4.4. Exercise: Listening to and Describing Client
Micro-process Markers
As we have said, doing PE therapy is a complex multi-dimensional
task that requires its practitioners to listen to their client on many levels
simultaneously and to weave these into a responsive intervention that helps to
focus the client and facilitate the resolution of their current cognitive-affective
problems. At first, the various
distinctions and markers are easy to miss, or seem too subtle to pick up. However, if you practice observing
therapy process, your ability to perceive them will improve, particularly if
you can get access to a supervisor who can point them out with your
clients. There is nothing like
learning with your own clients!
In the meantime, it can be helpful to select a therapy session on
which to practice the concepts in this chapter. If possible, use a session in which you are the therapist
and are trying to carry out PE therapy; otherwise, use a tape in which you are
engaging in some other form of therapy, or borrow one from a PE-oriented
colleague or trainer. The Process
Markers Outline provides a convenient summary of the client processes you
will be listening for (except for task markers, which are covered
elsewhere). Try the following:
1. Begin by taking process notes on the session, leaving
two inches of right margin. You
don’t need to transcribe the session; just take notes as you listen to the
tape, stopping only occasionally to catch up with the tape.
2. Pick a 5-minute segment of the session and listen carefully to
each client-therapist sequence.
See if you can figure out what client micro-marker the therapist
was responding to each time. The Example
of Micro-Marker Analysis
provides a model for such an analysis.
3. Next, look back over the client's narratives for markers of
characteristic style: that is, what are the client's main patterns of relationship
to others and self. Are they
critical and rejecting of others?
Of self? Do they see others
are critical and rejecting of them?
Or are they caring and supportive of others (perhaps too much so for
their comfort)? Of self? Do they see others as caring or
supportive? Follow the same
process for considering control/involvement and permissive/allowing relational
qualities.
4. After that, review your notes (if you need, listen to the tape
again), noting the different client modes of engagement as they occur,
including which appear to be most common and which do not occur at all.
5. Finally, see if you can determine what
your client’s main treatment foci.
Since you’ve only listened to one session, this may be hard to do, but
you should be able to list several possibilities, even though you won’t be sure
until you’ve heard 2 or 3 sessions.
(You could go back later to see if you were right.)
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