Preview of technique for finding disconfirmation
Here we will see once again the simple technique of overt statement used for launching the client’s mismatch detection, focused this time on the master solution-defining construct in a case of complex trauma.
In a completely natural manner, this subjects the construct to a high level of truth-evaluation in relation to existing conscious knowledge, resulting in a disconfirmation that opens a pathway of deep
resolution.
Symptom identification
“Ted,” 33, was a scruffy-looking man who called himself a “drifter”
and explained that he had dropped out of vocational training 10 years earlier and had never held a job or had a girlfriend for more than a few months. He was regularly in trouble with landlords over late rent. He said he wanted therapy because “I’m getting nowhere. It’s like I just can’t keep at it in anything. Kinda like, what’s the use, you know? And then I give up and change to something else and then it goes the same with that.”
Finding the symptom’s coherence
In initial discovery work using the symptom deprivation technique, Ted was guided to imagine holding a steady job, and he commented ironically that this would “probably get my father off my back.” The therapist, enquiring into Ted’s experience of his father, learned that Ted was mired in hurt and bitterness toward his father over what he described as a childhood full of frequent, severe, and rageful criticism, denigration and shaming by him. There was not one expression of fatherly warmth or love that Ted could remember.
Hearing this, the therapist now decided to focus the discovery work on revealing any connection between Ted’s suffering of his father’s emotional abuse and his presenting symptom of pervasive underachieving and marginality. To do that, the therapist continued the symptom deprivation experience, but now situated the imaginal experience within Ted’s relationship with his dad, as follows:
If you’re willing, let’s go a little further with imagining you’ve held a job. See if you can imagine it’s now over a year at this job, and you’ve been doing good work, and you’ve gotten a raise. [Pause] And then, you tell your Dad the good news.
Th: Imagine actually telling him—maybe by phone, maybe face-to-face, whatever feels right—telling him, “Dad, I’ve done good work this whole year and I’ve been given a raise. And I wanted you to know how well I’m doing.” See how it feels to tell that to Dad. Right to Dad.
Cl:
[Gazes at floor in silence, then gives a short laugh.] You
know, I don’t know why, but what you’re asking me to say makes me really edgy. I can’t even remember it, what you’re saying.
[The exercise is beginning to reveal, experientially, an unwelcome effect of being seen as successful by his father.]
Th:Edgy? You get real edgy when you start to tell Dad you’re doing well?
Cl: Yeah, like—can’t even focus on the words.
Th:
Okay. Sounds like telling Dad some good news about success is very uncomfortable in some way. Makes you feel edgy. [Pause.]
I’m curious about what comes up if you complete this sentence to Dad. Just picture him again, and try out saying, “If you think I’m doing well—.” Just say those words and when you reach the blank at the end, see what comes up to complete the sentence, without pre-thinking it. “If you think I’m doing well—.”
Cl: If you think I’m doing well, then—[Pause]—you’d stop being on my case all the time.
Th:Good. Okay, run it through again, and see what comes up next.
“If you think I’m doing well—.”
Cl: If you think I’m doing well—then when I visit home I wouldn’t have to get torn down at some point.
Th: Good. Again.
Cl:
If you think I’m doing well—that would prove him right. That would like—something about his ways, how successful he is at everything—oh, yeah, I know what it is! It would like prove he’s been successful as a parent, too! [Pause] It would say that since I went after what I wanted and got it and became successful, that would prove he’s a successful parent, he did okay, and how he treated me is no big deal ’cause I’ve gone out there and done okay and so he’s like blameless. He could say, “Well look, you turned out okay.”
Th: What do you want him to feel about how he did as your dad?
Cl: [With an angry tone] I want him to see what a fucking asshole he was and to feel like shit about it. He made me feel like shit, then he walks away like it’s nothing, it’s no big deal.
Th:
I see. He really mistreated you, made you feel horrible, really hurt you, and you want him to know it and see that he failed as a father and feel bad about it.
Cl: Yeah, you bet.
Th:And so if he sees you going off and doing things that look so successful—?
Cl: Then forget about it—he’ll never know what a lousy father he was.
Ted’s last three responses have revealed both the problem and the solution that make up his symptom-requiring schema: His problem is the raw distress he chronically feels over receiving no accountability or justice for his father’s hurtfulness and lovelessness toward him, all his life. His solution is to shape his own life to be the glaring evidence of the massive injury his father has caused, sending a constant message of rebuke and accusation intended to elicit accountability, remorse, and apology. Right at this point, Ted has emotionally deepened into recognizing and feeling his own powerful purpose for underachieving. The therapist’s immediate next aim is to stay right there and create integration experiences to establish ongoing awareness of purposeful underachieving.
Th:
So, try out completing this sentence: “The way I can make Dad realize what a lousy father he’s been is—.” Just say it out loud to me and see what comes up.
Cl: The way I can make Dad realize he’s been a lousy father is—
[Falls silent without completing sentence. Gazes at floor.]
Th: What’s happening?
Cl:
[Angry edge is gone; voice now lower and slower.] Well, when you asked me to say that, the words I heard in my head were,
“Me being a mess.” [Pause.] And it was kind of a shock. [This was the moment of recognizing his own agency in relation to his symptom of underachieving. This experiential recognition of agency is a basic characteristic of Coherence Therapy.]
Th:
[Pause; in a gentle tone:] So, it’s a shock to realize you may be keeping your life a mess, making sure success doesn’t happen, for this crucial purpose—making Dad realize how bad he treated you.
Cl: Yeah.
Th:
So, I wonder if you’d be willing to picture Dad again and try out saying it right to him—something like, “To me what’s most important is getting you to see that you failed at being a father because you treated me so bad. That’s so important to me that I’m willing to keep my life a mess to get you to see that.” [With that overt statement, the therapist is continuing to create integration experiences.]
Cl: You want me to say that to him?
Th:
Yes, because that seems to be the emotional truth of it. I’m asking you to picture him and say it right to him, and see for yourself if it feels true to say that.
Cl: But it’s really screwed up to deliberately keep myself so messed up.
Th:
Well, I understand it’s not at all that you like keeping your life a mess. It’s not that you like it. It’s that you seem to have this powerful purpose of getting Dad to get it and care about how he hurt you. And the mess, the lack of any success, is your way of trying to make that happen.
Cl: Right, right. That helps—putting it that way. Okay, what is it I should say?
Th:
Whatever words are true about what you suddenly realized, that shocked you—in really personal terms, right to your image of your father. If it makes it easier, you could start with, “I hate to admit this, but—.”
Cl:
[Laughs.] Yeah. [Pause.] I hate to admit this, but—[Pause]—if I do okay and make big bucks—[Pause]—you’ll think you did fine and you’ll never get it how bad you messed me up. And how you screwed up as a father.
Th:Good. Do you want to add that part about, “I’m hoping that seeing my total lack of success is what will make you get it”?
Cl: Yeah, right. What I’m hoping will make you get it is seeing my
total lack of success.
Th: Want to change the wording in any way?
Cl:
No, no, it fits. Kind of weird, though. [Pause] I mean, it’s
actually a relief, in a way, ’cause like I said, it’s always seemed like something must be really wrong with me that I never get anywhere.
Ted’s relief over the de-pathologizing of his underachieving, and his emerging sense of purpose and agency in relation to underachieving, were key markers of good integration of his pro-symptom schema. To end the session, the therapist set up a between-session integration task by giving him an index card that read:
The most important thing to me is to get Dad to see that he failed at being a father to me.
I hate to admit it, but that’s so important to me that I’m willing to keep my own life a mess, and get nowhere, to get him to see how badly he screwed up by tearing me down all the time.
As instructions for using this card, the therapist said, “Read it each day just to stay in touch with that as you go through the day, until our next session. Just stay in touch with it; don’t try to change anything, for now.”
This productive first session had retrieved an emotional schema in which the problem was the complete absence of acknowledgment, apology, or accountability from his father for great emotional harm inflicted, and the urgent solution was for Ted to make such a visible mess of his own life that his father would have to see and acknowledge this shambles as clear evidence of his own wrong-doing and failure as a father. Therapists who work from an attachment perspective could view this schema as an attachment pattern, with Ted’s solution being his attempt to induce his father to meet his needs by making amends properly. In Chapter 5 we discuss more extensively how attachment work is understood and carried out in the context of the therapeutic reconsolidation process and Coherence Therapy.
In Ted’s pro-symptom schema, the solution-defining section is representative of the class of solutions consisting of an envisioned
ideal, happy-ending outcome that is (unconsciously) expected to end a particular vulnerability, heal a grievous injury, deprivation or injustice, and restore well-being (as distinct from solutions that are only self-protective tactics for avoiding a particular suffering). Once conscious, solutions consisting of an ideal happy ending tend to be readily susceptible to disconfirmation by the client’s existing knowledge, as we will see below.
Finding a disconfirmation: Mismatch detection
The second session began with a follow-up on the index card task.
Th: How’d it go with the card?
Cl:
Well, at first I’d look at that card and, y’know, like it’s so true but it would just make me feel down, y’know? But then, after a few days it changed, and I got more like pissed over it—like, how long am I just gonna keep my life on hold, y’know? Waiting for my father to get it, y’know?
Th:Waiting for him to get it. Sounds as though you believe he could get it.
In that interaction, the therapist recognized the master construct within Ted’s solution: His previously unrecognized and unquestioned assumption that his father is a man who could face, feel, and acknowledge his own grievous wrong-doing—a magical fantasy of a wished-for, ideal outcome that was formed early in life. If Ted’s fantasy assumption—that his intensely self-absorbed, rejecting father was capable of being remorseful and making amends—were to be disconfirmed and dissolved, the impossibility of his underachieving bringing about the intended result would become apparent to Ted, so the need for that solution of underachieving would disappear, allowing symptom cessation.
As we have seen already in the previous case example of Charlotte’s obsessive attachment, there is a simple way to turn a target construct into a potent magnet that attracts existing
contradictory knowledge: Guide the individual to make an overt statement of the construct, openly affirming the newly conscious knowledge, which activates the brain’s mismatch detector networks.
That is what the therapist immediately did next with Ted.
Th:
Would you try out saying this sentence to me? Just try it out, even if it’s mechanical at first, to see if it fits for you: “My father is a man who’s willing to recognize his own big mistake.”
Cl: My father’s a man who’s willing to admit he made a big mistake.
[Looks down into his lap shaking his head] Fuck!
Th:Or trying out saying, “My father is a man who’s willing to openly admit his mistake and apologize for causing me harm.”
Cl:
[Still looking down and shaking his head. Low voice] Oh, man!
[Rueful laugh] I mean, what could I be thinking? He never does any of that with anybody. Never. [Pause. Snorts] What a joke.
Mismatch detection was immediate in this case. Ted’s response clearly indicated that he was now experiencing a strongly felt knowing that his long-wished-for solution to his attachment ordeal with his father was an impossible, unobtainable fantasy (without the therapist saying anything of the kind). The first disconfirmation of the pro-symptom construct and a contradictory knowing was occurring in those moments, presumably unlocking synapses in the implicit memory circuits of that learned solution. Ted’s distress here was a marker indicating that the disconfirmation was experiential, as needed. The yearnings for caring understanding from a parent and for accountability from an abusive parent are of course very deep, so Ted’s distress was natural and inevitable in this process.
At the core of idealized fantasy solutions is the deeply implicit, unquestioned assumption or construct that the yearned-for outcome is possible. This construct of possibility is so tacit and fundamental that it is easy for the therapist to overlook. Upon noticing such a construct, as a rule it is also easy for a therapist to guide the client to make an overt statement simply affirming the long-standing assumption that the desired outcome is possible. The client then immediately becomes aware of a vivid, contradictory knowledge—
his or her adult knowledge that the expected outcome is not actually possible. This juxtaposition experience is created without any counteractive message from the therapist whatsoever suggesting that the sought-after fantasy outcome is unobtainable.
Guiding a series of juxtaposition experiences
Several repetitions of a well-formed juxtaposition experience constitute the transformation sequence that dissolves an emotional learning, so Ted’s therapist proceeded to guide a repeated, explicit juxtaposition experience by saying:
Th:
Would you try out saying to me some words for what it seems you just saw? Maybe, “I see that my father can never give me the true apology I most want from him.” [The purpose of this was to make the emerging contradictory knowing fully explicit.]
Cl: [Long pause] My father can never give me the true apology I most want from him.
Th: [Pause] How is it to get in touch with that?
Cl: I just want to fight it! It’s fucking outrageous!
Th:
Yes. Outrageous. Tell that directly to Dad. picture Dad and tell him, “I refuse to accept that you can’t give me the
acknowledgment and apology and honesty I want from you, and I’m going to fight to make you come up with that for me.” [This invites an overt statement of his resistance to the
contradictory knowing that his long hoped-for outcome is not possible. Note that the contradictory knowing is in this way kept at the center of attention and Ted is kept in the
juxtaposition experience even while resisting it.]
Cl: [Gazes at his lap in silence, now looking melancholy instead of angry]
Th: [Pause] What’s happening now?
Cl:
[Sighs] When you said “apology and honesty”—like, yeah, that’s exactly what I want, and that’s exactly what he’d never do. With me or with anybody.
Th: The sound of your voice and how you look—you seem kind of down, right now.
Cl: Well, yeah. [Big exhale]
Th:
Mm-hm. [Pause] Would you try out saying to me, “If I really get it that my father will never have the emotional honesty to see what he did to me—.” [Sentence completion intended to invite verbal expression of the grieving that Ted has begun to allow himself to feel. previously he had resisted this grieving by going into anger.]
Cl:
Then, it’s like I got no father. I mean, it feels like that—like I got no father. [Pause] Never really did. [Pause] And never will, that’s the thing. Never will. And I just want to fight that, y’know?