I read a lot of research. When I find an article of particular interest I download it to my bibliographic database - EndNote - which currently contains over 16,000 abstracts.

The British Association for Behavioural & Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP) encourages the formation of Special Interest Groups (SIG's) in areas that members want to particularly focus on.  There has been discussion recently about a possible SIG on Compassion.  If you're a member of the BABCP and you would like to be involved, do please let me know (if you haven't done so already).  I've made some suggestions about the kind of territory a Compassion SIG might cover (see below), but I very much understand that people who are interested in the SIG, may well not be interested in all the areas I've suggested ... and they may have additional suggestions to add.  The aim would be discuss all this further once we see if there at least 15 of us who would like to support the SIG's establishment.

This blog post is downloadable both as a Word doc and as a PDF file. 

This blog post is downloadable both as a Word doc and as a PDF file. 

Overall - along with 50 to 60% of the population - I qualify as "securely attached".  I was fortunate in being brought up by loving parents who left me with an internalised "secure attachment script" that runs something like "If I feel a bit insecure or threatened, there will be others who I can turn to for comfort & support.  I'll then feel better & successfully be able to tackle the challenges I face."  Our attachment style spreads out to affect many aspects of our lives - especially how we feel about ourselves and how we relate to others.  I've written quite a lot in the past about attachment.  See, for example, "Attachment, compassion & relationships" and "Assessing attachment in adults".  In the latter post, I said " ...

"If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.  If you want to be happy, practice compassion."  Dalai Lama 

“ Watchful like a man crossing a winter stream, yielding like ice about to melt, simple like an uncarved block of wood, hollow like a cave. ” - Lao Tzu

Yesterday we had the twelfth & final session of this "Life skills" evening class.  There was scheduled to have been a bit less than a three month gap since the last - eleventh - session.  However the heavy winter snow we'd experienced had resulted in this last session being postponed.