6.2.1.
Outline: The General Structure of Therapeutic Tasks in PE Therapy
|
Task Resolution Stage |
Client Process |
Therapist Responses |
|
0. Premarker |
Marker is not clearly present, but may be implicit in client’s experiencing. |
•Listen for, reflect toward possible task markers. |
|
1. Marker/
Task Initiation |
Client presents indication that he/she is currently experiencing a particular kind of processing difficulty and is agreeable to work on it with therapist. |
•Reflect, confirm client marker. •Elicit client collaboration for task. |
|
2. Evocation |
Client begins to explore and express difficulty, so that is starts to come alive. |
•Offer special procedures to address particular task, as appropriate. •Help client explore difficulty •Evoke, intensify client's arousal. |
|
3. Exploration/ Deepening |
Client explores difficulty via a dialectical process, either with therapist or between different aspects of self. (Exploration process may be lengthy.) Eventually, primary underlying feelings begin to emerge, along with underlying emotion schemes and related needs and values. |
•Help client access and differentiate primary and secondary feelings, emotion schemes, needs, values. •Help client stay involved with task and in contact with experiencing. |
|
4. Partial Resolution (Emerging Shift) |
Client accesses new aspects of experiencing, including previously overlooked aspects of emotion schemes; as a result, begins to feel at least a small shift in experiencing. |
•Listen for, reflect emergence of new experiencing. |
|
5. Restructuring/
Scheme Change |
Client experiences a clear shift in how he/she seeing self or others, such as owning/accepting previously ignored aspects of self, coming to understand something about self or others better, or coming to see self or others in a more positive light or self as more powerful. |
•Help client solidify emerging shift by exploring, appreciating, or symbolizing it. |
|
6 Carrying
Forward (Full Resolution) |
Client pursues further implications of shift, including negotiation among competing needs/values, and commitments to pursue action consistent with new experiencing. Experiences greater contact with experiencing, clear symptomatic/ bodily relief |
•Facilitate exploration of implications, including negotiation and appreciation of emerging experiencing. |
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