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Collaborative Agreement

What do you want to change?

“What do you want to change?” That was the first thing out of Mary Goulding’s mouth when I sat to work in front of a group of my fellow students. The question came with a gaze that held a kind of assuredness, that….

Stepping Into Another Point of View

Our ability to adopt another person’s point of view (POV) steps us and our clients into accepting other people more completely and ultimately reveals the felt sense knowledge of the koan-like question “who is another human being?” More on that at another time ?

As our clients develop and enhance their ability to assume another’s POV….

Untangling from Cognitive Distortions, Part TWO

Yesterday, I opened the back door to the porch and this guy was RIGHT THERE! With his head in the air. Yikes. I closed the door. QUICKLY.

As I caught my breath, I realized how quickly the thought, “there’s a snake on the porch,” became a story. For those few moments, that story felt REAL!

Untangling from Cognitive Distortions, Part ONE

Many if not most therapists, coaches, spiritual directors would disagree on the value of the narrative in helping our clients.

Cognitive distortions may be the clearest view we can get on just how tangled up in a narrative we can all get. For those who journey with some variant of a mood disorder, these distortions can be debilitating.

AAIT, Not Your Grandfather’s Therapy

The one thing most practitioners might disagree with about Acceptance and Integration Training (AAIT) is the value of our clients’ narrative. With AAIT, the narrative doesn’t serve as the primary filter, this principle does:

Empathy’s Role

The last few weeks, I’ve been going the long way around answering a question raised by a talented young therapist, “What is the role of empathy in AAIT?” NOW, I think I’m ready to more directly answer the question.

Empathy is essential in ANY therapeutic relationship. It is crucial to developing trust which is critical to establishing a collaborative relationship. Collaboration is central to creating a solid crucible for transformation and is one of the five phases of AAIT.