"You learn to love by loving - by paying attention and doing what one thereby discovers has to be done."                                                                                                                                                      Aldous Huxley                

                      "Whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right."     Henry Ford                

                        "Knowledge is only rumour, until it is in the muscle."   New Guinea proverb

I'm running a ten-session training, starting next week, called "How to live well - a shared exploration".  Here's a link to a description of the first evening - "How to live well: 1st meeting - values, self-determination theory, roles & goals".  Before, during & after the course, there's encouragement to fill in questionnaires.  This is suggested for at least three reasons.  One is that when we measure something, we tend to pay more attention to it.  Keeping track is often a therapeutic intervention in its own right.  Secondly we're using questionnaires to see if changes in our behaviours actually produce the improvements we're hoping for. 

All counsellors & psychotherapists in the UK need to have regular supervision if they want to maintain their professional accreditation.  A central reason for this is to support therapists in being as helpful as possible for their clients.  Unfortunately current approaches to supervision don't seem to do this particularly well.  In a recent issue of the Cognitive Behavior Therapy journal, Alfonsson et al in their article "The effects of clinical supervision on supervisees and patients in cognitive behavioral therapy: a systematic review" clearly state "No study could show benefits from supervision for patients."  And this depressing conclusion simply affirms what previous research has already highlighted for psychotherapy more generally ...