It is subconscious you can not trick. How to make Self-help work

In a previous post  in Self-Help category I was talking what self-help is and the fact that there are certain features in us we can not get rid of. The other thing is that we can manipulate them while while getting some of them to the day light and the rest keeping somewhere in the dark corners inside our heads. The way to get some of our qualities out is while choosing right stimulation. However, it is pretty interesting the way different stimulus can be decoded by our subconscious without us having a smallest clue.

Accidentally I stumbled into a very interesting research made by a marketing guru Martin Lindstrom, an author of the Buyology book. This man spend 3 years and 7 billion dollars on the research in order to figure out the way people react to different adds, brands and campaigns and what really sells. But i do believe that his research outcome can be easily adopted in self-help and various therapies. Lindstrom used the MRI machine worth 4 billion dollars. The interesting thing about MRI is that this machine can notice the hemoglobin, substance which moves oxygen along your system, movement in the body. Oxygen is one of the fuel our system uses while coping with different tasks. Therefore, while observing the level of hemoglobin in the brains while using MRI you can see which part of the brain reacts while coping with certain tasks (analyzing images, sounds, etc.) and how strong are different parts of the brain involved in the task.  And to illustrate my idea of the ‘wrong’ and ‘right’ stimulus for the brains in order to bring out the right outcome I will analyze the example of one of the woman who was involved in Lindstrom research. Woman, called Marlene, a mother of two is a smoker. According to her she is not really addicted and it is more during occasions she actually lights up the cigarette rather than smokes daily and often. Lindstrom wanted to analyze how much social advertising aiming to encourage people not to smoke really works. He asked Marlene few questions before he started the experiment with MRI. According to Marlene she does smoke, but the warnings on the cigarette packages are effective and it makes her smoke less. In order to figure out the way Marlene’s brains really react to this kind of stimulus to quit smoking she was put under MRI. She has different warnings about smoking threats (like the ones on cigarette packages) passing in front of her eyes and while pressing different buttons she is asked how much different warning makes her to WANT to smoke.

Several weeks later the first results reveal that the warning text she saw did not even slightly discourage Marlene from smoking. And even are more interesting results arrive after analyzing MRI data which was collected during a research. Apparently the warning text, which aimed to discourage from smoking, actually was stimulating the part of the brains called nucleus accumbens which is a pleasure center in the brains. It is thought to play an important role in reward, pleasure, laughter, addiction, aggression, fear, and the placebo effect. This area in the brain gets activated than the body wants something: drugs, sex, alcohol, tobacco. So even Marlene said that text affects her, her subconscious kinda though the opposite.

Marlene’s example is of the way different stimulus can actually affect in the opposite way you want. This is very important to understand in self-help therapies and various other psychological activities. The stimulus which aim to bring the good things out of you and hide your bad habits must be chosen very carefully in order not to have the opposite result to the one you want.

Solution Focused Therapy

This post is prepared while analyzing the research done by Stephan Hendrick & Luc Isebaert)

Solution focused brief therapy (SFBT). “What SFBT does is that instead of digging somewhere deep it mainly focuses on client strengths and resiliencies examining previous solutions and exceptions to the problem, and then, through a series of interventions, encouraging clients to do more of those behaviors”. (Trepper&al.,2006) In this case it is important what are the effective therapeutic principles implemented in SFBT.  It is important to mention that principle is ‘ a set of rules that guides the therapy’, than a technique is ‘a specific procedure to get a specific result’. So principles are something what will be followed during all the therapy than technique is something used to achieve a well defined goal at th certain time.  These maight be distinguished as the main principles of Solution Focused Therapy:

1. Start where the client is, or: Adapt to the stage in which the client finds himself

There can be three different types of people who end up in front of the ones offering professional health:

• A Complainant – a person who does not have a clear request for help (a drinking housewife who says that no way she can cope without drinking as long as her husband works long hours and she has to take care of home on her own)
• A Visitor – the one sent to seek for help by the doctors, friends, relatives
• A Buyer – a person who actively seeks for help on his own (contacts a therapist about the drinking problems on his own and not influenced by anyone)

In scientific literature these mentioned types of people seeing for help can also be defined as three stages which change during the process of relationship between the therapist and the client. It is very important that therapist would correctly identify at what stage is the person seeking for help than he first contacts him. In this case therapist can use correct principles to move a client along the stages and get the result more effective. A client can very easily turn from a Visitor to Complainant and than a Buyer.

2. Use and enhance the client’s competence

Every person has abilities and coping strategies prior to any therapeutic intervention. Therefore, the therapeutic process should consist of bringing forward and implementing solutions that are already present in clients and their systems. Therapy works better if the solution suggested by  the therapist is based on the natural healing processes of the patient, in this way all the best competences of the client can be used.

3. Defining clear goals and obtaining the client’s collaboration

Solution focused approach gives a very important meaning to the clear definition of the goal which a person coping with various problems should achieve.  Client needs to define the goal using the details and concrete examples on how his life should be than he is done coping with this problem or is at the certain stage of the therapy.

4. Change client’s perception and experience

Promoting corrective emotional experience is an other basic principle in SFBT.  Corrective emotional experience refers to ‘exposing the patient under more favorable circumstances to emotional situation which he could not handle in the past under less favorable circumstances ‘ (Alexander, French & al., 1946). Nowadays this principle is considered as an efficient. It is described as an ability to create experiences where the client has the opportunity to learn something new is an essential ingredient in brief therapy.

5. Solution oriented language

Solution focused approach helps the clients to discover their own solutions and expects the therapist to adopt a trusting and respectful attitude. In the solution focused therapy it is very important that a therapist adopts the language of the patient: words, intonation, speed of talking and reflex. This, firstly, will build the trust and secondly, will help to communicate. In solution focused approach therapy the one who knows the solution is patient himself, just a therapist needs to help out while bringing that solution to the day light, while being supportive and respectful. There should not be any confrontation, denials, only the suggestions and alternatives.

6. Restore and enhance hope and positive expectation

Hope and positive expectation have a strong influence on final outcome of any therapy. Solution focused approach in therapy seeks of the ways to enhance hope, as a willing to improve into the healing process. Positive expectations in solution focused approach is something that stimulates the patient to focus more on the healing process.

To sum up: solution focused approach in therapy is a process during which the clear goals are defined by the patient and a therapist is the one trying to engage the best of patient’s skills and competences in order to achieve these goals. Also This is the kind of therapy which focuses only on the positive factors: hope, healing, improvement, goals and dismisses the negative things: problems and fails. In this case therapist is like a silent advisor who never is to persuasive and instead of telling the patient what to do only suggests alternatives in the way patient thinks it was actually his idea.