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Archive for October, 2007

wispy clouds

Posted in from the dark room, photography on October 7, 2007| 3 Comments »

wispy clouds, originally uploaded by bobsee.

It’s amazing how the sunlight illuminates these wispy clouds

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Skye view

Posted in from the dark room, photography on October 6, 2007| 1 Comment »

dramatic sky
Isn’t this dramatic?
The morning was full of rain and the skies started to clear as I crossed over from the mainland to the Isle of Skye

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morning sun stirling

Posted in from the dark room, photography on October 5, 2007| 6 Comments »

morning sun stirling, originally uploaded by bobsee.

Saw the sun come up over the railway station this morning.
Looks like a Chinese painting, doesn’t it?

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How we cope – learning from the movies. Part 5

Posted in from the consulting room, from the viewing room, health, life, movies on October 5, 2007| 2 Comments »

This series is about using the movies to help us understand how we are all different, how we experience the world differently and how we all try to cope with challenges and change in our own ways. One of the commonest responses to challenge, is to withdraw – to hide, retreat, shut down. It’s an especially common way to try to deal with hurts and disappointments. The downside of this strategy is that we disengage and can easily spiral down into depression.

To see all five parts of this series put the phrase “learning from the movies” in the search box up on the top right of the blog.

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How we cope – learning from the movies. Part 4

Posted in education, from the consulting room, from the viewing room, health, life, movies, narrative on October 5, 2007| Leave a Comment »

We all cope in different ways. In this series we’re looking at ways of coping in parts 3, 4 and 5. In part 3 we looked at the activist way of coping.

Now let’s consider control as a strategy. The world can be a very scary place. For many people the events that occur in their lives face them with overwhelming uncertainty and doubt. If we feel the world is scary and dangerous and random, one way to cope with this reality is to shrink daily life into containable, controllable pieces. People do this to try and reduce the uncertainty and randomness in their experience. They do this by introducing routines, habits and rituals. They do this by either trying to control their physical environment – cleaning and ordering – and/or by trying to control the people in their lives. Watch the following three clips to see what this is like if we take it too far!

I’ll consider the third strategy – withdrawal – in final part – Part 5.

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The celebration of who you are (the refusal to conform to stereotypes)

Posted in from the consulting room, from the reading room, health, humour, life, video on October 4, 2007| 3 Comments »

One of the things that depresses me most is the tendency to write off whole swathes of humanity by sticking a label on them and dismissing them. I sat on the train this week and two guys, a Scotsman and an American with a comb-over, spent the whole journey doing just that. Huge numbers of people were judged, given a label and dismissed.

Here’s an example “I work with medics. I know what they’re like. They’re only interested in one thing. Money.”

Here’s another “Everyone below the Mason-Dixon Line is an in-breeder”

Want more? No, I didn’t think you would.

So here’s a counter to all that. There is a beautiful piece of journalism in today’s Guardian about people with Down’s Syndrome. Read right down to the last paragraph – it’s the clincher! I meet people who says things like this every week. It never ceases to humble me.

And here’s another counter. Sugar Mouse in The Rain sent me a link to a video on youtube. (By the way, go see his blog. It’s lovely and he’s a lovely man) Here’s the video –

Thank you Sugar Mouse

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from the consulting room

Posted in from the dark room, photography on October 4, 2007| Leave a Comment »

from the consulting room, originally uploaded by bobsee.

one of my tags is “from the consulting room” to indicate posts about health.
Look at what I saw as I walked into my REAL consulting room this week!

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less is more

Posted in from the dark room, photography on October 4, 2007| Leave a Comment »

less is more, originally uploaded by bobsee.

some mornings as I walk down past the park to the railway station the dew or the frost makes literally dozens of spiders’ webs sparkle in the early morning light.
This one really caught my attention.
I think because sometimes, less is more……

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Sloppy thinking or sloppy reporting?

Posted in from the consulting room, health, science on October 4, 2007| Leave a Comment »

A study into herbal medicine hit the headlines in the UK today. It was conducted by a researcher at the Peninsula Medical School, Dr Peter Carter. What his team did was trawl through the world literature to see what randomised clinical trials into “tailored” herbal treatments – this means the practice of a consultation with a herbalist who makes up a particular prescription of herbs for each individual patient. They only found three studies and only one of the three showed the herbal treatment to be better than the placebo. Now, I’ve no knowledge or experience of herbal medicine, and I’ve no axe to grind for or against (although I would declare that the belief that herbs are safe because they are natural is a silly belief which could kill you!).

I don’t have something to say about herbal medicine but what strikes me about this report are the conclusions and/or the way they are reported.

The headline to this piece on the BBC news website is

Tailored herbal medicine ‘futile’

I read the article thoroughly and can’t find the word “futile” anywhere. Is it in the original study? It’s not anywhere in the BBC’s own report. So does the study show herbal treatment is futile? Actually, it doesn’t. It shows that if you look for randomised controlled trials of herbal treatments against placebo you’ll find only three and only one of them shows statistical superiority of the herb vs the placebo. Well you certainly can’t conclude from that evidence that herbal treatments work but you can hardly claim that the fact that almost nobody has bothered to study the subject scientifically means that herbal treatment is “futile”! This study doesn’t tell you that.

This is either sloppy thinking or sloppy reporting. As doctors say “There’s a lot of it about!” Remember this?

Have you come across any other articles or studies which make claims way beyond what the original research actually shows?

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How we cope – learning from the movies. Part 3

Posted in education, from the consulting room, from the viewing room, health, life, movies, narrative on October 4, 2007| 1 Comment »

One aspect of understanding someone is listen to their story and hear what they talk about – material, physical, practical issues? emotional and relationship issues? or spiritual issues of meaning and purpose? Another aspect is to find out what kind of ideas they have about themselves in relation to others – in particular to explore to what extent they see themselves as connected to, and identifying with, others, and to what extent they see themselves as separate and independant. I’ve explored this latter aspect in Parts 1 and 2.

But another key issue for all of us is how we cope in the face of challenges, and how we adapt to change. Just as I have a map of body, mind and spirit in consideration of the kind of world a person lives in, so I have a map of coping strategies, and again there are three – action; control and withdrawal. Let me reiterate that this is a dynamic map and whilst some people almost always seem to default to the same strategy, most of us are more flexible and use each and all of these strategies to different degrees.

Let’s explore to activist – the person who when faced with a problem or a challenge, rolls up their sleeves and gets stuck into it –

You can see it takes a certain self-belief to be able to cope with challenges this way!

We’ll have a look at control as a strategy in Part 4

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