External Resources

Compassion is the courage to descend into the reality of human experience. —Paul Gilbert, founder of Compassion Focused Therapy

This quote appears toward the end of a fantastic, very moving animated short-film that psychologist, Dr. Charlie Heriot-Maitland, worked on with animator Kate Anderson. It is the story of Stuart who experiences internal voices that criticize him, frighten, and overwhelm him, and of his journey of gaining confidence Read more ›

This year, the Avenstone Cutting Garden is open August 3, 10, 17, and 24 from 2 p.m. until dusk. View more information and directions.

Read my blog post about Avenstone and the wonderful work Peter and Jane Good are doing to support local Hospice organizations and raise awareness about hospice palliative care. Read more ›

While enjoying the blog of the Therapeutic Landscapes Network, I came across the post, “Hearts in Nature, from Suz Lipman“. It included two photographs of heart shapes found in nature (a cloud formation framing blue sky and a small stone). Read more ›

In the previous post, I announced the newly published book, Treating Psychosis: A Clinician’s Guide to Integrating Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Compassion-Focused Therapy, and Mindfulness Approaches within the Cognitive Behavior Therapy Tradition. I also wrote that the book’s accompanying website (treatingpsychosis.com) is well worth exploring (and bookmarking).

One of the resources on that website is a very moving and powerful video Read more ›

The book, Treating Psychosis: A Clinician’s Guide to Integrating Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Compassion-Focused Therapy, and Mindfulness Approaches within the Cognitive Behavior Therapy Tradition, has been recently released. Read more ›

Following up from one of my previous posts, here is a video of a presentation given by Dr. Victoria Sweet, author of the book, God’s Hotel: A Doctor, A Hospital, and A Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine. In the video, Dr. Sweet shares some content from the book, talks about the concept of veriditas, the “efficiency of inefficiency”, and of the power of utilizing both fast medicine and slow medicine. Read more ›

In the book, Mindful Compassion, you will find an important sub-heading: “Mindfulness of the Chaotic Mind, Not Just the Still Mind” (see chapter five). The book is written by psychologist, Paul Gilbert, and mindfulness and compassion meditation instructor, Choden. The 10-word sub-heading is so important, containing a key concept, practice, and lesson in and of itself. Read more ›

I am currently reading the biography, God’s Hotel: A Doctor, A Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine by Victoria Sweet (copyright 2012). From this reading, I have learned many things not limited to but including

1. the word, viriditas
2. that viriditas comes from the Latin word for green, and
3. that one meaning of viriditas that was used by Hildegard during a period of premodern medicine is “the analogous power of human beings to grow, to give birth, and to heal” (p. 86).

Read more ›

You can sign-up for this course on the Coursera website. It looks interesting and began last week. The course includes information from evolutionary psychology (a branch of psychology that influences compassion-focused therapy). Read more ›

Compassion-focused therapy aims to help us cultivate certain skills, qualities, feeling states, and motivations (e.g., skills and qualities compassion, feelings of safeness, the motivation to show care and to alleviate suffering). These we can then use to help work with particular difficulties or situations such as shame, self-criticism, or difficult emotions. Compassion-focused therapy also aims to help address and alleviate the fears and blocks we may have to experiencing compassion Read more ›