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    Brief and Unusual Therapies: Therapy Books, #1
    Brief and Unusual Therapies: Therapy Books, #1
    Brief and Unusual Therapies: Therapy Books, #1
    Ebook137 pages1 hour

    Brief and Unusual Therapies: Therapy Books, #1

    By Buddy Wagner

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    About this ebook

    Designed for students in counseling programs and for therapists who want to improve their skills in brief counseling. Each chapter discusses a relevant point of brief therapy and gives a counseling example to illustrate the point. The chapters also provide questions for the reader to answer and an exercise to practice a particular skill.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBuddy Wagner
    Release dateMar 23, 2012
    ISBN9781476028347
    Brief and Unusual Therapies: Therapy Books, #1
    Author

    Buddy Wagner

    Buddy Wagner is a National Certified Counselor and a National Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist. He is a graduate of Mississippi College with a Bachelor's Degree in Latin and the University of Mississippi with a Master's Degree in Community Counseling and a PhD in Educational Psychology. He served as Director of the Counseling Center at Mississippi College from 1986 to his retirement in 2009. He continued to teach in the Counseling Psychology Graduate Program at Mississippi College to 2018. He taught Techniques in Group Counseling, Techniques in Brief Therapy and Special Studies in Hypnosis. He and his wife, Sheila, live in Clinton, Mississippi. Between them, they have five children and six grandchildren.

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      Book preview

      Brief and Unusual Therapies - Buddy Wagner

      Brief and Unusual Therapies

      Buddy Wagner, PhD

      Published by Buddy Wagner at Smashwords.com

      Copyright 2014 Buddy Wagner

      Fourth Edition

      This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it or it is not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Disclaimer

      This book is for educational and informational purposes only. The contents should not be applied for the treatment of any individual. No guarantees of results are implied, expressed or intended as a result of reading this material. The material is not intended as a cure or remedy for any mental health problem. Wherever I have mentioned experiences or conversations with clients, I have changed the names and consequential details to protect privacy. Some cases are represented as composites rather than the experience of any one individual.

      Table of Contents

      Preface

      Chapter 1 - Introduction

      Chapter 2 - Brief Therapy and the Counseling Relationship

      Chapter 3 - Neuroscience and Brief Therapy

      Chapter 4 - Healing Quickly When Focused on Resolution

      Chapter 5 - Using the Strengths of the Client and Indirect Suggestions

      Chapter 6 - Give Options and Encouragement

      Chapter 7 - Utilize What the Client Gives You

      Chapter 8 - Building Trust Through Kind and Hopeful Honesty

      Chapter 9 - Follow the Client’s Lead

      Chapter 10 - Setting Goals and Giving Homework

      Chapter 11 - Help the Client Realize Progress in Specific Ways

      Chapter 12 - Being in the Experience and Changing It

      Chapter 13 - Feedback and Resolution

      Chapter 14 - General Concepts

      Chapter 15 - Counseling Approaches I Find Most Useful

      Chapter 16 - Conclusion

      References

      Appendices

      About the Author

      Preface

      In graduate school I was trained in traditional counseling theories. They were valuable because they taught me to listen and respond to both content and meaning, as I led the client to take personal responsibility and to work toward a specific goal. After graduate school I taught for six years (1976-82) in an undergraduate Psychology program and worked as a therapist. As I first practiced using these theories with my clients, I assumed that counseling was a slow process that took many sessions. This work continued until the early 90’s when I received training in Ericksonian Hypnosis and Neuro-Linguistic Programming. As a result of these methods, I discovered that many times therapy could be done quickly, and I rarely saw a client more than four sessions. Later I studied Solution Focused Therapy and other brief approaches which complimented my training in hypnosis and NLP.

      I am writing this book for students who are presently working toward a graduate degree in a counseling related field and to young therapists who want to improve their skills. This book contains what I believe to be the essentials of Brief Therapy. I have explained the concepts presented and offered counseling examples to demonstrate the concepts. My aim is not to prove that these approaches work but to challenge you to be creative and using the concepts of Brief Therapy, create your own techniques, if you find these to be ineffective. In this fourth edition, I have added chapters on Brief Therapy and the Counseling Relationship and Neuroscience and Brief Therapy. I believe these chapters give you a deeper understanding of Brief Therapy and how it differs from traditional therapy.

      Currently, I teach a class in Brief Therapy, and this fourth edition will be used as the text. In chapters four through thirteen I have included questions to assist you in thinking like a Brief Therapist; these questions are in bold print. When you come to a set of questions, I suggest that you spend time pondering how you would answer these questions, before reading further to discover how I approached the problem addressed in the chapter. I do not presume that how I approached the problem is superior to the ways that you might approach the problem. I give you my approaches to show how I do Brief Therapy. I have also included an exercise at the end of each of these chapters to assist you in practicing a particular skill.

      Though I am not always successful, and not all of my sessions are like the ones presented here, all of these cases are success stories. I have included only success stories because I believe students learn better by seeing what works. For this process, I randomly selected 50 cases between 2003 and 2010 to check my success rate. I was successful in 39 of the 50 cases or 78% of the time. By success rate I mean that by the end of our final session the client and I agreed that the problem had been resolved. Of the 50 cases, I saw 43 of the clients four or fewer sessions; for 19 of those 43, I saw the client for only one session. The number of sessions ranged from one to twenty-one. Some of the cases cited in this book are among these 50 cases, but many are not.

      Being a Brief Therapist is more than using certain techniques or a certain theory: It’s learning to think like a Brief Therapist. In fact, you can use any of the theories and be a Brief Therapist. It is my hope that you will learn to think like a Brief Therapist as a result of this book. Counseling is a challenging endeavor, requiring both skill and creativity. I hope this book will assist you in developing both.

      Chapter 1

      Introduction

      In this chapter my goal is to give you a concise list of what I believe to be the important points of Brief Therapy and to give you what other Brief Therapists believe the important points are. To make it easier to peruse the lists, I have put the points in bold print. In the following chapters, I discuss my points in more detail and offer illustrations.

      It is possible to heal quickly, even of longstanding problems. If you believe that therapy is a tedious process, then it will be. However, if you believe that people can heal themselves quickly, then this too can become reality.

      It is not important to spend much time focusing on the origin of the problem or focusing on the problem itself. Once you have allowed the client to express the problem and have responded in ways to build rapport and trust, focus on helping the client find alternatives to resolve the problem. Focusing on the present to future is far more effective than focusing on the past.

      Find the client’s strengths and ways to use these strengths in resolving the problem. Many times a client already possesses all that is needed to resolve the issue. The client simply needs help in recognizing strengths and in learning how to apply them to the problem.

      Indirect suggestions are more effective than direct commands. When you tell the client what to do, you are setting up the possibility for two negative consequences. First, issuing a command creates the opportunity for resistance from the client. Secondly, if the command is unsuccessful, the client could lose confidence in you. With indirect suggestions, there is no possibility for resistance because there has been no command; therefore, the client has the power to choose whether or not to take the suggestion.

      Be sure to give the client options. As you explore resolutions, find as many as you can. By creating options and allowing the client to choose which one will be most successful, you have empowered the client to take ownership of resolving the problem.

      Encouragement can give the client the courage to change. Encouragement can be powerful in helping the client take the action necessary to resolve the problem. Take every opportunity to encourage clients by pointing out their successes and strengths. Sometimes encouragement is all that is needed and all that can be given.

      Utilize what the client gives you. Rather than focusing on the deficiencies of the client, focus on the strengths. Rather than focusing on the negatives of how the client is functioning, focus on the positives or on how the negatives can be used as positives. Utilizing what the client gives you is far more productive than trying to change the client.

      Visualizing realistic success can be a powerful motivator and confidence builder. Notice the word realistic in the previous sentence. You do harm when you suggest unrealistic goals or make unrealistic promises. It is important that you help clients set attainable goals. Once a realistic goal is set, visualizing the achievement of the goal, in a very precise step-by-step video that is created in the client’s mind, can be one tool, among others, that assists the client in being successful.

      Patiently build trust by moving at the client’s pace. If you attempt to move too quickly or too

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