Stressed To Zest

Achieving Clinical Excellence conference in Amsterdam: second day (2nd post)

Stressed To Zest — Sat, 18 May 2013 04:37:56 +0100

Yesterday was my second full day here in Amsterdam at the "Achieving Clinical Excellence" conference put on by the International Center for Clinical Excellence. The first full day had been a workshop with Scott Miller on "Feedback informed treatment: pushing your clinical effectiveness to the next level". This second day was the start of the conference proper and was entitled "Excellence: what do we know and what can we learn?". I walked in from my hotel thinking that I'd be hard pushed to come up with a day of lectures that would interest me more than this exploration of what makes for clinical excellence.

BABCP spring meeting: Arnoud Arntz on schema therapy for personality disorders (2nd post)

Stressed To Zest — Sat, 04 May 2013 08:40:30 +0100

I wrote yesterday about coming to Belfast for this two day BABCP spring meeting. So how was the workshop I attended with Professor Arnoud Arntz talking about schema therapy for personality disorders?

Points to possibly enlarge on:

Where is this treatment compared with other psychotherapies for borderline (and comments about how widespread borderline is)?

Key issue of the prevalence & therapeutic relevance of personality disorders more broadly ... and the possibility too that schema therapy might be useful for chronic "Axis I" disorders as well.

The overlap with, for example, compassion-focused and emotion-focused therapies ... and narrative therapy to an extent as well ...

The huge issue about "limited re-parenting"

My own "needs-beliefs-behaviours" model

BABCP spring meeting: Arnoud Arntz on schema therapy for personality disorders (1st post)

Stressed To Zest — Fri, 03 May 2013 08:32:52 +0100

Now it's two days of the British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP) Spring Workshops and Conference.

C25K - couch to 5 km: NHS web resources for getting "just about anyone off the couch and running 5 km in 9 weeks"

Stressed To Zest — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 12:01:22 +0100

Well here's a good example of being taught by our patients. I've had two or three people, who come to see me, singing the praises of the C25K NHS website. The site states that "Our C25K plan is designed to get just about anyone off the couch and running 5km in nine weeks." That looks good ... and both my patients and the numerous appreciative comments on the C25K website underline how helpful people have found the written advice and more especially the downloadable MP3 podcasts that are to be used when running.

"Unfinished business": emotion-focused therapy and "empty chair work"

Stressed To Zest — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 05:42:17 +0100

"My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing." Aldous Huxley

A day spent "idle & blessed": revisiting an experiment - reviewing life balance

Stressed To Zest — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 06:09:50 +0100

Yesterday I wrote the blog post "A day spent 'idle & blessed': revisiting an experiment - savouring & positive state mindfulness" describing walking out on a lovely Spring day to wander for eight hours with no real plan, open to what emerged. I had a dictaphone with me and occasionally I spoke into it. I've jotted down what I said and added a few further notes:

A day spent "idle & blessed": revisiting an experiment - savouring & "positive state mindfulness"

Stressed To Zest — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 09:04:38 +0100

A good way of assessing attachment style across a variety of close relationships: the ECR-RS questionnaire

Stressed To Zest — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 06:38:54 +0100

Nearly four years ago I wrote a blog post "Assessing attachment in adults" where I discussed this field and gave more details of the 36-item "Experiences in close relationships - revised (ECR-R)" questionnaire. Despite the ECR-R being much easier to administer than (related but different) heavyweight methods like the Adult Attachment Interview, I haven't regularly used it over the years - quite largely because answering & then scoring 36-items for a series of different relationships is pretty time-consuming.

Attachment style in both health professionals & their clients, therapeutic alliance & mindfulness

Stressed To Zest — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 08:04:04 +0100

I had lunch with a health professional friend the other day. Later he emailed me saying "The last few times we have met you have mentioned the importance of attachment style in determining aspects of the interaction between patients and health care professionals." He went on to raise a series of questions about health professional-patient relationships, about the way that the attachment style of both health professional and patient can affect outcomes, about how adult attachment is measured and the possibility of improving attachment patterns, and about links between attachment & mindfulness. Gosh a lot of interesting questions being raised here.

BABCP spring meeting: workshop and conference - an introduction (1st post)

Stressed To Zest — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 07:51:26 +0100

Recent research: articles from March journals

Stressed To Zest — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 06:09:07 +0100

Twelve recent research studies on diet, psychological symptoms & wellbeing (2nd post): magnesium, zinc, folate, fish & selenium

Stressed To Zest — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 08:13:56 +0000

I wrote a post a couple of days ago entitled "Twelve recent research studies on diet, psychological symptoms & wellbeing (1st post): overall dietary quality & depression". I said that glancing back over recent research studies that I have noticed & downloaded to my personal database, I was struck by a whole series on the effects of diet on psychological state. I've listed twelve that caught my eye in the last several months - the first post gave half a dozen on overall dietary quality & depression, whereas this post focuses more on specific dietary components.

Twelve recent research studies on diet, psychological symptoms & wellbeing (1st post): overall dietary quality & depression

Stressed To Zest — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 05:22:22 +0000

Glancing back over recent research studies that I have noticed & downloaded to my personal database, I was struck by a whole series on the effects of diet on psychological state. I've listed twelve that caught my eye in the last several months - this first of two posts details studies that focus more on overall dietary quality. The second post in the series focuses more on specific dietary components & psychological disorder. There are obviously lots of interesting developments in this important area.

Therapeutic cross-breeding: EFT's approach to self-interruption splits applied to outdated coping modes in schema therapy

Stressed To Zest — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 05:10:43 +0000

"The walls we build to protect ourselves become the prisons in which we live" Alice Miller (adapted)

Keeping up with relevant research

Stressed To Zest — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 04:32:05 +0000

I average a little over three hours weekly scanning medical and psychological journals on the internet. Typically I zoom through the article titles looking for anything relevant to stress, health & wellbeing. If something seems interesting, I read the article's abstract. I may well then download it to my bibliographic database - I use EndNote. Currently I have well over 19,000 references stored and the number grows steadily. Sometimes I'll get hold of the text of the full article - by subscribing to the journal, buying the article, searching for the author's academic website, or emailing the corresponding author directly. I use this information I glean to improve my treatment of clients who come to me for help, and as a basis for talks and articles.

The potential value of rescripting images in chronic pain & other distressed states like depression & anxiety: treatment

Stressed To Zest — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 05:45:49 +0000

The potential value of rescripting images in chronic pain & other distressed states like depression & anxiety: assessment

Stressed To Zest — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 05:43:42 +0000

The potential value of rescripting images in chronic pain & other distressed states like depression & anxiety: introduction

Stressed To Zest — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 05:31:58 +0000

A high percentage of chronic pain sufferers seem to be affected by recurrent imagery that is linked to and aggravates their pain. Often the imagery's occurrence only emerges with careful questioning. "Rescripting" these images is associated with impressive short term improvements in pain and distress. What's exciting is the potential for longer term benefits from this kind of rescripting approach ... not only for chronic pain sufferers but also for people suffering from other persistent distressing states like depression and anxiety.

Recent research: articles from February journals

Stressed To Zest — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 09:27:56 +0000

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

Do psychotherapists, doctors and leaders develop "emotional chainmail"? Some ways of building both stability and empathy.

Stressed To Zest — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 07:11:05 +0000

In the last couple of days I've written two posts on the possibility of developing "emotional chainmail" when faced with repeated experiences of suffering. I have quoted research showing that being emotionally empathic to another's psychological or physical pain activates parallel pain areas in oneself, that medical training is frequently associated with reductions in empathy, and that a sense of power can lead to a deadening of sensitivity to the suffering of others. And this matters. Reductions in empathy strongly reduce how helpful we are for others. But how can we maintain or increase our levels of emotional empathy while maintaining our stability & resilience? In today's post I would like to suggest half a dozen ways of doing this. The diagram below is one that I use in explaining to clients why they have ended up in the distressed state that they're experiencing. However the sequence is also rele