I wrote yesterday about the first part of this tenth "Life skills" evening.  I particularly discussed development of Goodwill practice - very much in the "Nourishing positive states" section of the "Four aspects" diagram (below).  In the second half of the evening we moved on to the "Exploring & processing" section of the diagram with the introduction particularly of various forms of therapeutic writing.

If you want others to be happy, practise compassion.  If you want to be happy, practise compassion.    Dalai Lama 

I wrote yesterday about Marylene Cloitre et al's fine recent research study "Treatment for PTSD Related to Childhood Abuse: A Randomized Controlled Trial." I ended the post with the paragraph: For me, her work is both exciting and also raises a whole series of questions.  These include 1.) Would her skills-based plus trauma processing approach be relevant for others suffering from particularly severe forms of PTSD (e.g.

I've just come across a very interesting research study published in this month's American Journal of Psychiatry:  Cloitre, M., K. C. Stovall-McClough, et al. (2010). "Treatment for PTSD Related to Childhood Abuse: A Randomized Controlled Trial." Am J Psychiatry 167(8): 915-924.  The abstract reads:  "Objective: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) related to childhood abuse is associated with features of affect regulation and interpersonal disturbances that substantially contribute to impairment.

I read a lot of research.  When I find an article of particular interest I download it to my bibliographic database - EndNote - which currently contains over 14,800 abstracts. 

Yesterday was the ninth evening of this "Life skills" training.  I wrote about the eighth session last week.  The sequence of regular weekly classes now moves on to increasing gaps between sessions - so it's three weeks until the tenth, a further five weeks until the eleventh, and then an additional eleven weeks until the final twelfth session.  My hope is that we will be able to arrange occasional follow-up meetings even after that.

Yesterday I wrote about David Clark's inspiring conference talk on "IAPT: achievements, lessons and the future".  The lecture was followed by a rather poor conference lunch - I had an image of us all dipping our heads into the brown paper bags of sandwiches we were given, like feedbags for horses.  A good conversation with neighbours over lunch, then wandering to a different building to get to the "Metaphors and stories in CBT" panel discussion with Richard Stott and Ann Hackmann.  Paul Blenkiron had been billed to contribute too, but apparently his wife had had a baby this morning - I hope they're doing well.