Counseling & Therapy Skills, Fourth Edition
Ch. 1: The Third Alternative: Evocative Empathy
- the fastest way to get to your clients’ truth, and to get there in a way that will help them, is by helping them face the leading edge of what they are trying to say but can’t quite say. The critical guideline is the phrase “the intended message.”
- Nearly every statement has some implicit meanings in its message.
- I can be empathic with a person whose presence I can barely stand, who disagrees with me, and for whom I feel no sympathy.
- The “core conditions” are accurate empathy, respect for the client, and genuineness.
Ch. 2: Learning To Hear
- Attending is marked by a focused intensity.
- One helpful way to think of the client’s message is to imagine it at three levels: (1) What is the story? (2) What are the implications of the story? And (3) What is the impact of the story on the client?
- Then you should humbly listen for feedback, and when you are wrong, try again, correcting your distortions and becoming sensitive to your own blind spots.
- Your goal is to get as far ahead of the client as you can but have the client recognize what you say as part of what she or he meant.
- For the issue of selectivity, it is important to recognize that you filter everything you hear and that you have theories of human behavior to which you have some personal commitment. The striking lesson of the literature on self-fulfilling prophecies (Rosenthal, 1994, 2002) is that not only do we distort our perceptions because we tend to see what we expect to see but we also influence others to fulfill our expectations by subtly expressing reinforcement when they behave as we expect them to. Ironically, we often reinforce them even when we believe we don’t want them to behave this way.
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Your first guideline is to listen for implicit and explicit reactions/ emotions, to listen for the impact on the client. A second one that Rice (1974) discusses is poignancy. She says it well:
The criterion of poignancy, or liveness, seems to be the therapist’s best guide. How then is poignancy recognized? How can we recog- nize that the client is moving into an “unfinished” experience? . . . The most obvious sign is that the client feels something inconsistent or discomforting in the situation. In other cases, a kind of intensity comes through in the voice. On the other hand, the feeling may not be especially intense, but the client may feel that he somehow can’t quite assimilate the experience.
Ch. 3: Finding the Words
- We seem to be able to emit words but avoid their impact. The words have more impact when they come “reflected” back, since reflection might allow meaning to surface.
- Only by forcing a change in style and by practicing will you become comfortable with a follow-through and eventually be a much better player. However, the temptation is overwhelming to give in to the awkwardness and go back to chopping.
- I have frequently noted the need to focus on reactions—to pay most attention to how the person feels in response to situations, rather than talk about the situations or even about the person’s feelings.
- Metaphors startle us into new meanings by equating a familiar experience with a surprising new topic
- Worsley (2012) says a metaphor “can bear multiple meanings, [and] each metaphor is an act of imagination which seeks to create meaning that is not yet present” (p. 308). In a case study, Gelo and Mergenthaler (2012) showed how creative, unconventional metaphors were especially related to moments of emotional-cognitive integration.
I have a friend who is gifted at evocative metaphors, and I recently asked him how he does it. He said, “It just seems to be the way I think.” The more we talked, though, the less it seemed like a thinking process. We both agreed that he is so deeply immersed in the client’s experience that an experiential image forms.
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I would especially caution you about not overdoing it with the use of metaphors. My experience has been that some beginning therapists “fall in love with” metaphors once they see how powerful they can be. Or maybe the problem is that metaphors can be one way therapists get to show off how clever they are, rather than bringing the client’s experi- encing to life.
- With almost all of my clients, I antic- ipate my inevitable misses (and empower the client) by saying some- thing like, “As we explore things, I’m going to count on you to correct me when I miss your meaning.”
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Ch. 9: Direct Interventions
- Aversive methods usually lead to the development of “narrow and inflexible patterns of behavior with respect to many, many events, including many of the contents of our own con- scious experience” (Wilson & Murrell, 2004, p. 129).
- Evocatively empathic therapy can be seen as a form of graduated exposure and extinction, graduated countercondition- ing, or even systematic desensitization. What the client fears is his own thoughts and feelings—internal experiences (or covert behaviors, to use that language). Thus, the client doesn’t think clearly—doesn’t know him- self accurately. The therapist helps the client face those feared thoughts and feelings, and the fear extinguishes and is counterconditioned (by the therapist’s acceptance and presence). The principles are similar; the applications are different. In its common usage, however, behavior ther- apy does not include evocatively empathic therapy. What I hope to lead you toward is an eclectic appreciation that the distinctions between psy- chotherapy and behavior modification are needlessly exaggerated.
174. Clearly defined, limited goals often can best be achieved with behav- ioral approaches. Most therapists, however, report that very few clients who find their way to therapy have well-defined problems that fit the phobia or specific-symptom pattern. The vast majority are deeply unhappy or can’t understand why they can’t stay in an intimate rela- tionship or have unpredictable anxiety attacks or report other such complex and ambiguous problems. The process of evocatively empathic therapy both discovers the real complexities involved and relieves the problem. In those cases, however, with clearly specifiable problems and goals, a behavioral program can be helpful, and can be helpful in a rela- tively short time.
- It is frightening to talk so openly about suicide, but you really have no choice. Ignoring the issue won’t make suicide not seem peace- ful. It is very unlikely that you can argue or persuade the person out of the feelings. You can explore the feelings together. In the process of this exploring, you might express some of your own feelings and reactions, saying something like, “You probably know this, but I want to say that it matters to me that you live.” If done sensitively, this would be only an expression of concern and caring, not a judgmental guilt message that the client shouldn’t feel the way she does.