Some happiness doctors

 A month has passed since our FIM reunion at the residential training week in Bath, and I am still buzzing from it. 

What a week it was! Having ‘done’ Reflective Listening at medical school, as I thought, I was shocked to find that this very simple technique when used in the right way can impact in an extremely powerful way indeed.

In the context that I had previously used it was surrounding symptom description and drug use- I thought its main purpose was to allow the patient feel comfortable enough to tell the doctor the problem and help with rapport.

I now realise that, in addition to these benefits, the skilful application of reflective listening empowers the recipient to unravel their issues often to the point of finding their solution. Quite often a greater understanding and shifted perspective of the problem is all that’s needed to source our own answers. 

We were allocated a whole day to the wonderful Dr. Chris Johnstone, an integrated doc. who specialises in the psychology of positive change and has worked extensively in addictions. The first half of the day was dedicated to ‘motivational interviewing’ (MI), a remarkable technique which works to empower subjects to facilitate their own change. Clearly this has huge implications for health settings where motivation can be an issue when faced with health-detrimental behaviours like smoking, unhealthy eating and alcohol consumption.

The latter part of the day with Chris revolved around the principles and practice of positive psychology. Contrary to what might initially be assumed, positive psychology is not all about positive thinking, it’s much more.

It was developed as a new branch of psychology by Dr. Martin Seligman who recognised that although the field of psychology had a fairly in-depth understanding of mental pathology there was a different, highly significant dimension which had been neglected- GOOD mental HEALTH!

The scientific study of happiness: focussing in particular on positive emotions, strength-based character and healthy institutions. There are some fantastic resources and questionnaires on his website www.authentichappiness.com. 

We felt highly privileged to also have on the course Dr. Alan Watkins of Cardiac Coherence for a second time, as well as Dr. Rajendra Sharma of The Diagnostic Clinic and representative of The British Society of Ecological Medicine. Dr. Sharma provided us with an introduction to diagnostics in functional medicine for which we found ourselves having to dig deep to retrieve any biochemical pathways that we still had stored in our memory banks!

Although pretty complex, it is awe-inspiring to reconnect the systems that we have been used to separating so well in our conventional training and view the potential for treatment on another level. Dr. Watkins was with us on the previous taught week and had invoked an excited hum within the group; one which he was able to build upon further this time around.

He and his team at Cardiac Coherence (www.cardiaccoherence.co.uk) work with technology that monitors heart rate variability (HRV) which decades of research have shown to be predictive of mortality! In demonstrating to a subject their level of HRV coherence which is indicative of physiological stress there is an enhancing effect on subject motivation to change. Using finely-tuned coaching techniques the subject can be trained to alter their own physiology starting with simple breathing techniques. This is a powerful tool indeed with massive implications for national and global health.