And what do you do?

Just because I'm a nosey parker with a sticky beak:What do you all do for a living and do you think that your experiences gained in your occupation bring something to discussions here at EvC?I'm a Therapist so I guess that brings a need to make people question their assumptionss and beliefs......Coffee House, please.

Well I've been a therapist for about 4 years now, coming from a back groud of psychology but I moved into support work with young adults Autism and Asperger's Syndrome.It was then that I began to see that many of the guys I worked with were suffering from significant levels of anxiety and had an array of inappropriate beliefs that were enabled by their particular disorder.That got me into actual mental health (working in an acute admissions ward) and contact with delusional individuals again pointed to ones beliefs about the nature of reality as being maintainance factors in various psychological disorders.From there I kind of slid in cbt because it focusses on our beliefs and the effect on our functioning the beliefs have.I see what we believe as tremendously important to how we approach the world: many, many patients I have had have the most amazing beliefs that affect their whole life.One incidence of this is the individual fearing thunder. Not afraid of lightning, but thunder. The belief? Thunderbolts can hit you if it is thundering.When the belief was disabused i.e. educating the patient about the nature of thunder and lightning and the effect our negative predictions will have on us, the client was able to recognise the learnt reaction triggered by beliefs aboout reality that were unfounded.Thats why I get on my high horse about evidence and not accepting things only because we (in our heart) believe them to be true.The patient in question believed that thunderbolts (not lightning, mind) occured when clouds collided. The patient believed it with all of his being and would not budge from that belief inspite of mounting evidence for ages.I can't help but see parallels with religion, buts that not for here.

Hey, thats way cool!I loved the books (only kids book I have time for).I a bit of a CGphile so I get really excited when good CG comes around!

I had a girl friend who used to take great pleasure in showing me horrible pictures of diseased genitals, it really makes you think....."oh, fuck!"Still, we can learn from other peoples mistakes.Shudder.

What have you been studying?

Yeah, dating topics does seem to be pretty thin on the ground lately.Shame; it's a good area to bring reasonably solid evidence to the tabel. Hmm, maybe thats why there is no controversy anymore.

What a nice story!

Could never do that:I'm really bad with heights and a childhood fear of the Big Bad Wolf coming down the pig's chimney makes me shudder when I think of chimnies.