"The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking."    J. K. Galbraith

                   "The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder."    Ralph Sockman

                      "It's important to keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out."

I have already written blog posts about the great half day pre-conference workshop I went to - "Glasgow BABCP conference: Pre-conference workshop - the excellent Michelle Craske on 'Exposure therapy in the 21st century'" - and the first full day of the conference - "Glasgow BABCP conference: 1st day - lecture rant, Anke Ehlers on PTSD, a workshop on 'the strong & curious therapist', and more".  Sadly I didn't get to the second day of the conference, but I certainly went to the final half day attending a very fine two hour 'clinical skills' class with Jaime Delgadillo on&nb

I have been asked to write a chapter on the importance of obtaining regular feedback on client progress in a book on psychotherapist self-practice & self-reflection.  This initial section (see below) of a draft of the chapter comments on the current state of psychotherapy itself:

(Note the ideas in this blog are explored in more detail in the chapter "Client feedback: an essential input to therapist reflection" in the forthcoming Haarhoff, B. and Thwaites, R. (2016) "Reflection in CBT: Increasing your effectiveness as a therapist, supervisor and trainer." London: SAGE Publications Ltd.)

The last morning of this excellent BABCP conference dawned bright & sunny ... as it has all week.  I have particularly enjoyed this year's BABCP get-together.  I think this has been due to a combination of factors including presentations that have been personally of real interest, the weather, the University of Birmingham accommodation, good wifi access(!) and the general friendliness.  Not bad considering I hurt my back in the train on the way here and it has only gradually been easing over the four days of the workshops & conference.

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple"   Oscar Wilde 

In the last couple of days I've written two posts on the possibility of developing "emotional chainmail" when faced with repeated experiences of suffering ... "Do psychotherapists, doctors and leaders develop "emotional chainmail"?  Description of a possible problem" and "Do psychotherapists, doctors and leaders develop "emotional chainmail"?

I wrote yesterday about how, at the weekend, I was involved in an hour and a half's deep emotional conflict resolution with an old friend that was witnessed in a group by another eight people.  As pretty much always, in the feedback that emerged over the next twenty four hours, different people reported very different reactions to what they had seen.  I still (after forty years involvement in a wide cross section of psychotherapy groups) find it jaw-dropping the sheer variety of what different people feel & think when observing absolutely the same event.  However, it seemed that most of those who spoke were deeply moved and respectful of what we'd done and how well it had worked out ...

I've been in a peer "psychotherapy group" residential retreat again recently and I was involved in an interaction that has crystalised a series of thoughts about potential "emotional armouring" in therapists that I've been aware of more vaguely for some time. And in fact these "suspicions" involve not just psychotherapists, but also doctors and leaders more generally as well. Happily there are great advantages of this emotional stability & resilience, but I believe there can also be very genuine personal & interpersonal costs. So what am I talking about here?

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 d