Yesterday was the second full day of the BABCP summer conference in Warwick.

"Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction?  Fiction, after all, has to make sense."  Mark Twain 

I posted yesterday on the first, "Needs" section of the "Needs, beliefs, behaviours" diagram (below).  Today I want to say a little about the second section of the diagram - "Beliefs".

This diagram is downloadable both as a Powerpoint slide and as a PDF file. 

Last week I wrote about "A couple of fine books on attachment".  Today I want to highlight what a fantastic resource the internet is - below are details of half a dozen websites that offer lots of attachment information, and also details of further websites that are helpful but more limited.

I wrote earlier this month on "Attachment, compassion & relationships".  I've been aware of John Bowlby's work on adult-child attachment for many years but, when I've approached it for insights that might help in my work as a psychotherapist, I've been put off by the complexity of assessment methods and variety of reported attachment styles, as well as by the rapidly growing size of the relevant academic literature.  As Jude Cassidy and Phillip Shaver write in their preface to the 2008 meister work "Handbook of attachment (2^nd ed)" - see more details at the end of this blog post - "Anybody who conducts a literature search on the topic of 'attachment' will turn up more than 10,000 entries since 1975, and the entries will be spread across scores of physiological, clinical, developmental, and social psychology journals, will include numerous

Well I didn't sleep too well last night.  Catero, my wife, and I went to the cinema yesterday evening and watched "500 Days of Summer" . I enjoyed it and it got me thinking about relationships.  The "Summer" of the title is a woman who doesn't believe in romantic love.  She's kind of charming and maddening and, as I biked away from the cinema, I wondered how I would have approached treating her if she had come to me for therapy!  Interestingly a newspaper reviewer commented that the film is "weirdly incurious about the inner life of its female lead".

Here are three good, recently published books that are all highly relevant to the fields of stress, health & wellbeing.

This is the third Moroccan blog post.  It introduces some ideas about mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), self-criticism and problem solving.

So yesterday we drove East and South from Marrakech across the Atlas - the road, our driver said, winding up to over 6,500 feet (about 2,000 meters) before heading back down to the plain that eventually after many kilometers will become the Sahara.

First thing on Monday morning. How delicious, warm, beautiful to spend last night in our own bed with darling Catero. Bliss. My body softens and settles.