Well this was a fascinating day ... I went to my friend James Bennett-Levy's fine symposium on "Self-practice/self-reflection (SP-SR) at 18: an experiential training strategy maturing into adulthood", then on to an interesting & helpful symposium discussing broader applications of Arnoud Arntz's imagery approaches - "Efficacy of imagery rescripting as a transdiagnostic intervention".  And to complete the morning's cornucopia I was back listening to James delivering a barn-storming plenary on "Personal practice: why therapists should walk the talk."  I sat with Judy, James's wife, and we considered standing to applaud at the end but decided this might be a bit over-the-top, even if richly deserved.

Yesterday was the first full day of the two & a half day (plus one day of pre-conference workshops) BABCP summer conference in Glasgow.  It feels like I've been going to these annual BABCP get-togethers for a thousand years.  In so many ways, I think they're great ... although, for a society that prides itself on being evidence-based (more on this later in this post), I do think that the way these conferences are delivered is pretty dusty & traditional.  Basically we sit in large tiered lecture halls and listen to major plenary lectures or we sit in smaller rooms for workshops that are very largely just lectures in more extended formats. 

This is a quick overview of the first full day of the annual BABCP summer conference in Birmingham.  I intend to return to some of the key learning points in later posts.  I've already written about the pre-conference workshop I went to on "Emotion regulation" in a couple of earlier posts. Apparently the conference itself offers 37 symposia, 5 panel discussions, 3 clinical roundtables, multiple poster sessions, 13 skills classes, numerous special interest group & branch meetings, and 18 keynote addresses - all over the course of two and a half days here on the University of Birmingham campus. The freely downloadable 101 page abstracts book gives a great sense of what's on offer.

Yesterday I wrote an introductory post on using self-practice & self-reflection (SP/SR) to improve my understanding of David Clark's treatment for social anxiety.  In today's post I want to look at assessment - of social anxiety disorder, of skill with Clark's CBT approach, and at SP/SR initiation.

Self-practice/Self-reflection (SP/SR) is an approach to training in cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) that involves practising CBT methods on oneself (self-practice - SP) and then reflecting on what one can learn from this experience (self-reflection - SR).  SP/SR is at the interface between more standard training approaches (such as lectures, videos, role plays) and personal therapy (recommended as part of therapist training by many - particularly non CBT - psychotherapy schools).  In the current draft copy of their "Self-practice/self-reflection workbook", authors James Bennett-Levy, Richard Thwaites, Beverly Haarhoff & Helen Perry write "While the primary focus of personal therapy is on personal development, the rationale and purpose of SP/SR is to use your personal experience of CBT to develop better understanding and use of CBT with pati