I run an annual five day training for counselling psychology students on facilitating groups.  I'm using this blog post to upload some of the slides.  For example here's a collection on the current state of psychotherapy & some suggestions on potentially helpful ways of moving forward.  

More to follow! ...

                      (this blog post is freely downloadable as a Word doc and as a PDF file)

I wrote a post recently called "Truly excellent therapists have 'grace under interpersonal pressure - Fascinating new research".

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 as a Powerpoint slide and as a PDF file)

I recently wrote a blog post "Social relationships, group memberships and health: background", where I described some of the mental & physical health benefits of group membership.  I mentioned too the recent research study "Greater number of group identifications is associated with healthier behaviour" where the authors write:"What is already known on this subject? Researchers from a number of disciplines – especially social epidemiologists – have investigated the link between social ties and health behaviour in the past. These researchers have shown that, overall, greater ties predict healthier behaviour.

We know that relationships are important for wellbeing, for protection against & treatment of psychological disorders, and for improving mortality - see, for example, blog posts on this website such as "Strong relationships improve survival as much as quitting smoking", "Be the change you want to see in the world" & "Friendship: science, art & gratitude".

Yesterday was the second full day of the BABCP summer conference in Warwick.

In a recent post - "A project to change long-term interpersonal patterns: at a residential group" - I described a fairly classic example of the sort of tangle I can sometimes get into interpersonally (probably especially in group therapy environments), where others may see me as judgemental, a bit condescending, over-dominant and fairly invulnerable. Besides this being territory that I want personally to understand better and change, I hope that this kind of exploration can illuminate the tricky challenge of changing longterm patterns for others who are interested in this kind of work ... either as "general public" or as "psychotherapists".

Yesterday we had the final morning of the 'long weekend' three day Scottish Mixed Group.  I have already written posts about arriving, and the first and the second full days.  This was the fourth year that we had met for these annual get-togethers that run from Friday evening to Monday lunchtime; and several of us from the group have also met for an occasional full day workshop during the year between residentials.

I wrote yesterday about the first full day of this Scottish Peer Mixed Group, singing a celebration of what felt like one of the really special days of my life.  And then yesterday the river of the group slipped into more shadow for me, the emotional/interpersonal weather changing.  Squalls, rain, cross currents & turbulence.  One of the more difficult group days.  So fascinating this.  Metaphors can be very helpful when navigating challenges.  Important to be cautious & thoughtful with them though, because metaphors/models/charts aren't the reality itself.  What's actually going on is so complex & multi-layered in a group of eighteen people that it highlights the, at times, over-simplicity of operating charts ...