I've already written a couple of blog posts on the short day workshop I'm running early next month - "Psychotherapy & positive psychology: why psychotherapists should pay attention" and "Psychotherapy & positive psychology: the assessment dashboard".  On the day itself I plan to start with a little background on what positive psychology is and how it has developed, then comment on why it's so relevant for psychotherapists, discuss assessment issues, and finally give examples by introducing three areas - self-determination theory, positive emotions, and self-compassion. 

I wrote yesterday about the email that was sent out last autumn asking several fellow psychotherapists up here in Edinburgh whether they would be interested in forming a Therapists' Support Group.

Seven of us got together yesterday afternoon to talk about possibly setting up some kind of therapists' support group.  We're all therapists ourselves, and some of us are close to or on the mature side of 60.  All male therapists, so we're kind of "the Grizzlies".  Why do it?  It's mostly been me who has got this inital meeting to happen ... with some help from a friend.  Why the effort?  The email we sent out at the end of November was headed "Invitation to a therapists' support group" and it read:  

Greetings.

Recently two of us ... who have been involved with counselling/psychotherapy for many years, have been talking about some good things that might emerge from meeting up with other experienced therapists.  We've batted around a whole series of ideas and one that has emerged looks loosely like this:

"Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction?  Fiction, after all, has to make sense."  Mark Twain 

I wrote an initial blog post last month on "Antonio Damasio's 'Self comes to mind': overview".  I commented that I wanted to think a bit more about three of the areas covered in the book - "Emotions and the body", "Memory and the autobiographical self" and "Mindfulness, protoself, core and autobiographical self" - and I wrote a post "Antonio Damasio's 'Self comes to mind': emotions & the body 1".  Today I want to write further on this "Emotions and the body" topic.