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Some suggestions for giving and receiving helpful feedback

                      (this blog post is freely downloadable as a Word doc and as a PDF file)

"Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor."      Dr. Alexis Carrel

"It is a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away."     Robert Pirsig

"There are people who live their whole lives on the default settings, never realizing you can customize."        Robert Brault

Lessons from a personal multi-source feedback project

"A friend is someone who sees the potential in you and helps you to live it."     W. B. Yeats (adapted)

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

A few months ago now, I initiated a personal feedback project.  It was triggered by a number of factors.  I was soon to start the third part of an Emotion-Focused Therapy training and was interested in possibly using myself as "a case study" for the course; I had received some quite surprising & confronting feedback from a friend and I wondered how idiosyncratic or widespread his viewpoint might be; I had been encouraging feedback in groups that I run and I wanted to explore this more deeply; and finally I'm in a very good position to ask for & receive honest, thoughtful feedback from a broad social circle.

So what dietary advice should we be following - for psychological as well as physical health?

A couple of days ago I wrote a blog post that I think makes a very important point - "Emerging research on diet suggests it's startingly important in the prevention of anxiety & depression".  Much of what the post said is downloadable in Powerpoint and can be printed out as a six-slides-to-a-page handout that looks like this:

diet, anxiety & depression