Evidence-based” is a miracle term used in the field of mental health. It opens and closes doors, makes some people rich and others poor. Officially, it’s intended to promote quality of health services and safety of patients. And it works to some extent as it’s meant to. But it’s also used in a very flawed […]
On acceptance of emotions
Have you ever heard about acceptance of difficult emotions? The concept became recently quite popular in psychology. However, this coping strategy may easily be misinterpreted. Why do we have bad feelings? Our feelings are not a kind of internal entertainment system from the pre-TV era. They are not here to please us. “Difficult” emotions are […]
The Matrix of Wellbeing – your compass in the journey of life
In the last post I discussed mental health in general terms. As mentioned there, the World Health Organization defines mental health as a state of wellbeing. But what exactly does our wellbeing depend on? This is our topic for today. I’m gona be more specific about what mental health is, and talk about four pillars […]
Mental health explained
Some time ago mental health was viewed as lack of a mental disorder. You were mentally healthy when you weren’t mentally ill. But this view has dramatically changed in this century.
Emotion regulation made simple
This post is about emotions and emotion regulation. I wonder if you have ever seen one of those “Man versus machine” science-fiction movies. They often show that the difference between human beings and robots lies in emotions. In the movies, machines may have equal or even superior intelligence. What they lack are human feelings. Well, […]
Four psychological takeaways from Christmas
As we are approaching Christmas, Christmas is the topic of this post. Christmas is not only a yearly reminder of something that happened long ago, and it is not only a part of a religious tradition. From the psychological point of view, Christmas contains metaphors that are relevant in the context of our current lives. […]
Therapeutic competency no 1: awareness
Have you ever wondered what might be the overarching competency that helps therapists choose whether or not to follow certain rules in therapy? A couple of months ago I delivered a workshop to a group of CBT learners, during which I did a role play as a “therapist”. After the event one of the participants […]
Therapists on a bus – therapeutic alliance in Emotional Safeness Therapy
Therapeutic alliance is one of the most frequently discussed topics in psychotherapy literature and its importance is broadly acknowledged. But what about the consequences of this acknowledgment? How does the robust evidence of the critical importance of alliance affect what we call evidence based treatment? Therapeutic allegiance In one of my previous posts I mentioned […]
Introducing Emotional Safeness Therapy for depression and personality problems
Emotional Safeness Therapy (EST) is a new integrative treatment for recurrent depression and co-occurring personality problems. The EST has been successfully implemented and run as group therapy over a period of three years (2015-2018) at an outpatient unit of the Akershus University Hospital in Norway. You can read more about the work on the development […]
The Multidimensional Model of Change – a new way of structuring psychotherapy
Multidimensional Model of Change (the MMC) is a meta-theoretical framework for structuring psychotherapy. The Model has been used as a basis for the development of an integrative group treatment for depression, called Emotional Safeness Therapy (EST). The EST has been implemented and successfully run by our team at the Akershus University Hospital, the major Norwegian […]