(This post on "Written exposure therapy" is downloadable both as a PDF file and as a Word doc)

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear.    James Hollingworth

Denise Sloan, associate director at the US National Center for PTSD, has produced many fine publications on therapeutic writing.  However I think she has surpassed herself with her most recent:

"God guard me from those thoughts men think in the mind alone; he that sings a lasting song, thinks in a marrow bone."     W. B. Yeats

"We camouflage our true being before others to protect ourselves against criticism or rejection.  This protection comes at a steep price.  When we are not truly known by the other people in our lives, we are misunderstood.  When we are misunderstood, especially by family and friends, we join the 'lonely crowd.'  Worse, when we succeed in hiding our being from others, we tend to lose touch with our real selves.  This loss of self contributes to illness in its myriad forms."         Sidney Jourard

I wrote yesterday on stress, abuse & mind-body links that might be relevant for some chronic fatigue syndrome sufferers. There is a good deal of research too on other - possibly linked - vulnerability factors that may predispose some people to later development of fatigue problems - including a number of studies on unhelpful levels/types of perfectionism.

In yesterday's post, I described the pre-workshop publicity for this day on treatment of chronic fatigue syndrome.  How did I find the workshop in actual practice? Well, I enjoyed meeting Trudie Chalder. She came across as very alive, friendly, bright, knowledgeable. Great.  And her two decades or so of dedicated exploration of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is so impressive ... one of those research journeys that I find it heart-warming to look at.  For me the workshop itself was a bit of a funny mix. In the morning session we were given an overview/update on chronic fatigue syndrome and its standard CBT treatment.

The 40th British Association for Behavioural & Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP) conference is at Leeds University.  As usual it's preceded by a choice of pre-conference workshops. Three of the nineteen initially on offer have been cancelled, but there's still a wealth of options. I'm due to go to Trudie Chalder, from the London Institute of Psychiatry, speaking on "Emotional Processing in the Context of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Implications for Persistent Physical Symptoms in General".  The pre-workshop publicity states: "More than half of people with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) have co-morbid depression or anxiety.