9.4.4. Exercise: Working with
Externalizing processes
The most
common method clients use to avoid emotions is maintaining an external focus,
on other people and their life situation.
You can practice working on client externalizing processes in a training
workshop, by having the person in the client role attempt to stay focused on
external events while the person in the therapist role tries to help the client
shift to a more internal focus.
Here are some suggestions for enacting the client role:
•Challenge the therapist. Question, test therapist expertise
•Don’t listen to the therapist. Try to convince the therapist of your point of view. Tune out the therapist while he/she is talking, so that you can figure out what to say next.
•Be helpless/hopeless. Feel as helpless as possible and believe that no one can help you.
•Dismiss feelings and issues. If the therapist reflects a feeling, forcefully retort with “Of course I’m angry (hurt etc.).” If you want, you can add phrases such as “Who wouldn’t be? You’d be angry (hurt etc.) if it happened to you! Husbands (bosses etc.) are supposed to be responsible (supportive etc.).” This usually gets therapists to back off, especially if they are relatively inexperienced. A variation is, “Oh, I’ve dealt with that already.”
•Adopt externalizing tasks. Select an externalizing task: Try to figure out why something external happened; try to problem solve a situation; or try to get the therapist to agree with you that men (bosses) are jerks and that you are OK and that it is not your fault.
When you are in the client role, pay attention to which therapist responses help you slide away from your feelings, and which “pull” you toward them. When you’re in the therapist role, try not to take it personally, and use the strategies suggested in this section for helping clients turn to internal feelings, including empathic understanding and empathic exploration responses.
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