Stressed To Zest

Personal experience: working with "negative feedback" & thoughts about "artificially produced compassion" (2nd post)

Stressed To Zest — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 05:35:27 +0000

"No man was ever wise by chance." Lucius Seneca

Personal experience: working with "negative feedback" & thoughts about "artificially produced compassion" (1st post)

Stressed To Zest — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 05:06:26 +0000

"Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger." Franklin P. Jones

Using Williams & Penman's book "Mindfulness: a practical guide" as a self-help resource (7th post) - fifth week's practice

Stressed To Zest — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 05:14:22 +0000

My brand new "two-seven-two" model of integrative psychotherapy! (second post)

Stressed To Zest — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 04:52:54 +0000

I began thinking yesterday about what I actually do as a psychotherapist. This lead to a light-hearted first post describing a "two-seven-two" model of integrative psychotherapy. The initial "two" acknowledges the importance of an overview of what has been going on for the client and a good working alliance. The "seven" describes a series of overlapping therapeutic areas that I pay attention to. The first three of these are probably used by most psychotherapists - problem solving relevant outer issues, problem solving unhelpful internal response styles, and - where appropriate - looking at "ball & chain" contributions from the past that may be holding back progress in the present.

My brand new "two-seven-two" model of integrative psychotherapy! (first post)

Stressed To Zest — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 06:01:05 +0000

Using Williams & Penman's book "Mindfulness: a practical guide" as a self-help resource (6th post) - fourth week's practice

Stressed To Zest — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 05:20:28 +0000

Emotion-focused therapy workshop series (fifth post): two chair conflict dialogues

Stressed To Zest — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 14:38:14 +0000

Emotion-focused therapy workshop series (fourth post): the importance of processing "hot" cognitions & feelings

Stressed To Zest — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 05:11:45 +0000

Emotion-focused therapy workshop series (third post): narrative therapy and trauma processing

Stressed To Zest — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 05:21:07 +0000

Yesterday was the third day of the seven seminar "Emotion-focused psychotherapy: Level 2 workshop series" that I'm attending at the University of Strathclyde. I wrote about the second workshop last autumn in the posts "Emotion-focused therapy workshop series (first post): excitement and why am I doing this?" and "EFT workshop series (second post): client processes and therapist-client conflict". So how was yesterday's workshop for me? Irreverently that question reminds me of the joke "The love making was so good that even the neighbours stopped for a cigarette".

Using Williams & Penman's book "Mindfulness: a practical guide" as a self-help resource (5th post) - third week's practice

Stressed To Zest — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 04:46:04 +0000

Recent research: articles from December journals

Stressed To Zest — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 18:07:03 +0000

I read a lot of research. When I find an article of particular interest I download it to my bibliographic database - read more

Is short duration sleep a problem or is it just disturbed sleep that leads to increased mortality risk? A personal exploration.

Stressed To Zest — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 06:44:41 +0000

Using Williams & Penman's book "Mindfulness: a practical guide" as a self-help resource (4th post) - second week's practice

Stressed To Zest — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 05:53:02 +0000

Last week I wrote about "Using Williams & Penman's book ... as a self-help resource (3rd post) - first week's practice". It's time now to move on to the second week's practice described in chapter six - "Keeping the body in mind".

Encouraging recent research on social anxiety: being embarrassed can lead you to be judged more, not less, positively by others

Stressed To Zest — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 06:20:59 +0000

Using Williams & Penman's book "Mindfulness: a practical guide" as a self-help resource (3rd post) - first week's practice

Stressed To Zest — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 06:30:43 +0000

Time to roll up our sleeves and start turning Williams & Penman's book's "meditation recipes" into genuinely nourishing meals. I have already written a first blog post on why we have good reason to be optimistic about the benefits we can achieve with this kind of self-help venture. The second post encouraged us to get ready for the mindfulness practice. We are now at chapter five in the book - "Mindfulness week one: waking up to the autopilot".

"Sleep well and live better: overcoming insomnia using CBT" - the links between sleep disturbance and depression (2nd post)

Stressed To Zest — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 06:40:04 +0000

I wrote a first post last month about a workshop I went to given by Professor Colin Espie - "Sleep well and live better: overcoming insomnia using CBT". I mentioned that he went through the sequence: What is insomnia? Why is it a big deal? Why is cognitive behaviour therapy relevant? Is it clinically effective? How can it be delivered in real world practice? In today's post I would like to look more at Why is it a big deal? And I would like particularly to focus on links between insomnia and depression.

Particularly if you're socially anxious, try to stay task-focused rather than self-focused

Stressed To Zest — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 05:56:39 +0000

(This & last week's social anxiety blog posts are available as a PDF file or a Word doc - you may need to 'save' the latter before you can open it)

"Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point" C. S. Lewis

Using Williams & Penman's book "Mindfulness: a practical guide" as a self-help resource (2nd post) - getting ready

Stressed To Zest — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 05:27:38 +0000

An intriguing and encouraging development in therapeutic writing

Stressed To Zest — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 05:22:30 +0000

(This blog post is available both as a PDF file and as a Word doc - you may need to 'save' the latter before you can open it)

"You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness." Jonathan Safran Foer

"No man was ever wise by chance." Lucius Seneca

Fear of blushing is more a problem of hyperawareness than of facial temperature

Stressed To Zest — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 07:45:33 +0000

(This & next week's social anxiety blog posts are available as a PDF file or a Word doc - you may need to 'save' the latter before you can open it)

"At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time." Frederich Nietzsche