|
ReDecision Therapy
This form of therapy is a child of Transactional Analysis, Gestalt Therapy, and Conjoint Family Therapy. Developed by Bob Goulding and Mary McClure Goulding between 1965 and 1970, it has been enriched and developed continuously to the present.
Redecision therapy is an action oriented approach, and is the classic and definitive form of brief therapy.
- Contact the client, or forming a therapeutic collaborative alliance with the client in a timely, flexible manner.
- Contractual and co-constructing a results oriented therapeutic goal or contract for specific problem solving in a way that can be described and achieved.
- Emphasizing the client's responsibility and confronting attempts to disown autonomy and power by way of 'cons'. Supporting clients competencies, strengths and inner resources.
- Identifying the painful or counter productive symptoms.
- Clarifying the interpersonal and intrapsychic ways symptoms are maintained by beliefs, games, rackets, and fantasies.
- Bringing into awareness and re-experience of pivotal childhood decisions that result in present day dysfunction.
- Impasse resolution (of the childhood decisions). This is described further in the TA lessons section.
- Anchoring the client's healthier thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and satisfaction.
Those bullet points are intended more for clients who enjoy understanding the techniques of therapy.
For everyone else, here's what ReDecision Therapy is about by way of an example:
One day when I was four and coloring in my book, my father came up beside me and
said "That's no good you're going outside the lines!" I felt a deep sadness in my chest because I believed
him. (Here's the decision) I'm no good at art.
After all Daddy should know, he knows more than me about everything. Since then I always knew I was no good
at art. So (Second decision) because I have no
talent for it, I avoided art for forty years. In a therapy session wherein I contract to
change this belief, the therapist invites me to go back in time to that scene and recreate it in the room. Switching roles between me as a
four year old seated at a table coloring, and my father standing beside me, I role play both of us right up to the point when I decide to
agree with Daddy that I'm no good at art. This is very real to me and includes the sadness and emptiness in my chest. I cry about that loss
of enjoyment. Then the therapist intervenes and asks four year old Greg if I like the decision. I the four year old Greg replies no.
Therapist asks if I'd like to say that to Daddy. So I do. Therapist asks me to tell Daddy how I'm feeling. I do. Therapist asks me if I want
to carry on living with that decision. I say no. Therapist asks me to say that to Daddy. I do, and feel an internal change of some kind.
Therapist says tell Daddy what you're gonna do instead. So as four year old I say I'm gonna do any art I want. I'm gonna play with colors
and paints, and crayons, and make messies. I'm gonna draw, and play with plasticene and even mud if I want to. Therapist claps and says Yes
and leads me through a closing sequence for the piece of therapy. From that moment on, I knew I could choose
to do art and enjoy it, and build some skills (or not) in whatever form of it I wanted. I had re-decided that I was ok as an artist even if
I was unskilled at it. I was free of that decision! Although my example is somewhat benign when compared to depression, anxiety,
personality disorders and most of the issues listed on Who Therapy is For, it shows you what can be done in a short piece of therapy.
It's a way to change core beliefs and schemas that can profoundly change a person's life. |
