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Posts tagged with 'avoidance'

Working with traumatic memories: trauma-focused CBT and an introduction to rescripting

19th November 2012

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear." James Hollingworth Yesterday I wrote a post "Working with traumatic memories: KISS (keep it simple, stupid) and the virtues of straightforward prolonged exposure". Today I would like to consider what fuller …

Working with traumatic memories: KISS (keep it simple, stupid) and the virtues of straightforward prolonged exposure

18th November 2012

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." Leonardo da Vinci "It seems that perfection is reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." Antoine de Sainte Exupery I have just written a series of three posts on Arntz & Jacob's new book …

Andrew Christensen's "Unified protocol for couple therapy" - the five principles (one, two & three)

19th August 2011

I wrote yesterday about Andrew Christensen's interesting proposal for a "Unified protocol for couple therapy". I mentioned that the protocol involves "five principles". The first of these is to: (1) provide a contextualized, dyadic, objective conceptualization of problems. Good. This makes plenty of sense. It's seeing the "wood" rather than …

Andrew Christensen's "Unified protocol for couple therapy" - overview

18th August 2011

Couple therapy was a major theme in last month's British Association for Behavioural & Cognitive Psychotherapies conference and I wrote three blog posts about this. One of several initiatives I followed up after the conference was to get a copy of the book "Enhancing couples: The shape of couple therapy …

BABCP spring meeting: David Barlow's unified protocol - emotional avoidance, edb's & physical sensation tolerance (fifth post)

19th April 2011

This is the fifth in a series of posts about David Barlow & colleagues' new unified protocol for treatment of anxiety, depression & related emotional disorders. The fourth post was on "Emotional awareness training & cognitive reappraisal" and this one is on the fifth & sixth modules in the eight …

Recent research: six studies on money, happiness, romance, leadership, self-compassion & avoidance

26th August 2010

Here are half a dozen recent research studies that caught my eye. Diener et al, in a large sample of people round the world, found intriguingly that wealth tends to increase life satisfaction, while it is the fulfilment of psychological needs - learning, autonomy, using one's skills, respect, and the …

Assessing and encouraging enjoyable activities

25th October 2009

What we've seen in our work is that most people don't give themselves permission to live until they've been given a terminal diagnosis. Stephen Levine I came across an interesting research study recently: Pressman, S. D., K. A. Matthews, et al. (2009). "Association of Enjoyable Leisure Activities With Psychological and …

Attachment, compassion & relationships

6th September 2009

Well I didn't sleep too well last night. Catero, my wife, and I went to the cinema yesterday evening and watched "500 Days of Summer" . I enjoyed it and it got me thinking about relationships. The "Summer" of the title is a woman who doesn't believe in romantic love. …

Handouts & questionnaires for social anxiety

3rd November 2008

Note this list of resources has been updated ... see the "Good Knowledge" section's folder on "Social anxiety information & assessment". It is also worth clicking on "social anxiety" in the "Tag Cloud". Here are a collection of information sheets, handouts and questionnaires about social anxiety disorder. As I write …

Four aspects of helpful inner focus: 2.) nourishing positive states (part A)

29th October 2008

Ten days ago, on this blog, I wrote about "Reducing negative states" as one aspect of a simple model entitled "Four aspects of helpful inner focus" (see below). The model is a method I've evolved to help me organize and think about the many facets of deliberately induced altered states …