Counseling Theories

OBJECT RELATIONS FAMILY THERAPY Resistance

Defenses that protect the client in the therapeutic process, and that must be skillfully uncovered, explored, and worked through to allow the therapist access to the client's painful, shameful, or conflicted feelings.

COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY Thought stopping

A client is instructed to address intrusive or obsessive cognitions that create anxiety or depression by picturing a stop sign and then telling the thought to "Stop. " This process is repeated whenever the intrusive thoughts occur.

COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY Thought tracking

A client is trained in self-observation and learns to identify the typically unnoticed, automatic thoughts that produce emotional responses.

COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY Self-monitoring

A form of thought tracking in which clients are instructed to keep daily records of events and/or psychological reactions.

OBJECT RELATIONS FAMILY THERAPY Individuation

A goal of psychodynamic therapies, the process by which individual beings are formed and differentiated; the psychological development of the distinct, individual being.

NARRATIVE THERAPY Narrative

A random chain of events connected through processes that assign meaning, prioritize and shape them into a story. For the Postmodern therapist, "reality" lends itself to multiple interpretations.

STRUCTURAL THERAPY Restructuring Techniques: Stroke and a kick

A restructuring maneuver to counter resistance by first delivering a "stroke" that acknowledges good intentions, followed by a "kick", which identifies changes that need to be made. If a mother speaks for her daughter, the therapist acknowledges mother's "helpfulness and concern" and then tells the daughter that she must learn to communicate for herself.

BEHAVIORAL THERAPY: OPERANT CONDITIONING Shaping

A subject's behavior is conditioned by successive approximations to obtain the desired result.

STRATEGIC/COMMUNICATION (MRI) THERAPY Homeostasis

A system's balance point. The place where a family system is comfortable, even if that comfort is at the expense of the well-being of one or more of its members.

NARRATIVE THERAPY Interviewing the client as the problem

A technique in which the client pretends to be the problem as he or she imagines and personifies it, and the therapist interviews the client as the problem.

BEHAVIORAL THERAPY: OPERANT CONDITIONING Punishment

A technique to reduce or eliminate unwanted behavior. Two examples of punishment are: Time-out: Decreasing a behavior by denying positive reinforcement. For example, a disruptive child is separated from the group (removed from the positive reinforcement of social contact and attention). Response cost: A privilege is taken away after the performance of an undesirable behavior.

SHARED CONCEPTS IN FAMILY SYSTEMS THEORIES Hierarchy

A theory that families, as with all living systems, need leadership. In some families, the interactional dynamics are such that the children wield the power because the parents lack basic knowledge of child development or parenting techniques. This may be because of mental or physical illness, or because they are intimidated by the children, etc. This creates anxiety and insecurity for children, whose developmental needs cannot be met, and thus chaos in the family system.

PSYCHOANALYSIS Parapraxis

An act that appears to be unintentional but is understood to be unconsciously motivated. Also known as "Freudian slips," they too provide a "road to the unconscious. "

OBJECT RELATIONS FAMILY THERAPY Holding environment

An internalized structure that allows a person to tolerate conflict or anxiety without acting out or developing symptoms. Clients often come to treatment with a deficient holding environment.

PSYCHOANALYSIS Resistance

An unconscious dynamic used to defend against anxiety that would result if repressed or pre-conscious feelings, thoughts, memories, experiences, or behaviors were brought to awareness.

DEPTH PSYCHOLOGY Archetypes

Ancient experiences housed in the collective unconscious and expressed in the form of partially developed memories or images.

GROUP THERAPY Support

Acceptance and a sense of belonging are the major ingredients in group cohesion. Support is the factor found to be most important for positive outcomes in group therapy.

FAMILY SYSTEMS TERMINOLOGY Wholeness

According to General Systems theory, all living systems have a unity or wholeness. Wholeness refers to interdependence between the parts of the system such that change in one family member will affect the entire family system.

PSYCHOANALYSIS Freud's Five Psychosexual Stages of Human Development: Name; Age; Description

Achievement of mature sexuality

GROUP THERAPY Self-esteem

As group members experiment with new ways of being and communicating that are more consistent with their preferred selves, their sense of self worth increases. Similarly, sharing with, providing care for, and helping others in the group has a positive impact on self-esteem.

BEHAVIORAL THERAPY: OPERANT CONDITIONING Extinction

Attention (reinforcement) is withheld during the performance of an undesirable behavior.

DEPTH PSYCHOLOGY Ego

Center of consciousness and the basis for the way we perceive our world and ourselves.

STRATEGIC/COMMUNICATION (MRI) THERAPY Directives

Change occurs not as a result of insight or awareness, but by the process of carrying out the therapist's directives. Directives can be "straight" or compliance-based, giving the family a simple assignment to carry out; or indirect or defiance-based, that is, paradoxical.

FAMILY SYSTEMS TERMINOLOGY Second order change

Change that alters a system's structure and functioning, so that a symptom or behavior no longer serves a purpose.

PLAY THERAPY Representational play or sand tray play

Children are given small toys representing people, cars, buildings, trees, etc. (sometimes the child is given a sand tray in which to create scenarios with the objects). The child is free to create scenes that represent his or her internal world, which is validated and affirmed by the therapist. By not interpreting, the therapist allows children to freely express themselves.

SOLUTION FOCUSED THERAPY Client resources

Clients have the ability to solve their own problems, and the Solution Focused therapist helps the client relocate his or her hidden resources, strengths, capabilities, competencies, etc.

SOLUTION FOCUSED THERAPY Exception questions

Clients typically describe a problem as always happening. The therapist asks, "When is the problem not a problem?" or "Was there ever a time when you were without the problem?"

FAMILY SYSTEMS TERMINOLOGY Negative feedback

Communication that causes a system to resist change and maintain its homeostasis. Negative feedback maintains order and prevents chaos, but too much negative feedback inhibits a family's ability to adapt to new developmental demands and changing circumstances.

STRATEGIC/COMMUNICATION (MRI) THERAPY Levels of Communication

Communication: Communication defines the nature of the relationship between family members, and all relationships are characterized by a struggle for power to determine who defines the relationship. Communication takes place on two levels: The surface or content level: the plain meaning of the words that are spoken. The metacommunication level: behavior that qualifies, comments upon, or contradicts the content (verbal) level. Metacommunication includes such things as tone of voice, speech pace and volume, to whom the words are spoken, physical gestures, and eye contact. Turn I got it wrong I got it right!

FAMILY SYSTEMS TERMINOLOGY Identified patient (I.P.

Consistent with the concept of wholeness, family systems therapists believe that the symptoms in one family member are an expression of the family system dynamics. Another way of saying this is that the symptoms belong to the system, and are simply being expressed through the I.P. Turn I got it wrong I g

SOLUTION FOCUSED THERAPY Coping questions

Coping questions reframe client assumptions, and the therapist's shift in language fosters shifts in client thinking. A Solution Focused therapist might ask, "Given all of the difficult things going on in your life, how is it that you are coping as well as you are?"

PSYCHOANALYSIS Defense Mechanisms: Identification

Defending against inferiority by aligning with successful causes, people, or organizations.

STRUCTURAL THERAPY Restructuring Techniques: Shaping competence

Emphasizing the family's positive and functional dynamics by praising them, complimenting them, and making a fuss over what the family is doing well or effectively.

COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY Cognitive distortions

Errors in thinking that produce undesirable behavior or emotions. Examples include: Selective abstraction:Taking a detail out of context and dwelling on it. Arbitrary inference: Jumping to a conclusion without evidence to support it. Over-generalization: A single, negative event is seen as a never-ending pattern. Polarized thinking: Thinking in extremes. Events or situations are experienced as all good or all bad, black or white. Catastrophizing: A form of exaggerated thinking in which the worst possible outcomes are anticipated. Disqualifying the positive: A rejection of positive experiences by rationalizing away their significance. Jumping to conclusions: Assuming the worst intentions of others or negatively predicting how things will turn out in advance of events. Labeling: Describing an event with highly colored and emotionally laden language. Emotional reasoning: Assuming one's own negative emotion reflects the way things actually are. Personalization: Seeing yourself as wholly or partly the cause of negative events for which you were not, in fact, wholly or partly responsible.

GROUP THERAPY Typical Group Therapy Interventions

Essential responses: Opening or closing, attending. Passive responses: Giving feedback, paraphrasing, empathizing. Active responses: Clarifying, directing, questioning. Interpretive responses: Playing a hunch, noting a theme, noting a discrepancy, reframing, noting a connection. Discretionary responses: Allowing silence, self-disclosing.

NARRATIVE THERAPY Exceptions

Exceptions are times when the problem is not a problem. Exceptions represent a toehold into an alternative story, preferred narratives that belie the problem-saturated story. Turn I got it wrong I got it right!

PSYCHOANALYSIS Defense Mechanisms: Rationalization

Explaining away failures; a student cheats on an exam because "everyone else does it."

NARRATIVE THERAPY Externalizing

Externalizing personifies the problem as an entity or alien force. This encourages new possibilities for taking action. Examples of externalizing language: "How long has depression had the upper hand in your life?" or "What does temper do to get you to participate in its world?"

STRUCTURAL THERAPY Alignments

Families divide themselves into subgroups, such as subsystems. The other types of alignments are: Alliances - Families form subgroups based on generation, gender, developmental tasks, and common interests. Alliances are temporary or permanent, and family members are part of multiple alliances. Coalitions - Coalitions are alignments of two or more family members against another family member. Sometimes coalitions function as triangles to divert conflict onto another person (detouring coalitions). Other times coalitions are used to scapegoat family problems.

STRUCTURAL THERAPY Subsystems

Families organize by generation, relationship and necessity. The marital subsystem consists of the life partners/spouse. The parental subsystem consists of the same people in the role of parenting the children. The executive subsystem consists of the same people in the role of running the small business known as a family. The sibling subsystems consist of the children and are organized by age, gender, interests, etc. Healthy subsystems are free of interference from other subsystems.

FAMILY SYSTEMS TERMINOLOGY Pseudomutuality

Family systems in which everyone gets along and no one rocks the boat, so that any feelings that might disrupt the façade of togetherness must be disavowed or split off, leading to isolated, inauthentic selves.

MULTIGENERATIONAL (EXTENDED FAMILY) THERAPY Fusion and emotional cut off

Fusion avoids the anxiety of voicing one's needs during instances when others have different needs. Another way to avoid anxiety is to cut off feelings and become emotionally deadened by withdrawing, avoiding personal conversations, or by becoming reflexively oppositional.

GESTALT THERAPY Gestalt Therapy

Gestalt therapy is based on the premise that people must become aware of their need for connection and effective in satisfying it. Gestalt means a whole or a completion, and emphasizes the need for people to be as fully as possible who they are. It emphasizes self-awareness and self-acceptance and is grounded in the here and now, promoting direct experiencing as an agent of client change, rather than education or explanation.

TREATMENT PLAN: FORMULATION AND OVERVIEW Differentiating Goals from Interventions

Goals: What the client wants/needs Create better boundaries. Interrupt the triangulation process. Remove child from identified patient role or provide positive connotation for symptomsImprove communication skills VERSUS Interventions: Examples of how to get there Model boundary setting by requiring all family members be present before beginning session. Comment on parents' attempts to draw the child into their conflict. Explain that the child's acting-out behaviors are an expression of pain over parental conflict. Teach each person to speak in the first person singular and to speak to and not about one another.

GROUP THERAPY Resource

Group members become a valuable resource for each other, providing information, sharing experiences, and offering a support network for specific problems or challenges.

HUMANISTIC-EXPERIENTIAL FAMILY THERAPY Growth

Humanistic-Experiential therapists see the growth of each individual and of the system as the goal. Presenting problems are simply "the price of admission to therapy", i.e. a portal to growth.

MULTIGENERATIONAL (EXTENDED FAMILY) THERAPY Pseudo-self and solid-self

If we avoid conflict and anxiety by either allowing others to tell us how to feel and behave or by avoiding others through emotional numbness or pseudo hostility, we create pseudo-selves. The opposite of this, the creation of solid self, is acting in a way that is consistent with our feelings and needs.

COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY Automatic thoughts

Immediate thoughts in response to life situations, which typically go unnoticed, but create our feelings about a given situation. Sometimes called 'maladaptive thoughts' because of their unhelpful nature, or 'autonomous thoughts' because they seem to happen independently, outside of awareness.

STRUCTURAL THERAPY Enmeshed and disengaged

In enmeshed families, no one is allowed to operate without interference from others. Disengaged families are the product of rigid boundaries, and family members are emotionally distant and operate privately and separately.

SOLUTION FOCUSED THERAPY Expert stance/not knowing stance

In modernist, the therapist is an expert who assesses, diagnoses and prescribes. Solution Focused therapists are expert at hosting conversations that shift language and uncover client resources. The Solution Focused therapist presumes nothing about the client and takes nothing for granted, instead assuming a stance of genuine curiosity, a stance of "not knowing. "

MULTIGENERATIONAL (EXTENDED FAMILY) THERAPY Non-anxious presence

Multigenerational therapists model differentiation by maintaining a non-anxious presence that is not emotionally reactive when engaging with the family, even in the face of conflict.

GROUP THERAPY Empathy

Issues broached in the group evoke differing viewpoints, which expose participants to alternative perspectives that may help broaden their understanding.

MULTIGENERATIONAL (EXTENDED FAMILY) THERAPY Multigenerational (Extended Family) Therapy

Multigenerational therapy is a process-oriented therapy. The goal is to help family members communicate with one another in a non-anxious, non-reactive way that permits togetherness and allows for separateness when required, a concept known as differentiation.

NARRATIVE THERAPY Narrative Therapy

Narrative therapy, like Solultion Focused therapy, says reality is language-based, problems exist in a social context (not within the client), therapy is collaborative, and the therapist elicits client strengths. Narrative therapy believes people have problems when their stories do not sufficiently represent them.

SELF PSYCHOLOGY Kinds of transference: Empathy

Kohut's concept of empathy is about intrinsically comprehending the experience of others from their own unique perspective. Accurate empathy includes both affective and cognitive components. Empathy is curative when the therapist is able to understand and explain back the patient's experience accurately.

NARRATIVE THERAPY Local knowledge and expert knowledge

Local knowledge is the therapist's own experience. Expert knowledge is the "truth" that "everyone knows" or professional views of what is "normal" or "factual. "

GROUP THERAPY Confrontation

Members are encouraged to challenge and confront one another directly and honestly. Through this process, they learn that they can do so without destroying themselves or others.

GROUP THERAPY Feedback

Members are encouraged to give and receive feedback in the form personal reactions to one another's behavior and learn effective ways of giving and responding to feedback.

OBJECT RELATIONS FAMILY THERAPY Object Relations Family Therapy

Object Relations, a psychodynamic theory, posits intrapsychic structures that develop from relational experiences with primary care givers and through which all relational experience is filtered. Object Relations family therapy deals with the system dynamic that develops between family members who are subject to interactional pressure to respond to unconscious aspects of one another. Through this process of projection and projective identification, the family members attempt to regulate themselves and one another, sometimes at the expense of the emotional well-being of one or more family members.

FAMILY SYSTEMS TERMINOLOGY Pseudohostility

Ongoing bickering between family members over superficial or easily resolvable issues. The fighting serves to avoid vulnerability, feelings, and intimacy. People's feelings or views are not respected or validated, leading to isolated, inauthentic selves.

BEHAVIORAL THERAPY: OPERANT CONDITIONING

Operant Conditioning is a type of learning in which a subject chooses to modify a behavior in order to receive a reward or avoid a punishment.

SHARED CONCEPTS IN FAMILY SYSTEMS THEORIES Fusion and cut off

Opposite poles on a continuum descriptive of the ways in which individuals in a family system avoid anxiety and conflict. Avoidance by fusion means the individual goes along with whatever the interpersonal environment demands, at the sacrifice of the individual's needs and interests. Avoidance of conflict and interpersonal anxiety by way of a cut off means the individual uses anger, coldness, etc. to distance him or herself from the relationship and its demands.

STRATEGIC/COMMUNICATION (MRI) THERAPY Positive Connotation

Positive connotations reframe the symptomatic behavior so that its purpose is understood as a communication. When symptoms are seen as a striving by the symptomatic person to meet his or her needs (positive connotation) in the only way he or she is able, it exposes the family's rules and how in this instance, those rules are not serving the needs of the system.

NARRATIVE THERAPY Exception questions

Questions that deconstruct the idea that the client is always being impacted by the problem and that provide windows for new stories about the client's relationship to the problem.

NARRATIVE THERAPY Invitation questions

Questions that make client vulnerabilities to the problem more visible e.g., "What makes it so irresistible when temper invites you to go along with its ideas about how you should behave?"

NARRATIVE THERAPY Meaning questions

Questions that reinforce the ability to be something other than what the problem asserts, e.g., "What does it say about you that you didn't go along with anorexia's demand that you exercise twice yesterday?"

NARRATIVE THERAPY Preference questions

Questions that take a closer look at how clients participate in the problem, e.g., "When you decided to go along with isolation, did that end up being better or worse for you?"

SOLUTION FOCUSED THERAPY The Three Rules of the Central Philosophy

Rule #1: If it ain't broken, don't fix it. Rule #2: If it's working, do more of it. Rule #3: If it's not working, do something else. Translation of Rule #1: If the client isn't bothered by it, it's none of the therapist's business. Therapists don't look below the surface for dysfunction. Instead, he or she hears a client's complaint at face value and concentrates on finding solutions to problems that the client presents. Translation of Rule #2: Consistent with the emphasis on finding the exceptions to the problem, the therapist helps clients to become aware of and utilize more of what is working in the client's life. Translation of Rule #3: Solution Focused therapy helps clients to notice what isn't working so that it's not repeated. In his first paper on the core principles of Solution Focused Brief Therapy, Steven de Shazer wrote, "All that is necessary is that the person involved in a troublesome situation does something different, even if that behavior is seemingly irrational, certainly irrelevant, obviously bizarre, or even humorous. "

STRATEGIC/COMMUNICATION (MRI) THERAPY Resolve the presenting problem

Strategic and Communications therapists limit their therapeutic task to eliminating problems presented to them, without taking a position about how families should behave or should be structured. When the presenting problem is resolved, therapy has been successfully completed.

STRUCTURAL THERAPY Structural Therapy

Structural therapy focuses on building and reinforcing an effective family structure. Structural theory is action-oriented and directed at the here-and-now interactions of families.

STRATEGIC/COMMUNICATION (MRI) THERAPY Symptoms are communication

Symptoms are used to gain power when there is a perception that there is no other way for needs to be met. As a result, the therapist is less interested in the internal experience of individuals and will instead focus on the family's communication patterns.

PSYCHOANALYSIS Defense Mechanisms: Introjection

Taking in and assimilating another's values, behaviors, and personality traits.

FAMILY SYSTEMS TERMINOLOGY Equifinality

The ability of complex systems to achieve the same results and changes (goals) from various starting points and in a number of different ways.

STRUCTURAL THERAPY Joining

The process of creating a therapeutic subsystem, disarming defenses, and easing anxiety by building a relationship of respect with each family member. Aspects of joining include: Accomodation: Noticing and adjusting to the family's communication style and body language. The therapist does this intentionally by activating parts of him or herself that are similar to the client. Mimesis: The root of the word is the same as "imitate", "mimic", and "mime. " Mimesis means the therapist tracks the family's style of communication and relating, and then uses it.

OBJECT RELATIONS FAMILY THERAPY Projective identification

The recipient of a projection experiences the disowned feelings, impulses, shame, and split-off parts of the projector as his or her own.

PSYCHOANALYSIS Defense Mechanisms: Sublimation

The redirection of antisocial psychic energy into more acceptable forms of behavior.

SOLUTION FOCUSED THERAPY Compliments/cheerleader

The therapist highlights small changes, exceptions, and unnoticed resources: "How did you do that?" is an example of a cheerleading question. "Wow, you were really able to hang in there despite the heaviness of the problem!" is an example of a compliment. Turn I got it wrong I got it right!

NARRATIVE THERAPY Invitations

The therapist investigates the "invitations" the problem makes to the client to better understand how seductive these invitations are, even though accepting such invitations is problematic.

PSYCHOANALYSIS Free association

The client is instructed to provide grist for the mill by saying whatever comes to mind without censoring the thoughts and images that arise spontaneously in the analysis.

FAMILY SYSTEMS TERMINOLOGY Circular causality

The concept that communication and behavior are relational, so that no one individual is the cause of relational problems. The problem inescapably exists within the conditions created by everyone in the relationship; the symptom belongs to the system, not the individual.

PSYCHOANALYSIS Freudian Topography: The Superego

The superego is the part of the personality created from the internalized moral code of family and culture, determining an individual's sense of right and wrong behavior.

MULTIGENERATIONAL (EXTENDED FAMILY) THERAPY Triangle

The tendency of relational dyads, under stress, to recruit a third person to gain stability and lower anxiety by diverting the conflict to the third person. In family systems terminology, the triangled person is the identified patient who is sacrificed by the system for the sake of reducing anxiety.

SOLUTION FOCUSED THERAPY Scaling questions

The therapist might ask, "On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the most suicidal you've ever been, and 10 being the happiest you could imagine being, where are you right now?"

OBJECT RELATIONS FAMILY THERAPY Unresolved issues

The traumas and unresolved business of childhood unconsciously motivate people to replicate those earlier, wounding relationships, binding us to recapitulate those same relationships.

SHARED CONCEPTS IN FAMILY SYSTEMS THEORIES Triangles

The idea that relational dyads diffuse the anxiety inherent in relationships by recruiting a third party. The anxiety is diverted, but the original relationship becomes frozen and the triangled person develops the symptoms that make them the identified patient.

PERSON-CENTERED (ROGERIAN) THERAPY Non-directive

The therapeutic stance is to follow the client's lead, sometimes by repeating or paraphrasing back the client's words. This is to encourage further self-exploration of thoughts and feelings without interpretations or questions, which shift the focus to the therapist's interests.

SELF PSYCHOLOGY Kinds of transference: Idealizing

The therapist (or partner) is experienced as all-knowing, all-loving, and omnipotent - the embodiment of the longed-for, perfect and idealized parent

NARRATIVE THERAPY Reauthoring

The development of alternative stories that better reflect the client's preferred self.

PSYCHOANALYSIS Freudian Topography: The Ego

The ego has contact with the external world of civilization and other people, and its primary function is to mediate between instinctual drives and the environment. It governs, controls, and regulates the personality. The ego operates from the reality principle or secondary process.

SHARED CONCEPTS IN FAMILY SYSTEMS THEORIES Boundaries

The emotional rules that regulate contact between family members, subsystems, as well as the family and the rest of the world. Boundaries can be rigid, keeping people at an emotional distance from one another, or they can be diffuse, failing to provide the protection necessary for autonomous development of a sense of self. Flexible boundaries that permit closeness or distance as required by changing circumstances are the goal of family therapy.

PERSON-CENTERED (ROGERIAN) THERAPY Self-actualization

The goal of therapy is to help clients become self-aware and self-accepting so they can fulfill the basic human drive toward growth, completeness, and fulfillment.

GESTALT THERAPY Figure/Ground

The ground is everything that is possible to bring into awareness or consciousness. The figure is that which is the focus of interest in any given moment. The therapist follows that which is figural, from moment to moment, in the client's expression and between therapist and client.

PERSON-CENTERED (ROGERIAN) THERAPY Unconditional positive regard

The hallmark of Person-Centered therapy is the therapist's non-possessive caring, understanding, and acceptance of the client for who he or she is as a human being.

PSYCHOANALYSIS Defense Mechanisms: Projection

Unconsciously attributing to others one's own unacceptable desires or impulses.

PSYCHOANALYSIS Defense Mechanisms: Repression

Unconsciously excluding traumatic events or threatening feelings from awareness.

HUMANISTIC-EXPERIENTIAL FAMILY THERAPY Communication stances

Under stress, people with poor self-esteem default to unhealthy emotional positions: Placater - The response to stress is to avoid it. If there are any uncomfortable truths, they will try to avoid talking about them and may go to extraordinary lengths to avoid such conversation. Blamer - Blamers feel powerless and uncared for. Under stress, they compensate by trying to take charge, accusing, and hiding their aloneness in attempted leadership. Super Reasonable or the Computer - Super Reasonables are intellectualizers who feel exposed when showing emotions. To avoid feeling, the Super Reasonable is logical, rational, and untouchably cool. Distracters - Distractors are easily confused and grasp at straws by making a joke, creating a physical distraction, or responding with nonsensical statements. This is due to anxiety or genuine confusion. Levelers - The ideal response to stress is to accept it as normal, and this is what the Leveler does. Levelers communicate in a genuine and clear way, despite conflict or anxiety.

GESTALT THERAPY Unfinished business

Unexpressed feelings and resentments that linger in the mind and interfere with the ability to be present and to have genuine contact with self and others.

GESTALT THERAPY Dichotomy (split)

Unintegrated or disavowed parts of the personality that are in conflict.

GESTALT THERAPY Paradoxical theory of change

When we stop trying to change what we are, when we really accept all parts of ourselves, it is at that moment that change begins to happen all by itself.