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Peer groups, Cumbria spring group: first full day - feeling our way in, revisiting the Skye experience and dancing

Still before breakfast - at the start of the second full day now.  Yesterday I wrote about "arriving".  The noise of the mill stream just outside provides a constant back drop while we're here.  When we arrived on Wednesday evening it was flowing so quietly, the water level almost as low as I've seen it.  Then the rain came and it turned into a torrent.  Roaring.  In a way a bit of a parallel for our group.  We've got going fast.  So many of us know each other well.  Familiar place.  Familiar to be in one of these residential groups together again.  And new.  Extraordinary to "age" alongside these people.  We've brought photographs from earlier groups going back over twenty years.  Poignant, funny, endearing, happy-sad.

Peer groups, Cumbria spring group: first morning - "arriving"

First morning of the "Mixed Group".  We have been meeting like this - in an old converted watermill in Cumbria - nearly every year since the start of the 90's.  This year's residential is a bit different.  For many it's a 20 year reunion (or thereabouts).  Sixteen old friends!  Sounds a little like "The big chill" or "Peter's friends" or any of a whole series of other films and stories looking at  "reunions".  I've written a lot about these residential groups in this blog - see, for example, the group work links in

  • BABCP spring meeting: Nick Grey on memory-focused approaches in CBT for adults with PTSD - other applications (5th post)

    Last month I wrote a series of four blog posts about a CBT workshop on memory-focused for adults with PTSD (and a couple of posts about a personal experience of trauma).  The third of these posts discussed how this kind of memory-focused approach could also be helpful for other types of "non-PTSD" trauma such as experiences of grief & loss.  In today's post I want to explore this extended application even further - looking at the use of memory-focused therapy for anxiety & depression, personality disorders, and complex type II trauma.

    Walking in Skye & Kintail: lessons, self-compassion & posttraumatic growth

    Still less than three days since the most intense, prolonged, potentially catastrophic experience of my life.  What have I learned ... both personally and as a therapist?  Gratitude ... of course.  Gratitude to the mountain rescue service, gratitude to my wife & family & friends, gratitude for my health, for the extraordinary beauty of this world, for being able to walk, to breath, to smile.  And gratitude can even help me process what happened better

    Walking in Skye & Kintail: mountain rescue, helicopter winches, and avoiding death & PTSD

    It's really early, and paradoxically I should be sleeping beautifully because I'm in a comfortable room at the Sligachan Hotel on the Isle of Skye.  However I'm not too fussed - acute sleep deprivation may well affect memory consolidation and reduce the risk of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following trauma.  And why the possible PTSD?

    The jazz trio metaphor: reworking the core conditions, relational depth, compassion & two kinds of empathy (1st post)

    Working as a psychotherapist or counsellor, practising as a doctor, participating in interpersonal groupwork, and at the heart of relating deeply with another human being - I have internal reminders, charts, ways of helping myself be present in as constructive a way as I can.  One inner chart or internal reminder is the jazz trio metaphor.  A bit like a musician revisiting and making fresh again their playing of a well known classical work, the jazz trio metaphor takes another look at the key, so often explored territory of the therapeutic relationship - which overlaps to a huge extent with the more universal territory of how to be profoundly present in any deep relationship with another human being. 

    BABCP spring meeting: Nick Grey on memory-focused approaches in CBT for adults with PTSD - writing suggestions (4th post)

    (A handout of the key points in this blog post is downloadable both as a Word doc and as a PDF file)

    I have written a series of blog posts on Nick Grey's expert workshop on CBT treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder.  The day's focus was particularly on treatment approaches involving the trauma memory itself.  Nick highlighted four interlinked memory-focused methods - exposure & reliving, written narrative, site visit, and discrimination of triggers.  This post is the text of a client handout I subsequently put together discussing how best to go about the written narrative.  

    BABCP spring meeting: Nick Grey on memory-focused approaches in CBT for adults with PTSD - grief & loss (3rd post)

    This is the third in a series of posts triggered by Nick Grey's workshop on memory-focused approaches in CBT for adults with PTSD.  In the second post yesterday, I wrote about " ... treatment structure".  In today's post I want to step back for a moment and get a broader perspective.  These trauma-focused treatments have much wider applicability than just for DSM-IV-TR congruent, single episode traumas, and it's this wider applicability that's a major reason for me doing this workshop.