"One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.  He said "My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all.  One is Evil.  It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.  The other is Good.  It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith."  The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf wins?"  The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed." "

Anonymous

CBT World Congress: 1st conference day - chronotherapy, sleep, PTSD, bipolar disorder, and emotions

July 18, 2019

I wrote yesterday about a pre-conference workshop I attended on "Reimagining CBT for depression" with Keith Dobson.  Today is the first of the three full days of the '9th World Congress of Behavioural & Cognitive Therapies' conference proper.  They aren't taking any prisoners ... each day runs from 8.30am to 6.00pm.  My Airbnb is about a 40 minute walk from the CityCube conference centre, so the day pretty much runs from 7.30am to 7.00pm ... not a holiday!

Apparently this is the "largest global CBT meeting ever held".  I gather we have over 4,000 participants.  Running these big conferences is something of an art form and it's well done.  The 12-page at-a-glance slimline version of the overall programme shows me that when I get to the conference at 8.30 this morning, I will have a choice of 28 different symposia, panel discussions, skills classes & open paper sessions ... and that's before I even get to the great wealth of current research poster sessions.  By 10.30am I have to do it all again, but now I have a choice of 30 different options.  Over each of the three full conference days, I have about 6 choice points ... so about 18 events to attend, chosen from the many 100's on offer.  Gosh.  And we're each given a fairly bulky 152 conference book covering our choices.  But freely downloadable are another 840 pages of conference abstracts in two volumes.  Bloody hell!!!  Actually I rather like this kind of information cornucopia.  My plan for the day, after poring over my choices is a symposium on chronotherapy, another on sleep, and then a plenary on PTSD.  I've reduced my choices this afternoon by booking a longer in-conference workshop on bipolar disorder, and then I'm due to go to a plenary lecture on 'the primacy of emotions'.  I'm looking forward to it, but it's sure going to be a lot to digest. 

 

emotions ptsd cbt bipolar insomnia conferences