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Introduction
The decision to enter counselling/psychotherapy is both exciting
because you are taking steps toward change, and frightening because
you may not know what to expect. What follows is an outline of the
journey to making changes that will be beneficial to your life and
your work as practiced by therapists with The Change Institute.
The process is not linear – we don’t go through them as
‘stages’ but as a living process revisiting the elements
as necessary to facilitate change. However, without contact and
without a contract – change doesn't happen! Therefore, much
of the initial work may be to establish contact and discover what
changes you want to make.
Contact
The client tells their story as the TA therapist guides them through
focused listening, comments and questions that enable important
information to surface. During this phase the therapeutic alliance
develops where client and therapist become partners in the client’s
change process. The task is not to judge the validity of each memory,
experience or childhood scene, but to help the client recover and
heal from their past – real and imagined – and to go on
to a fulfilling life now.
Contract
The client is then in a position to discuss what changes they want
to make in their life that will be beneficial to them. The emphasis
on contracting for change was an early hallmark that set Transactional
Analysis apart from other therapy modalities. While other therapies
have adopted the use of contracting for change, what continues to
be unique about Transactional Analysts is the ongoing process we
use in contracting. The emphasis on contracting is to ensure there
is no ‘one-up-man-ship’ in the therapy process. Client
and therapist are partners; and while the therapist influences the
client to gain clarity about their goal, the power to change is
the client’s decision alone. The contracting process is a significant
part of the work because we don’t necessarily come to therapy
with clarity about the problem or what we want. Gaining that clarity
is an important part of the process toward change and health.
Decontamination and De-confusion
(The cognitive behavioral component of Transactional Analysis therapy)
This stage of counseling invites the client to learn about their
script – the limiting beliefs they have developed that stop
them from living their best life. Transactional Analysis gives clients
a very clear roadmap for understanding themselves and others. It
was the original cognitive behavior therapy where clients are given
a structure for understanding their thinking, feeling and behavior.
With this knowledge, clients can see more clearly the options available
to them in how they think about themselves, others and their future.
They have more feeling options – feelings that were once submerged,
begin to emerge and viewed as important information that serves
as a motivational impetus for change. And their behavior changes
in ways that help the client get more of what they want in their
life. It’s not unusual for clients to leave treatment at this
stage. They feel better, they have a deeper understanding and they
feel more in charge of their lives.
Redecision Therapy
While some redecisions have clearly been made in previous stages
of therapy, the Redecision Therapy stage is unique to Transactional
Analysis and is a therapeutic stage in the sense of it being deeper
that the cognitive aspects of counseling. It was developed by psychiatrist
Robert Goulding and Mary Goulding and combines Eric Bern’s
clear thinking model of Transactional Analysis, with the emotional
model of Gestalt therapy as developed by Fritz Perls.
Keith Tudor describes the process in his book called Transactional
Analysis Approaches to Brief Therapy. He says: “ The redecision
therapist takes charge of the therapeutic process by negotiating
a clear contract and establishing a clear, measurable goal. This
goal circumscribes exploration of the past and keeps the therapy
focused. It should be noted, however, that although the collaboratively
negotiated goal is influenced by the therapist, the power to make
the decision is the patient’s alone.; Emotional re-experiencing
in the present during gestalt work with key scenes provides a motivating
force for the redecision, but this heightened emotion is then tempered
by a cognitive framework (transactional analysis theory) and maintenance
planning. Through the use of transactional analysis terminology,
the client has a way of understanding the experience and of re-
her or his life.”
This stage of therapy moves the relationship between therapist
and client to a deeper level and gives the client an opportunity
to restructure their belief systems to such an extent that their
internal experience of themselves and others is fundamentally altered.
Their life is marked with more joy, fulfillment and a deep and profound
sense that they are capable of dealing with whatever challenges
and opportunities life gives them. They become the person they were
born to be - experiencing themselves and others as OK. The familiar
phrase from Transactional Analysis I’m OK, You’re OK describes
this deep and existential shift in our human experience. We become
fully ourselves and are willing to fully accept others with all
their human failings and imperfections. We no longer have the need
to please others in order to be loved, or to be perfect in order
to be OK. We no longer expend enormous energy in ‘trying hard’
but without the success we so deserve. We give others and ourselves
permission to take all the time there is – to assume an attitude
of abundance and thereby paradoxically get enough. From this OK
place we experience the sweetness of success and the joy of relationships.
From this individuated place, we can also be fully attached to others
and create relationships that both give life to others, and relationships
from which we receive nurture and sustenance. We can also fully
attach to the goals we set for ourselves and create a successful
life in our relationships and in our work.
This stage also involves the working through of buried emotions
and associated memories that emerge in the course of the work. The
client is in touch with the roots of today’s hurts – their
family of origin experiences – even though there may not initially
be any specific memory they can tell a story about. While their
difficulties in the present are with their life partner, their children,
their jobs, their bosses, their health, their addictions –
the root of these challenges are in the experiences from childhood
and the decisions they made then about the ‘way their life
would be’. The child we were had a wise and intuitive sense
for knowing how to survive and how to get people to pay attention
to them. In our adult life of today, those old strategies –
that once served us well – are now getting in our way.
Anchoring Change
Anchoring change and reinforcing a new decision is necessary to
initially maintain the new thinking, feeling and behaving. As the
new way of being in the world is fully integrated, the contract
is finished and open to considering other changes he or she wants
to make that will be beneficial to their life. The following list
is some of the new decisions that people have made.
The decision to exist – to occupy space
To be one’s self regardless of gender, personality, race,
age, sexuality
To live with zest
To be appropriately close to others, to trust to feel secure
To allow oneself to be soothed and nurtured and to soothe and take
care of oneself
To be empathetically and mutually responsive with others
To influence ones environment – to be important
To experience one’s own feelings across a wide range of emotions
To feel that one belongs in and with family, friends, community,
and culture
To feel ok about one’s self, about others and the world. And
to not make one’s self OK by making others not OK or by discounting
the contexts in which one lives
To experiment and to change and also to fail safely and to use
that failure productively
To think clearly and to solve problems across a wide variety of
domains
To experience one’s own experiences
To make it in love and in work
To make meaning, to find meaning
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