• R U O K? – Learn how to ask, and what to say if someone says that they aren’t OK.
• Working with Parts – Janina Fisher
• The Anger Iceberg and the Anger awareness temperature gauge
• STOP technique – Palouse Mindfulness
• RAIN technique – Tara Brach
• SMART goals
• The difference between healthy & unhealthy love – 12 minute TED talk by Katie Hood
• The meaning of success? It’s more than money… – Nikki Gemmell article in The Australian
• Sleep hygiene – the Centre for Clinical Interventions
• How to get better sleep – 4 minute video. Why are you always tired? – 3 minute video
• Anxiety and depression checklist K10 – Beyond Blue
• Does science need to rethink its theories about women? Science is susceptible to gender bias as well as politics & cultural bias.
• Relationships are like a three-legged stool
• Consent – as simple as tea. A simple 2 minute 50 second video explaining the importance of consent.
• Consent – A great series of videos about how to tell & talk about what you & your partner want or don’t want from sex. They address consent, reading body language, verbal communication, setting/respecting limits & dealing with differences in timing & desire. Please share with others – especially your kids.
• Jamming – Great sex, like great music, has soul. You allow yourself to improvise, tune in, go with whatever happens in a spirit of co-operation and fun. Practice makes us less self-conscious, more skillful & more in the moment – just like good musicians jamming together. Jamming can’t be forced.
• Martha Kauppi says: “Sex issues are nearly always at least this complicated. They are tangled up with identity, belief system, culture, relationship, obligation, expectation, hopes, dreams, body, babies, self-esteem, pleasure, and more”. Is your counsellor qualified to deal with this complex issue and to make a clear assessment of what’s happening? The link has some questions for you to ask your relationship counsellor.
• Al Vernacchio TED talk Sex Needs a New Metaphor – Here’s One.
• Six Principles of Sexual Health – 1. Consent 2. Nonexploitation 3. Protected from STI’s (Sexually Transmitted Infections) and unintended pregnancy 4. Honesty 5. Shared values 6. Mutual pleasure.
• Guidelines for a Healthy Person and a Healthy Relationship

1)  Focus on now. See what is happening in the present instead of what should be, what was or what could be.

2)  Feel your feelings. Feel what you do feel instead of what you think you ought to be feeling.

3) Speak up. Say what you feel and think instead of what you imagine is expected of you.  Be tactful as well as honest.

4) Say what you want clearly and directly instead of hoping it will be offered.

5) Take risks in your own behalf instead of settling for the status quo.

6) Learn to say no firmly, kindly and unmistakably.

7) Learn to hear no with good grace.

These guidelines can be applied to one’s sexual life as much as they can be applied to the other issues that often come up in relationship therapy.

• World Association of Sexual Health (WAS) Declaration of Sexual Rights

1. The right to sexual freedom.
2. The right to sexual autonomy, sexual integrity, and safety of the sexual body.
3. The right to sexual privacy.
4. The right to sexual equity.
5. The right to sexual pleasure.
6. The right to emotional sexual expression.
7. The right to sexually associate freely.
8. The right to make free and responsible reproductive choices.
9. The right to sexual information based upon scientific inquiry.
10. The right to comprehensive sexuality education.
11. The right to sexual health care.

• Klein’s Sexual Orientation Grid – The Klein Sexual Orientation Grid (or KSOG) is a system for describing a person’s sexual proclivities in a way more detailed and informative than previous methods. You can do a free quiz here. It was developed “in an attempt to better … understand the complexities of human sexual attitudes, emotions and behaviours”. Klein thought that Kinsey’s original scale was useful to a degree, but he was concerned that there is far more to sexual identity than just who one has sex with. He also added the dimension of time to acknowledge that one’s sexual identity can change. Klein’s representation still has its flaws: it doesn’t recognise a bisexual identity or a bisexual community, assuming that bisexuals have a mixed gay/straight identity and associate with gay and straight people equally. It relies on the gender binary of male and female, which can cause confusion for anyone who has recently transitioned to the opposite sex (or doesn’t self-identify with either sex). What the Klein Sexual Orientation Grid does well is to open our minds to abandon easy definitions of our sexual identity and, instead, to think of our sexual identity as being multi-faceted. It can be thought of as a starter to greater awareness of sexuality. Many people have suggested additional dimensions to the Grid.
• Immigration – by historian Yuval Noah Harari.
• The elephant and the rider – a 2 minute video using Jonathan Haidt’s useful analogy for thinking about behaviour change. It explains the three elements needed to change behaviour.
• Switch – a 6 minute video on the book by Chip & Dan Heath giving clear examples of the three factors that are required for change and how you can apply them to yourself, your family, your organization, or your community, to maximize the chances of making a permanent switch from a bad behavior to a good one.
• Comfort, learning (stretch) & panic zones – Karl Rohnke’s comfort/stretch/panic model helps you recognize the physiological responses you might experience and what your body is telling you when you are in each zone to give you the information you need to make a choice.
• The Karpman triangle – 5.5 min video.
• Finding a Secure Base and Rewiring Your Personality by Hal Shorey.
• Four stages of competence to achieve mastery in any skill. It takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice in a targeted way.

• Deliberate practice makes perfect – Anders Ericsson 1:23 min video. Ericsson is the expert on experts.

• What makes a good psychotherapist?
• Guilt vs Shame jpg
• Brene Brown’s short distinction Shame vs Guilt.
• Stephen Covey’s Important & Urgent quadrants. A simple image and a more complex image.