Lawyer’s Guide

GIVE

  Marsha Linehan, the prime proponent of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (a cognitive therapy) suggests the acronym 'GIVE' to help people think about and manage difficult one-to-one relationships [1].  Assertiveness is achieved by being Gentle, Interested, Validating and Easy. In the words of an ancient proverb, ‘a gentle answer turns aside wrath’. As we will see shortly, Beth’s assertive discussion with her supervisor led to a subtle change in the working

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GIVE2023-11-21T10:07:22+00:00

TRANSACTIONS  

It wasn't until the confrontation with her supervisor that Beth began to realise something about her mindblindness. Before the meeting with Steve she had been reading up on ideas of transactional analysis. As she thought about how she felt about confronting Steve, she came to realise that she had been reacting to him like a cowering child, avoiding conflict and confrontation with an overbearing parent figure. Something about his manner

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TRANSACTIONS  2023-11-21T10:06:41+00:00

MINDBLINDNESS

Around the turn of the century in the UK, Simon Baron-Cohen and others at the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University were working on producing the first electronic encyclopaedia of emotions. A DVD was produced entitled ‘Mind Reading: the interactive guided to emotions’ [1]. The work was motivated by the lack of any tailor-made educational software for people on the autistic spectrum, many of whom have difficulties in recognising emotions.

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MINDBLINDNESS2023-11-21T09:58:26+00:00

THINKING FEELINGS AND FEELING THINKINGS

If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view – until you climb into his skin and walk around in it. (Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird) In 1909 Edward Titchener introduced a new word in the English language: ‘empathy’. He went back to the

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THINKING FEELINGS AND FEELING THINKINGS2023-11-21T09:57:27+00:00

SECURING THE BASE

Heinz Kohut, father of the school of self-psychology, in the last lecture of his life, when considering the most significant factor leading to mental illness, said, "The absence of the mother". Whilst his words could be taken literally, he was talking symbolically about the loss of a nurturing caregiver and the lack of a supportive environment and consistent parental figures. In short, the lack of a secure base. Bowlby’s term

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SECURING THE BASE2023-11-21T09:56:11+00:00

ATTACHING  

How is it that some people seem to breeze through life effortlessly? What secret do they have that enables them to ride pressures and demands? Sometimes from the outside it seems that other people's lives are simple and easy. We know that this is far from reality, but often it doesn't look that way.   Bowlby Working with war orphans in London in the 1940s and 1950s, psychiatrist John Bowlby

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ATTACHING  2023-11-21T09:55:38+00:00
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