Richard took in the question, gazed at the therapist in silence for a few seconds, and then replied, “Well, I don’t know what to tell you. All I can say is, that doesn’t trouble me any more. And hearing you say it, it seems a little strange that it ever did—like, what was my problem?”
Hah. I’ve had that experience with clients (and myself) so many times I coined the term “change amnesia”—it’s extremely common following successful reconsolidation, and a good sign that the specific change made is going to “stick”.
I was going to say that my approach doesn’t use side-by-side comparison, but then on further thought the critical stage in my SAMMSA model involves the contradiction between someone else’s view of them as lazy, incompetent, stupid, selfish, etc., and their actually not being those things at the time the judgment was made.
But that in and of itself isn’t sufficient to make a change, AFAICT. It might open things up to allow the reconsolidation that follows, but it’s necessary also to make new predictions in light of the thing that’s been opened for reconsolidation.
Huh. This is interesting. It explains why certain things I’ve been doing work, that I knew you had to do in order to get results, but which I didn’t know why they needed to be done. Metaphorically, I’ve been telling people they need to open the right “file” in their brain before they can make a change, but it seems that I’ve also been having them flag errors in the file first, before adding new data to the file.
The Work of Byron Katie also follows this general pattern, i.e. : He should listen to me—is that true? (reflect on experience) Can I absolutely know that’s true? (generate alternative possibilities) How do I react when I think this thought? (predict negative consequences for continuing with this pattern) Who would I be without that thought? (predict positive consequences of thinking differently) And finally turnarounds (e.g. “I should listen to him”, “he shouldn’t listen to me”, “I should listen to me”), to generate alternative schemata that might apply to the trigger situation.
Hah. I’ve had that experience with clients (and myself) so many times I coined the term “change amnesia”—it’s extremely common following successful reconsolidation, and a good sign that the specific change made is going to “stick”.
I was going to say that my approach doesn’t use side-by-side comparison, but then on further thought the critical stage in my SAMMSA model involves the contradiction between someone else’s view of them as lazy, incompetent, stupid, selfish, etc., and their actually not being those things at the time the judgment was made.
But that in and of itself isn’t sufficient to make a change, AFAICT. It might open things up to allow the reconsolidation that follows, but it’s necessary also to make new predictions in light of the thing that’s been opened for reconsolidation.
Huh. This is interesting. It explains why certain things I’ve been doing work, that I knew you had to do in order to get results, but which I didn’t know why they needed to be done. Metaphorically, I’ve been telling people they need to open the right “file” in their brain before they can make a change, but it seems that I’ve also been having them flag errors in the file first, before adding new data to the file.
The Work of Byron Katie also follows this general pattern, i.e. : He should listen to me—is that true? (reflect on experience) Can I absolutely know that’s true? (generate alternative possibilities) How do I react when I think this thought? (predict negative consequences for continuing with this pattern) Who would I be without that thought? (predict positive consequences of thinking differently) And finally turnarounds (e.g. “I should listen to him”, “he shouldn’t listen to me”, “I should listen to me”), to generate alternative schemata that might apply to the trigger situation.