Using Williams & Penman's book "Mindfulness: a practical guide" as a self-help resource (7th post) - fifth week's practice
Last updated on 29th August 2012
I began thinking yesterday about what I actually do as a psychotherapist. This lead to a light-hearted first post describing a "two-seven-two" model of integrative psychotherapy. The initial "two" acknowledges the importance of an overview of what has been going on for the client and a good working alliance. The "seven" describes a series of overlapping therapeutic areas that I pay attention to. The first three of these are probably used by most psychotherapists - problem solving relevant outer issues, problem solving unhelpful internal response styles, and - where appropriate - looking at "ball & chain" contributions from the past that may be holding back progress in the present.
"Those who do not have the power over the story that dominates their lives - the power to retell it, reexperience it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change - truly are powerless because they cannot think new thoughts" Salman Rushdie
I read a lot of research. When I find an article of particular interest I download it to my bibliographic database - It is clear that there is a U-shaped association between sleep duration and mortality, with both short and long sleep linked with increased death rates. This finding is underlined by two major recent research overviews - Gallicchio & Kalesan "Sleep duration and mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis" and Cappuccio et al's "Sleep duration and all-cause mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective studies". There is so much interesting that one could write about this, but this particular blog post is triggered by a personal query that I have. I try hard - and am mostly successful - to have a very healthy lifestyle. I eat well, exercise well, keep a sensible weight, don't smoke, don't dIs short duration sleep a problem or is it just disturbed sleep that leads to increased mortality risk? A personal exploration.
Last updated on 26th August 2024