Two Approaches To Adlerian Brief Therapy - Buncombe County ...

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Adlerian Brief Therapy 40 for more, the possibilities for change might generalize to other parts of her life and thereby reinforce and reaffirm a shift in her underlying rules of interaction and her motivations in living. The flow of this session reflects many of the aspects of therapy along the continuum that we prize. It starts by choosing a focus for the session, which is also to say, a purpose for therapy. The initial pace is a slow, careful, tight therapeutic sequence (Polster, 1987) in which the therapist follows the client as if considering each stitch in a developing tapestry. Yet, even within these sequences there are shifts that we have noted in the typescript that are chosen to interrupt the deadening of experience, enhance awareness, and bring the client into better contact with self and others. The movement from initial issue focus to a focus on the person to getting a behavioral description is, perhaps, the most common initiating process we use in Adlerian Brief Therapy. Behavioral descriptions to be useful must be specific and concrete. Concrete descriptions highlight interaction, movement, style, and patterns in the person’s life. It is in her interactions with others, in the doing of life, that patterns of pleasing, “goodness,” and perfectionism emerge. The immediacy of brief therapy almost requires that there be some challenge to the usefulness of these embedded rules of interaction. Humor in the form of delight and play has two very useful dimensions: (a) It lightens the process by joining the client in common human folly, and (b) it provides a process and context against which a
Adlerian Brief Therapy 41 shift to a more serious intervention is instantly recognized (again, enhancing awareness). The interventions that asked the client to decide between living or dying, between becoming a real person or giving up, represented a real shift in the conversation from more playful to more serious, and it is literally the beginning of reorienting the rules. At the same time, the therapist also discloses that saying something so difficult and direct can be hard to hear, inviting the client to comment, if she wants to, on her experience of this intervention. She chooses not to comment, which is her prerogative. A short time later, it seems useful to note a fear of rejection she might have, but therapeutically, the counselor does not want two relatively hard disclosures in a row. In this case, there is an audience, and asking the audience “what the fear might be” allows the client to take the information in from another source. Further, since the therapist has turned his awareness and contact toward the audience, the client is allowed to breathe, to relax a little, and to settle briefly into observation. This relaxation in the flow of therapy is also facilitated by a shift to Dreikurs’ (1997) objective interview. In the middle of approaching new options and strategies for change, a challenge that can often feel overwhelming, the client is invited to regain the role of expert in her own life, to bring the counselor up-to- date on her family constellation, the family atmosphere, and her early recollections. Throughout this process, the therapist is gathering a sense of the strength that is in the client and in the client’s background. These will become
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Page 3 and 4: Adlerian Brief Therapy 3 Relational
Page 5 and 6: Adlerian Brief Therapy 5 Baruth, 19
Page 7 and 8: Adlerian Brief Therapy 7 demands of
Page 9 and 10: Adlerian Brief Therapy 9 well as th
Page 11 and 12: Adlerian Brief Therapy 11 labeling,
Page 13 and 14: Place Table 1 About Here Adlerian B
Page 15 and 16: Adlerian Brief Therapy 15 Therapist
Page 17 and 18: Adlerian Brief Therapy 17 Identifyi
Page 19 and 20: Adlerian Brief Therapy 19 Client: W
Page 23 and 24: Adlerian Brief Therapy 23 biggest?
Page 25 and 26: Client: Ok. Adlerian Brief Therapy
Page 27 and 28: Adlerian Brief Therapy 27 Client: T
Page 29 and 30: Client: Well no, but he wasn’t af
Page 33 and 34: Adlerian Brief Therapy 33 Client: W
Page 35 and 36: Adlerian Brief Therapy 35 you’ve
Page 37 and 38: Therapist: And you do your skills.
Page 39: Therapist: Oooh. How’s that? Clie
Page 43 and 44: References Adlerian Brief Therapy 4
Page 45 and 46: Adlerian Brief Therapy 45 counselin
Page 47: Authors Notes Adlerian Brief Therap

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