Week 5 Presentation

Agenda Turn in Final Tape (4) assignment Review and process last assignments Engagement/disengagement & Paradoxical interventions Humor

Master Therapist Assessment What was your favorite thing about reviewing the Master therapist tapes? How did the assignments help you identify nonlinear responding? What were the most and least common nonlinear responses that you observed? How did the masters influence your professional development as a counselor in training?

Disengagement & Paradoxical Interventions

Paradoxical Interventions Definition Mirror the tension of a client’s ambivalence or dilemma Subtly points out the double bind (two true elements cannot coexist, but they do) in an absurd but true manner Does this remind you of another domain we discussed? Neutralizers Reframing or redefining Looking for opposites, positives and opportune moments Advocating for the status quo (benignly) Suggests continuation of certain symptoms Searching for previous solutions

Redefining a Complaining Wife Obviously this distraught man was interpreting what his wife’s behavior was all about and didn’t like what he was looking at or feeling. Seeing that the man had made some very keep observation about his marriage, the therapist first gave the dispirited man a note of encouragement by complimenting him on his recognition of this pattern. The encouragement is directed purposely, knowing that he was a high paid executive and proceeded to ask if he was a “data- driven” manager. The client enthusiastically responded “YES!” and the therapist offered a “prosocial” paradoxical explanation by stating that his wife was not different from many women who, by questioning their husbands, were looking for information. The man responded saying “That spins it so differently! I take it as threatening and abusive because my parents were verbally abusive to me. I might be overreacting to circumstances of my childhood abuse!”

Redefining a Complaining Wife A man whose wife discovered him in an adulterous affair came to therapy struggling to maintain his marriage and learn how to deal with his desire to “crawl under a rock” due to how he had betrayed his wife and children. At the same time, he indicated that he had great difficulty in reconciling certain patterns he had observed in his marriage even before his brief affair. Although he was mortified over his own behavior, he maintained that his marriage was far from perfect prior to his affair. Communications with his wife were characterized by seemingly incessant questioning by her that ended up with her “never being wrong”. Their children had made the same observation of their mother: that she “always had to be right”. Everyone likes to be right, but an extreme need to be “right” can be clearly aggravating to others. In this instance, this left the husband feeling like he was “groveling” and constantly apologizing without ever feeling he could be forgiven, let alone for his affair.

Paradoxical Interventions Tranquilizers (absurdities!) Permission Continue with your present symptom! Postponement Prohibition In order to change, you have to NOT change “I cannot support you doing what he’s already not been doing.” Persuasion Arguing for the symptom and joining resistance Many of these defy common sense

Masters of Sex Masters and Johnson’s technique: sensate focus Each person gives and receives pleasurable stimulation. The receiving partner controls the amount being given by telling the partner to start or stop. The couple is required to give only nonerotic pleasurable stimulation. Then gradually more sexual stimulation is introduced. What kind of tranquilizing intervention is this and why?

Paradoxical Interventions Energizers Encourage Stimulate Mobilize Challengers Proportionality Prediction Prescription Positive provocation

Rules for using paradoxical interventions Comments must be made with the intention of helping the client to disengage from an unproductive behavior Comment must be made within an atmosphere of rest for the client without malice and certainly without sarcasm Must understand the client’s schema dynamics Must have an understanding of the ambivalence (approach- approach, approach-avoid, etc.)

Disengagement & Engagement Externalization Focusing outward vs. focusing inward Mindfulness, self-encouraging, self-soothing Deliberate practice

Humor

Biological, psychological or relief theories consider the function of humor as a survival mechanism Incongruity, surprise and configuration theories consider the stimuli for humor Cognitive theories consider the thoughts behind humor (how’s and why’s things are funny)