Articles

For most of my life I’ve been at war with vegetables. Apart from peas, pretty much they were just table decorations – and salad? Well, salad came in for a particular level of contempt. Despite a lifelong enjoyment of keeping fit, I spent little time thinking about keeping healthy through my food choices, and what [...]

This particular blog began as a response to a thread on our student forum – an extremely lively place which often receives up to a thousand visits a day from our network of students and therapists (collectively known as Questies). Someone on the thread had quoted me as describing counselling as a backward step – [...]

Darin McCLoud is a nice guy who had a recent bad experience with the press. He’s a diabetic and has had problems with his his weight for as long as he remembers. Having failed with diets on repeated occasions he believed that a gastric bypass was the best way to remedy the problem. However, when [...]

There’s an interesting new treatment that has been shown to be effective with anxiety and addictions and which is now being tested for PTSD. It’s called Cognitive-bias modification (CBM) and can have a positive effect in a short space of time.
It is based on the idea that many psychological problems are caused by unconscious [...]

We often think of conforming as being a sign of weakness, and often applaud and admire the person who swims against the current. However, it would appear that the urge to conform comes directly from the brain, and my guess is that it’s a behaviour designed to help us thrive within a group – we [...]

I was interested to read recently that the company who make Power Balance bands were forced to admit that there was no credible scientific evidence to support their claims. Before I go any further, for those of you who haven’t come across them, a Power Balance band is a silicon bracelet that contains two holograms [...]

I was disturbed recently by a long conversation with a friend who had recently completed his qualification in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. I hadn’t been aware of how driven they had become by their interpretation of evidence-based practice. On the face of it, it seems a good idea, but from his reports it seems that the [...]

Apparently up to about 80% of our thoughts seems to be verbal rather than visual or emotional – at least according to recent research at the University of Nevada. This finding emerges from a field of study that’s looking at the power words have to influence our perceptions – i.e. the way we see [...]

Experiments have shown that a great deal of the sense we have of ourselves, of the feeling of the kind of person we are, is gained from our interpretation of our surroundings. If we continually find ourselves in a negative environment we tend to become the kind of person you find in such a place [...]

Dan Brown writes books that are perfect for holidays. After the success of the DaVinci Code he had a tough job on his hands but I think he’s done well. While the usual criticisms apply – his dialogue and characters are pretty wooden – his assemblage of research is superb and interesting, and some of [...]