Posts tagged with 'conflict'
An online interpersonal support group stirs up a mix of feelings
14th April 2020
"Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel." "This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man." Both quotations by Polonius in Shakespeare's …
Psychotherapy with couples & other close relationships
28th January 2019
Over the next two days I'm due to run a two day training workshop in Glasgow on "Psychotherapy with couples & other close relationships". Here are the downloadable slides for the first day on "Working with couples" (sadly with the cartoons removed for copyright reasons) and here the slides for …
How to live well: 8th meeting: nourishing relationships, conflict & wisdom, and attachment
24th October 2018
"The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart." Dhammapada We introduced the first of three sessions on relationships in last week's meeting - "How to live well: 7th meeting - relationships, roles, Dunbar, needs & dyads". We looked particularly at Funeral speeches/current progress, Dunbar's 5-15-50-150 …
Reappraisal training can help hugely in coping with difficult experiences
27th August 2017
Reappraisal (changing the meaning we give to experiences) has been repeatedly shown to be one of the most effective ways we have to regulate our emotions. It's one of the star components of effective emotion-regulation, coping-skill toolkits ... and it's important to realise that these toolkits can be very helpful …
Personal social networks (5th post): the frequency of conflict
11th March 2017
Personal social networks are hugely important for our health & wellbeing, as I've underlined in the first of this six post sequence - "Personal social networks (1st post): Dunbar's 5-15-50-150 model". However our personal networks are also regularly affected by conflicts, especially with those we're close to. It's not a …
Using involvement in group discussions for (self-) assessment and learning
26th September 2016
(this blog post is freely downloadable as a Word doc and as a PDF file) I recently gave a talk on "Therapist drift: black heresy or red herring?". Although that was the title, the talk rapidly segued into an exploration of the current state of psychotherapy and what we might …
Truly excellent therapists have "grace under interpersonal pressure" - How can we assess ourselves?
19th March 2016
I wrote a post recently called "Truly excellent therapists have 'grace under interpersonal pressure - Fascinating new research". I mentioned the classic 2009 Timothy Anderson paper "Therapist effects: facilitative interpersonal skills as a predictor of therapist success". I then went on to describe three great new additions to this literature …
Truly excellent therapists have "grace under interpersonal pressure" - Fascinating new research
15th March 2016
Hemingway wrote "Courage is grace under pressure". New research underlines that "grace under interpersonal pressure" is a key ability of truly excellent therapists. Study after study has shown that psychotherapists vary considerably in how helpful they are for their clients. The slide below shows a typical set of findings: (downloadable …
Workshop on couple therapy: slides and handouts
7th February 2016
A couple of days ago I ran a one day workshop on Couple Therapy for final year Counselling Psychology students at Glasgow's Caledonian University. Although I've run many workshops over the years around relationship themes, this is the first time I've taught one specifically on Couple Therapy. It's hard work …
A project to change long-term interpersonal patterns: building & maintaining commitment
8th April 2015
"Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was but vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible." T. E. Lawrence Our lives …