(this post is downloadable as both a Word doc and as a PDF file).

I wrote yesterday about conflict and the costs of over- and under-assertiveness.  Today's post adds further thoughts about making conflict constructive.

(this post is downloadable as both a Word doc and as a PDF file).  

Occasional disagreement and conflict are pretty much inevitable.  I scanned Medline for relevant research articles to see if there are any helpful insights that have emerged recently.  As usual when one trawls for information, hundreds of publications emerge.  Here are a few of the areas I found particularly interesting.

I wrote yesterday about arriving at this year's Mixed Group here in Cumbria.  Now it's the second morning.  Yesterday was the first full day of the group.  How was it?  As I've written before "Process groups tend to move through a series of developmental stages.  These can be described in a variety of ways.  Tuckman presented an early description which still contains much that is useful.  His sequence was forming (orientation and dependence), storming (intra-group conflict and differentiation), norming (interpersonal intimacy and cohesion), performing (work and functional role-relatedness), and adjourning (loss and autonomy).  It is important to emphasise that all stages of group development contain useful opportunities for learning and that one stage is not necessarily any better than another."

First morning of the "Mixed Group".  This last week has been such lovely weather.  People arriving yesterday evening looking so brown.  The forecast had predicted a change to more cloudy weather, and it certainly seems accurate for this morning's rather colder, overcast feel.  Good weather to stay indoors for "group work" though ... no repeated urge to be outside in the sun.

We've been meeting here in Cumbria for these four day peer group residentials for over twenty years.  I've written quite often about these groups in this blog, for example last year's Mixed Group and last year's Men's Group.

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 module training - "Emotional avoidance & emotion driven behaviours (EDB's)" (typically taking one to three treatment sessions) and "Awareness & tolerance of physical sensations" (typically taking just one treatment session).

This blog post is downloadable both as a Word doc and as a PDF file. 

This blog post is downloadable both as a Word doc and as a PDF file. 

Here are details of half a dozen recent research papers - two on relationships, two on body to mind effects, and two on mindfulness.  Fuller details, links and abstracts of all the studies mentioned are given further down this post.