In honour of World Friendship Day, we’re spotlighting The Power of Friendship. In this extract, authors Frida Bern MSc, Daniel Ek MSc and Pär Flodin PhD explore how friendships can enrich our lives so that we’re not only happier but healthier too.   The importance of friends Many of us take for granted that friends are important and good. When we asked around in our communities

Using cognitive behavioural techniques has been proven to help those living with chronic pain. Here, Frances Cole, Helen Macdonald and Catherine Carus, authors of Overcoming Chronic Pain 2nd Edition, share their advice for living well with pain.   Balancing daily activities through pacing People living with chronic pain find that pacing is one of the key everyday skills to learn and use. This is so that you can achieve your goals without

Healing from loss and trauma at any age is difficult, but it can be particularly hard for children. Clinical psychologist David Trickey and chartered health psychologist Vicky Lawson have put together helpful advice and practical tips to help children during difficult times in Helping Your Child with Loss and Trauma. Maximising Chances of Recovery However much you wish you could, you can’t change what has already happened to your child

The Psychological Toolkit is an interactive workbook for teenagers providing the tools and techniques needed to think about and establish a sense of self and identity in a positive and healthy way. In this abridged excerpt, author Jennifer Evans Fitzimmons helps you to define what makes up ‘you’. Think about this for a moment: the self is at the centre of all of our thoughts! Well, of course this is

David A. Clark is one of the best respected names in the field of CBT, with more than thirty years of experience. In this edited excerpt from Controlling Your Mind he offers practical advice on how to identify problematic intrusive thoughts. The Unsettled Mind Think back to the last time you were bored. Maybe you were stuck in traffic, mindlessly watching a TV programme, or trapped in a tedious meeting

In this extract from Overcoming Relationship Problems, authors Michael Crowe and Kevan Wylie give some guidance on communication and negotiation within relationships. Communication – verbal and non-verbal Everyone communicates non-verbally, even if they are strangers in the same room. Think then how much more communication goes on between you and your partner. Non-verbal communication can be in the form of eye contact, smiles or frowns, tone of voice, posture

Authors Cathy Creswell and Lucy Willetts introduce the common types of fears and worries experienced by children in this edited extract from their bestselling parenting book Helping Your Child with Fears and Worries.   What do we mean by fears, worries and anxiety? Everyone, children and adults alike, experiences worries, fears and anxiety some of the time. What they all have in common is that they involve an expectation that something bad

Maureen Cooper is the founding director of Awareness in Action, an organisation dedicated to helping people accomplish sustainable wellbeing in their lives, with their relationships and in the work environment. She is the author of The Stress Workbook, and in this abridged extract, she explains a little about how stress works in our bodies.   How the term ‘stress’ came about The Hungarian-born Hans Selye (1907–82), is

Frances Cole is a retired GP and author of An Introduction to Living Well with Pain. Here she introduces the idea of pacing as a key skill to learn for overcoming chronic pain. Everybody with persistent pain agrees that pacing is a really, really important and useful skill to learn. They say not knowing how to pace yourself means your day or activity is controlled by pain. Pacing or balancing activities help

Edward Brodkin and Ashley Pallathra, the authors of Missing Each Other explain the key skill of attunement and why is vital for establishing and maintaining better connections with others. We are wired for human connection. Our drive to connect with others is evident from the earliest moments of our lives. Infants recognise and demonstrate a preference for human faces, suggesting that we have an innate interest and curiosity about others. As infants

Mandy Bryon and Penny Titman, authors of Helping Your Child with a Physical Health Condition, here consider the impact on parents of finding their child has a medical health issue. In this blog post, we will use the term ‘physical health condition’ in a broad sense, to include a wide range of medical diagnoses, genetic conditions and illnesses affecting children who require regular, often complicated treatments or specialised management. The

Satwant Singh, Margaret Hooper and Colin Jones, authors of Overcoming Hoarding, here help us to understand commonly asked questions about the nature of hoarding disorder. What is hoarding disorder? People with hoarding disorder save and collect things to excess and find it very difficult to get rid of items. They often have a cluttered living space at home or elsewhere and experience distress and find it hard to function fully within their