Alternative Brief Therapies Concepts

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Brief Therapies Concepts
Traditionally, brief therapies have been those therapies and processes designed to focus on a single issue, resolve it quickly, and provide tangible evidence of progress. In talk therapies, brief ther

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Traditionally, brief therapies have been those therapies and processes designed to focus on a single issue, resolve it quickly, and provide tangible evidence of progress. In talk therapies, brief therapy models are considered in terms of months or weeks rather than years of therapy.

Over the past 10 years or so, however, this time element has substantially shortened with brief therapeutic interventions now thought of in terms of days or sessions. Depending upon the condition, the allopathic model holds that a diagnosis for brief therapy must first be applied. Whereupon a short course of therapy is indicated depending upon the diagnosis.

Brief therapies are useful in goal-oriented therapy where the client has a goal in mind and needs some assistance to achieve it. Most psychologist will tell you that brief therapies abound for conditions like phobia, specific anxieties like test anxiety, and PTSD with an identified trauma. However, even these brief therapies usually take several sessions to resolve an issue and are usually based on desensitizing the emotional elements by repeated exposure to re-stimulating elements (facing your fears).

I've even heard it from a world renowned psychiatrist that the only way to beat a phobia was to face the fear - it's no wonder so few people seek to beat their phobias - they rightly don't want to face it. After all, that's why they have a phobia - because they are too frightened to face it.

One of the power points about RET is its ability to get to the issue quickly, resolve it, and provide an avenue of self-empowerment without the requisite of facing the fear. The reason for RETs quickness in areas where brief therapy models have traditionally been successful is its holistic approach.

Let me put this into perspective - in the allopathic model, and, to a large extent, most other healing modalities including Reiki, EFT, BSFF, TAPAS, and a host of others, the client must identify the "problem" in order to "fix" it. This is effective in that it addresses the specific area of concern directly without any side-excursions (usually).

When doing RET, the therapist covers the gamut of concerns and issues of just about EVERY problem a person could face and every goal they could conceive. In doing so, they will most assuredly cover the elements of limitation that keeps the client in their phobia, lack, or whatever.

In doing brief therapy sessions, especially when doing RET in one or two sessions of focused work, I suggest you use the SUD scale (0 - 10) so that you and your client may more quickly direct your efforts to effect change. The reporting of SUD may be done as you go or at the end of a RET process you are doing. I like to do SUDs as I go - that gives my client something to do while we work in addition to blinking. It also gives me some idea of how to modify what we are doing to more quickly and effectively address their concern.

As a therapist follows the overall plan of RET (the 12 session program), a plethora of issues and correlative issues are addressed simultaneously - many of them in the first 4 sessions. So, I'd like to dedicate this issue of the Bennette Bulletin to exploring concepts, ideas, and practical hints about the power of the first 4 RET sessions in the area of brief therapies.

The RET SSPT set is also valuable in a number of brief therapy situations. However, since SSPT is a technique, intended as a tool rather than a full session process, I will visit SSPT another time.
In brief therapy models, a few "rules" are important to get consistent results:

1. State the intention as clearly as possible in the positive. "I want to get over this phobia" sounds positive, yet it is actually focusing on the phobia rather than what life would be without it. To get a positive from a negative intention statement, just ask what they would have if they didn't have their phobia (or whatever their "problem" is). Get what they WANT rather than what they DON'T WANT.

2. State an intention that is within the client's power to initiate and control. For example, "I want the airlines to make travel safe for me" would not be within the client's power to initiate or control. "I want to feel comfortable traveling by air" would be a suitable therapeutic goal in that the client can initiate and control this.

3. Make sure the intended outcome is a manageable size. A therapeutic goal of "getting over all my fears and phobias today" is unreasonable and probably unattainable in the current state of mind. Some clients will want to bite off more than they can reasonably chew. This is your job as the therapist to assist them in formulating goals that they can believe in and get behind fully.

4. Make sure you've attended to ecology - that is, if they do achieve their goal, will anyone be hurt by their achievement, including themselves? If John gets over his phobia about approaching women and this causes his wife to get jealous or causes him to leave his family, John will likely not get his intended result because he has "concerns" about it - in NLP it's known as ecology and it will thwart your efforts every time if you do not address it. Fortunately, most ecology issues are addressed in the course of every RET session. They are placed in the scripts as safeguards. Hey, we didn't do all that study in NLP for nothing... j:-)