Tony White

Thought management exercises are useful when a person is troubled by ongoing or recurring distressing thoughts. There is a range of thought management techniques.

Distraction: using pleasant thoughts can help take attention away from unpleasant thoughts.
Mindfulness techniques to redirect attention from negative thinking.
Thought replacement or coping statements. Develop a set of statements that will counteract worrying thoughts (e.g., "This is difficult but I have been through it before and have got through it okay", "Hang in there, this will not last much longer"). Substitute one of the reassuring or coping statements for the troubling thought.
Thought stopping: The person states the word “Stop!” in response to troubling thoughts.



These are most useful when the individual has problems that are not too ‘deep’. They can be quite effective and useful for the person who has trouble with a big internal critic and so forth. For those where there is more serious maladjustment such as with the personality disorders or character problems then such thought management is much less useful. Someone who hates and loathes self is not going to be able to change that attitude around by altering specific thoughts they have. This requires the use of other treatment methods as well.

However such strategies do have their use but one can add to those above with other thought management methods. For instance regressive techniques of thought management can be used.

Rather than creating new thought patterns as described above one can often find that they already have such alternative thinking styles. Some of these can already be ingrained in the personality and thus will tend to be much more impactful than learning a new thought style from scratch.



One can use regressive techniques to almost “hunt” around on the personality. One way of doing this is with the parent interview technique.

So it is better if you already have someone there
1. Identify who is in your Parent ego state tapes
2. Do a parent interview to elicit what they think, feel, do and say. One is accessing the Parent, Adult and Child ego states of mother and father.


The parent interview allows the client to define and experience mother's and father's own Parent, Adult and Child ego states.




Quite often there already are some good messages in those that the person is unaware of. Some times in counselling so much focus is on the damage that the parents may have done that there can be other ‘good’ stuff that is forgotten or pushed to the side. If some is there and can be found then they can be quite impactful as they are already deeply ingrained in the personality. They have been there since childhood.

If there is none then one better way to create new thinking styles is to make editions to the Parent ego state. The thought management techniques cited above are primarily an Adult ego state function. To have them ‘implanted’ in the Parent or Child ego state is going to make them much more potent.



How does a young child get Parent ego state tapes? It simply surveys its environment and copies other parental type figures around them. It then behaves, thinks and feels like that person. It copies them and practices being like that. If this persists then it will become part of their Parent ego state.

This happens at times naturally in the therapy setting. Clients will report things such as, “The other day I was dealing with my mother and I found myself saying things like you (the therapist) would say”. This means the client has introjected the therapist partly into their Parent ego state. So taking on new thoughts and behaviours via introjection is going to be much more powerful than by simple Adult ego state based thought management techniques.

In addition to this. In doing a more overall approach to thought management one needs to address the client’s reinforcing memories and script based fantasies.

Graffiti

Despair is commonly misdiagnosed as depression which leads to incorrect treatment such as with anti depressants.




If you want to see the proper version of this go to my Face Book.
You tube are Mother f**kers



Graffiti

In the newspaper today there was this article about a snake oil salesman. This story has been running for some time now and he is accused of running a cult and being this charismatic person who gets followers and abuses or uses them in various ways. Apparently one of his techniques of control is that he is said to give counselling to his followers and apparently he uses this as a way of keeping them ‘obedient’.


Obedience.



Well the journalist Colleen Egan calls for more regulation on ‘counsellors’ to make them accountable to some form of professional body. Whilst I am sure her intentions are well meaning the last thing we need is more regulation of this kind. It simply is ineffective.

All this does is stop people using the word, in this case ‘counsellor’. Counselling is not a word but is a style of relating and you simply cannot regulate that. Everyday mothers counsel children, bosses counsel employees, teachers counsel students, wives counsel husbands and so forth.

If such regulation came in then the charismatic figures would simply change the title of what they do to such things as therapy, coaching, life coaching, facilitating human development and so on. It is not going to stop this man relating to his followers in a counselling type of way which the problem is, and it can lead to exploitation.



But that is life and it goes on day in and day out. In the work place it is called office politics. That is people are setting about changing office relationship so one gains some dominance or ‘power’ over the others. In the counselling relationship that can happen as well and it can be used for good or evil.

One also needs to be careful of the corollary. If one sees regulation of the title as the solution then many will automatically assume that because a person has such a title then they are competent and ethical. Unfortunately that is not always true. I know some highly qualified and titled counsellors who I would not refer my dog to.

To get a qualification or title means you have passed an exam, it does not mean you are competent as a counsellor. It can help a little bit, but as I said counselling is about a style of relating and I am not aware of how one can examine such a thing effectively. I am yet to see an examination system for counsellors that can do such a thing and I have been involved with credentialling counsellors for the past 25 years.



It does however raise another interesting point. Can a husband and wife counsel each other? My answer to that is, “No”. What they can do is listen empathetically and compassionately and give some bits and pieces of advice perhaps. But it must be kept to a moderate level. The quickest way to destroy a marriage is for the wife to stop being a wife to her husband and become her husband’s counsellor. If that happens its, good-bye marriage.

Counselling is not only listening and passing on wise counsel but it is a way of relating as I mentioned before. The power structure in the relationship is not equal and thus if the wife counsels her husband then she is moving into the powerful, psychologically dominant position. Sooner of later that is going to incense his Child ego state and then the shit hits the fan and the relationship is on the rocks.



If the husband is struggling emotionally then there is nothing wrong with the wife helping empathetically. But it cannot go on too long or get too intense because then the marriage changes into a counselling relationship.

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