11.3.
Additional material: Helpful Hints for Dealing with the Collapsed Self
Here are some suggestions for dealing with the collapsed self:
1. Realize that this is not a dialogue of truth but of feeling, so the strategy is to go under the experiencer’s agreement and ask “How does this criticism make you feel?”
2. You can say, “This is really the critic talking. Come back over here.”
3. You can help the client reactivate the experiencer by asking them to make a case for their side.
4. The most extreme strategy: If the client seems to be chronically
weak in a dependent way, then you can exaggerate the agreement with the critic
to a point of absurdity by saying, "Can you intensify this giving in or
being helpless? Try saying I am
completely unable to do anything, you are right, I’m the worst, laziest person
in the world, etc.," until you get a resilient bounce back.
Materials designed to
accompany the book Learning Emotion-Focused Therapy: The
Process-Experiential Approach to Change from APA Books.
©2003 Robert Elliott, Jeanne Watson, Rhonda Goldman, and Leslie Greenberg
http://www.process-experiential.org/learning