hi this is Dr. Diane Gehart and this is my lecture on Adlerian individual therapy that goes with my text theory and treatment planning and counseling and psychotherapy. Adler is often considered the unsung hero of psychotherapy and counseling because most people have heard quite a bit about Freud and also Jung but Adler was also one of the original developers of a psychotherapy approach but he's often the least spoken about but what's really interesting when you look at Adler's work much of what he was doing over a hundred years ago looks a lot like what we're doing today in contemporary work contexts. So, even though he's talked about a little bit less I think you're gonna find that his ideas really are the most contemporary and fit the most with contemporary practices and what's interesting is that many people don't go back and actually cite him most likely because they didn't actually use his ideas when they developed their own approach I'm guessing that's the reason why I don't know exactly why other people don't talk so much about him um but when you look at the ideas that we're going to discuss you know related to Adler's developments you will see that many other therapeutic models contemporary models use his approach. So object relation, self psychology the humanistic approach cognitive and behavioral approaches the family systems feminist multicultural and even postmodern approaches and in group counseling and education you will see the roots of the ideas in these approaches in and the Adlerian theory which is one of the original counseling approaches. Adler was a contemporary of Freud and Jung and depending on whose side of history you listen to some describe Adler as a student of Freud others will describe Adler as really having developed his ideas around the same time that they were more colleagues. However you frame it they definitely did work at the same time. There are ideas they were in dialogue their ideas definitely influenced one another and yet there are really significant differences so here's an overview of some of the key differences between Adler's work and his contemporaries colleagues Freud and Jung. The first is a holistic view. Much more so than Freud or Jung, Adler took a very holistic view to viewing the person not just as an individual or as a psyche but also in context and in the person's social context which is really a very contemporary way of looking at people and yet Adler was really the first to do this. And so ad really emphasized the social factor and the social environment and how that influences personality and again in the context of working in multicultural context and working with clients in various cultural ethnic social economic backgrounds religious backgrounds Adler from the very beginning of his work considered these social factors while not trying to understand the individual. Adler also really emphasized that people have choices and he did not see the past determining the future and so again this very much distinguished him from some of his colleagues at the time. In terms of social motivation this was also a really innovative concept of Adler's at the time because he really believed that people were motivated by social connections social interest not just instinctual drives and so he really saw that psychological health was defined by having social interest a desire to be part of the community and along with pro-social behavior that this is really the key to being psychologically healthy and so again this kind of fits with some of the later attachment theories um that have become actually increasingly popular over the years that I did say increasingly popular over the years so Adler also looked at humans as being very goal-oriented he saw behaviors truly having a purpose and that was to to meet and achieve certain goals now sometimes those goals maybe aren't the best-informed or the best choices but nonetheless he saw all behavior even dysfunctional behavior as trying to beat some kind of goal for that person and then finally and really focused on and valued this objective and phenomenological reality of the client and so valuing that subjective reality as a truth to the person and how they're experiencing it and will soon see in the chapters that follow that the humanists also share this emphasis of valuing the subjective and the phenomenological lived experience of the client which is different than many other approaches. When you look at the Adlerian counseling process, you will also notice that it really distinguishes itself from both the ideas of Freud and Jung and that Adler actually advocated for a very brief and present and future focused counseling process and it was also fairly directive which is very unlike his contemporaries at the time in addition he saw the counters role as being primarily educational helping the client understand and so it's a much more active role than either Forever Young advocated for the counselor also uses encouragement to help clients move towards goals again this is very unique at the time that he practiced in the in the actual process of counseling azor does address early recollections and memories the family constellation the family organization a sibling position and what he calls style of life which I'll be defining in great detail and overall he saw humans as social creatures who strived to better themselves and so that was kind of underlying all of his approach was this view that he are inherently social and we do want to make ourselves better and so there is this kind of positive view of human nature one of the key concepts and Adlerian counseling is this idea of style of life sometimes called the lifestyle but after had a really unique definition of what this meant you really saw it as a set of attitudes and assumptions that fundamentally shaped the way a person sees life so it's kind of the lens through which you interpret all your life events and he believed that it did emerge in the first six years of life so in this way he is similar to some of his colleagues who saw those first early years and really defining the personality this although this isn't technically a theory of personality it's more of the cognitive set one has when looking at life he also believed however that development and other events including trauma could shape one style of life and he saw problems or difficulties are basically evolved out of her come from faulty interpretations for mistaken notions that cause problems and difficulties as you can imagine you know between zero and six is pretty easy to develop some mistaken notions about life such as life is always fair or life will always be unfair to me either one of those can emerge quite easily early in childhood and so add neuro ease goes backs and a lot of the especially the early interventions and assessment in this approach focus on trying to understand the person's fundamental style of life in those earth early errors that a person developed you know due to various life circumstances and so he calls these basic mistakes these early assumptions about life that are basically faulty and so he saw the whole process of counseling was simply to correct these basic mistakes he's incorrect assumptions about life and thereby enabling a client to consciously choose a new style of life to consciously choose how the client was to go about leading his or her life so closely related to the concept of style of life is this idea of social interest and community feeling amazingly a door ding social interest and a strong sense of community feeling and so this is this lived experience of having commonalities with others being part of a community and you know benefits of cooperating with others and so there's really this sense to that the healthy person is willing to actually give more to the community than one actually receives in this term in return so it's a sense of even generosity and so this is kind of the the be-all end-all goal and Adlerian therapy is to develop a greater sense of social interest because either really believed that psychologically healthy people and ultimately most forms of dysfunction result from not having healthy levels of social interest or feeling part of a community and they're identified three areas of social life in which a person needs to develop this sense of social interest the first is communal life which is the sense of being part of a community the next is work life and that is somehow contributing to society doing your part and that may or may not look like a 40-hour a week job you know but somehow contributing to others beyond yourself and then finally love relationships so Adler also saw that romantic relationships family relationships parent-child relationships are also another area in which one needs to develop a sense of a social interest now modern illyrians am added three more to this the first being self acceptance the next being spirituality and then finally parenting and so a healthier adaptation in each of these realms involves driving for the goal of perfection in the sense of being the best person you can be or a poorly adjusted person someone who's going to be having symptoms and problems our striving for the goal of personal superiority which means trying to be better than someone else so you're not trying to be the best you can be but when you slip into this idea of I have to be better than someone else then you're most more likely to have psychological difficulties from this view of a delirium therapy in addressing social interest Adler discussed inferiority issues and we've all heard of an inferiority complex and Adler's one of the first to talk about this it's where some of that phraseology comes from so but ever identify three types of inferiority the first two actually promoting social interest and the final one inhibiting it so biological inferiority is that painful realization that we need each other to survive and and so that when one has a sense of biological inferiority one is much more likely to cooperate with groups because humans need to survive I need to need to work together to survive they always have in some ways we're much more like pack or herd animals than anything else the next is cosmic inferiority and that's recognising death and limitations of human existence and so this promotes social interest so the more one is aware of existential issues and also just being part of this larger cosmic hole when is much more likely to actually work towards social values and to be part be a useful part in a contributing part of the broader so human you know family for lack of a better term then finally there's personal inferiority and that's a sense of feeling less powerful less valued less able than others and a sense of not belonging to a community and so this inhibits social interest and so it's this area of personal inferiority that a lot of the Adlerian approach focuses on and helping people and so you'll hear will be a focus on power encouragement and but helping people overcome this sense of being personally inferior because that's gonna make them much less likely to actually cooperate with others now Andrew sees this as having a couple of options in terms of how to respond to a sense of personal theory Ora tea the first is gain trying to gain a sense of significance through achievement and so that describes folks who work really really hard to have some kind of achievement to say okay I am good enough in the world and really without their achievements they don't feel good enough in the world the other option which is less ideal is to avoid obligation risk avoid risky decisions and avoiding even connection with others so in this sense you just feel so unworthy and so you're kind of avoiding life obviously this is a less functional approach you're more likely to have more problems but nonetheless trying to gain significance and meaning in life but through achievement is also not really a recipe for happiness from an illyrian perspective so it's slightly more functional because at least you're engaging with others and there's a certain amount of trying to work within the community but there there's this deep down sense of still not being good enough and I have to perform or I won't be good enough and and I think Adler correctly points out that that's really not the best recipe for happiness so Adler sees the counselors role is to encourage people to transform this sense their sense of personal inferiority not being good enough and to instead promote a sense of social interest and thereby kind of reducing this overall sense of not being good enough at a very fundamental core level and luring counseling has four very distinct phases of the counseling process in the first phase the focus is really on establishing an egalitarian relationship in the second phase there's this assessment of the style of life and also one's private logic then in Phase three there's an encouragement of insight and self understanding looking for the kind of basic mistakes in that style of life and private logic and then finally in phase four the emphasis on education and reorientation so in phase one there's this emphasis on establishing in a gig egalitarian relationship making a very positive and warm connection under the clients and there really is a focus on the strengths and abilities and helping clients find better ways of coping and this whole relationship itself is helps improve a person's sense of belonging and being good enough and begins to help reducing the sense of overall inferiority and also helps the client to become a more meaningful contribution to a contributor to their community and if you think about it you know he's a contemporary here's Adler a contemporary of Freud and he's advocating for an egalitarian relationship and so this again it's another example of how in many ways Adler's approach certainly described you know kind of the norms of contemporary practice much better so you know it's really is kind of remarkable when you look back in history when he was working and to promote such a stance I think is quite remarkable now in the second phase this is the basic assessment phase and this is where he gets into the style of life in a person's private logic and trying to understand and the basic mistakes the faulty assumptions about life that are really at the root of the presenting problem whatever that might be whether it's depression anxiety or relationship problem and so the counselor looks at the family constellation and specifically the sibling position and the clients role within this family system in addition he looks at early recollections believing that it's possible that these might help the counselor understand you know where did some of these really early kind of incorrect ideas about how life works where did these might come from and so often he found that early early recollections helped him identify these basic mistakes and then also illyrian contemporary illyrians have developed DSM diagnosis approach that in linking it to basic practices in a delirium counseling so in count in phase three the counselor is going to help the Clank develop insight and self understanding to help the client begin to correct these basic mistakes so there's an emphasis on looking at the at the clients private logic and to identify sources a positive motivation to take action and make changes and in this phase sometimes the counselor will offer possible interpretations for example looking at how feelings of inferiority might actually be related to instances in the client's life for their avoiding commitment whether it's in a love relationship or in a work situation and so beginning to identify how some of these feelings inferiority might actually be fueling their problems and so again the the counselors working with the client to collaboratively to help the client find useful meaningful interpretations of their own motivations and their own actions and unders so that the client has a lot of buy-in and this is quite distinct from especially more traditional psychodynamic in psychoanalytic approaches where the counts were the counselor therapist and those approaches really wasn't so much open to the clients buy-in and the focus especially in earlier approaches was really that the analyst had the correct answer and the idea was to bring the client around to see the therapists perspective and insights whereas a deliriant counseling advocates a much more collaborative process as do many of the more modern psychodynamic therapists in this regard so in the final phase this is where the counselor helps a client to educate them and then take action and so this is where the change really happens and so in this phase the counselors challenge clients to develop real-life changes based on these insights and so the idea is to help the client reorient to life and develop a new style of life as they correct their mistaken beliefs beliefs about life so in terms of the counseling relationship and Larry ins really have a unique approach to developing a counseling relationship first of all as we've mentioned before the relationship is egalitarian and so hopefully the counselors have a certain amount of social interest and they work through some issues of personal inferiority so they don't see themselves as superior to their clients and so they also want to help their clients maintain this sense of agency and choice so even interpretation and psychoeducation are offered from a humble position which is quite unique I would say and again it really stands out to me it's just remarkable that a deliriant that Adler used this approach so early on additionally Adler encounters are quite encouraging and they're very optimistic and hopeful about their clients and so there's just true like deep in their heart they see the best of their client and there's this overall sense of encouragement and there's a fundamental belief the clients can change their lives in more meaningful ways and so this is both expressed verbally and non-verbally and this is done through facial expressions like smiling listening attentively really being present taking action when needed these sorts of things additionally Adlerian counselors or empathetic and they role model social interest and I love this quote to see with the eyes of another to hear with the ears of another to feel with the heart of another and so there's this real emphasis on being empathetic and getting into the clients worldview we'll also see this thing picked up in the humanistic and existential therapists in addition to this level of empathy and occur birds meant there can be a directive quality to the counseling relationship in a delirium work and so in terms of directedness there's this real emphasis on providing very practical and helpful education and suggestion even though they are directive they still try to be non hierarchical and encouraging and there's this overall sense of educating clients with a genuine sense of enthusiasm and hope that there are ways for the client to better their situation the assessment process in Adlerian counseling basically focuses on assessing this the client style of life and so there are several areas that the counselor considers including parenting style their parents parenting style the family constellation in birth order early recollections basic mistakes private logic Oregon inferiority or physical weak points which will define the question look that addresses the function of the symptom and then finally dream analysis so one of the first areas of lifestyle assessment is assessing once the client's parents parenting style and so especially looking for evidence of pampering or neglect so some of the questions for assessing parenting style would be do you know just just to describe have the client describe the relationship with their parents were they indulgent were they strict were they inconsistent or they supported how did the client get what they needed how did you get what you wanted how what were your favorite strategies for getting your way as a kid did they work you know which client was able to influence the parents the most or the least so just basically talking with clients to get their sense of their relationship with their parents and how their parents functioned and to get a sense of whether or not there was pampering or neglect because either situation is likely to create problems in terms of basic mistakes and some faulty assumptions about how life should actually work next in the lifestyle assessment the counselor considers the family constellation or birth order so a direct considered birth order to be important but not all determining and so even though there's certain characteristics that are associated typically with being a first child or an only child ever did not believe that these really determined a person's characteristic but he thought it was worth exploring and identifying where the person fit into the family system and what their role tended to be Adler also blew the sibling closest in age and also the most different in terms of personality was a sibling that most affects how one defines who who he or she is and so Adler would look at whether the client was the oldest the second child the middle child a youngest or an only child and he would use this to consider and to reflect on whether some of the clients basic mistakes actually come from their particular role in the birth order another interesting area of the lifestyle assessment is this idea of assessing early recollections asking clients for some of their earliest childhood memories typically three to get a sense of how and how and what their basic mistakes might be so some way to do this might be to ask describe what you believe to be your earliest memory from when you were a child where were your feelings at the time what were others feeling what did you understand or not understand about what was going on what's the most vivid and important part of the memory what really stands out and what do you think you learned as a child from this experience so not just identifying the memories but also exploring what type of meanings a client you know has made from those early experiences again this is just to be helpful in trying to understand the style of life and not necessarily these events are not necessarily determining who the person you know the person's personality or not always directly related to the presenting problem but there certainly looked at as clues as to what might be going on and what might be some of the private logic or mistaken beliefs that are related to the percentage problem so much of the meat of the lifestyle assessment comes down to identifying specific basic mistakes or faulty assumptions or errors and private logic so you know many of the assessment elements we've discussed at this point or that the primary purpose is to help identify the basic mistakes and there's so many different ways we can develop you know basic mistakes and you know mistaken assumptions about life and most of us have several often hitting all five of these typical patterns um so you have a lot to work with generally with yourself and also with clients so one of the most common types of basic mistakes is an overgeneralization so those exaggerating truths that our truants are in context to global all or nothing you know truth so all men are the same or you know once you always do this or never do this these sorts of things the second type of basic mistake is a false or impossible goals of security this is always fun trying to remove all risk from life making unreasonable demands on others we really often see this and these really come to light often when you look at committed partnerships and marriages where you know if you love me you will never hurt me you will never leave me you will never say an unkind word to me these sorts of demands are as you might imagine I hope I'm not bursting any bubbles here but these are very unrealistic and and so sometimes these unrealistic expectations of how secure life could actually be is the source of a particular presenting problems so another common type of basic mistake are misperceptions of life and demands not you know understanding that they're inescapable rules and truth about life you know realizing that people do die that survival takes quite a bit of effort even in the modern world and so you know not actually understanding or fully Kaizen can also create problems later in life another form of basic mistake Erik problem is a minimization or denial of one's basic worth it's a really strong sense of personal inferiority and that becomes problematic in relationships so why would anyone want to love me I'm inherently flawed you know I'm not even good enough so this kind of creates a very fatalistic and self-fulfilling prophecy as you can imagine it becomes a problem and then finally faulty values and so these are basic mistakes in which one finds ways of coping with life but these ultimately also become problematic so believing that if I'm successful enough and achieve enough people will have to love me I will earn their love or in their trust or earn you know my value earn their respect those sorts of ideas and although these are you know sometimes gets one to be somewhat functional in various phases of life they ultimately can create problems and also create a very heavy burden for the person often emotionally so these are the some of the common themes that one might find in basic mistakes and certainly this is not this this list is not exhaustive it can go on and on and on and on there are also several other areas of lifestyle assessment one is what Adler calls Oregon inferiority which certainly sounds awkward to modern ears maybe a more modern translation will be physical weak points but these are either physical problems or disabilities that leads one to believe that they are physically inferior to others and so again this is going to be another source of a sense of personal inferiority that the counselor wants to take into consideration when considering the style of life another area of lifestyle assessment is dream analysis and again both Jung and Freud also did dream analysis but each each one of these gentlemen did it with very very different goals in mind and so in the sense of Adler dreams are really used is to provide insight into a client's inner process and again this theme should really be clear now as we move through this lifestyle assessment is that dreams are again clues to help analyze a client's style of life and identify potential solutions and Adler really believe that the meaning of Dreams basick to the client and that the client really had the final determination in terms of the meaning of the dream finally here we have the question which isn't one part of the assessment and it illyrian and what's interesting is as you can see that this is kind of a precursor to what solution-focused clients ask in terms of the miracle questions so it's just interesting to see this this question has been around for a long time so you may want to take note the question is at Adlerian counseling what would be different if you're in your life if you didn't have this problem and so the clients response provides clues as to what would be avoided by having the symptoms so this helps the counselor get a sense of is there a real function or purpose to the symptom and this is important to understand because if there is this needs to be addressed before the clients can be willing to give up that symptom so for example if being depressed gets a lot of other people to do your chores or pick up slack for you that may be a secondary kind of motivation for having the symptom so also as part of the case conceptualization and marrying cancers look at each client's life tasks and their level of social interest in each of the six life tasks the first is looking at work and does the client feel like they're contributing meaningfully to society through education through being a homemaker childcare volunteer activities employment so any one of these can be a way in which a person feels fulfilled in this area I'm looking at communal life and friendship so does the client feel connected and are they enjoying social connections looking at love relationships so looking at levels of social interest and if this requires a lot of courage and almost intimate relationships so exploring whether or not a client is feeling satisfied and able to demonstrate high levels of social interest in their intimate love and family relationships looking at self-acceptance that is as foundation foundational to really being successful and relating to others looking at spirituality and doesn't mean the client needs to have a formal religion but having some kind of relationship to something greater than the client in general generally I require that the speed or the university their neutral are ideally positive rather than the university to have to get me but some version of spirituality that supports the client and helps increase their sense of social interest finally looking at parenting as a particular set of social skills and social functioning in which a client may need to function so in treatment planning you're going to look at specific goals can be written for each one of these areas typically just one or two of these might be part of the presenting problem but then maybe in the later phases of counseling you'll address some of these other areas so Adlerian is like most other contemporary mental health practitioners are typically asked to do DSM diagnosis in their work environments and so they have looked at how can you take the more traditional DSM approach and somehow find a way for it to meet the a deliriant approach and so the BSN the traditional dsm approach can vary pathology and deficit based focusing on external measurable behaviors which is unlike as you hopefully you may have guessed up to this point and is unlike in lehrerin approaches which really focus on the subjective experience that focuses on strengths and encouragement positivity and so what have done has looked at how can we translate some of the traditional DSM language to the said Larian work that we do and so what they realized is that that access one which is where you would normally put the focus of clinical attention a diagnosis of some kind they call it the arrangement so how the client is arranged symptoms to cope and corresponding to clinical syndromes and diagnoses and so this is considered the arrangement of symptoms but they really see it as a client's way of trying to cope with whatever stressors they're experiencing in life now access to is typically a place where you would put personality disorders and here this kind of corresponds to from a delirium perspective what it's called the style of life which is that the very basic assumptions about how life works now and Leary's aren't saying that everyone has a personality disorder but instead that some of these kind of more pervasive basic mistakes about life of which may correspond to a personality feature that it's described by the style life or can be equated to what would be put on access to access 3 is where you would put the organ inferiority but this in traditional diagnosis kind of corresponds the physiological disorders that may be relevant to the psychological treatment and so then organ Theory already kind of fits on this access access for is what they called a shock traditionally it's where you put psychosocial stressors but Adlerian czar very attuned to the social world and social pressures and the clients social context and community context and so various psychosocial stressors kind of correspond to that and then finally xs5 is the barometer of life tasks in most dsm ik's diagnosis this is a hundred point scale for global assessment of functioning and the illyrian assessment of life tasks corresponds to this in a deliriant counseling that theory posits some basic long-term goal which is to develop social interests hopefully at this point election you're not surprised but basically a social interest is considered normal adjustment which means one has enough energy and courage to meet the problems and difficulties of life as they arise so no matter what the presenting problem is in the latest phase later phases of counseling the emphasis will be on developing a sufficient level of social interest so that a person is able to cope with life basically a more recently in contemporary times at illyrians have added concepts of wellness and positive psychology to the concept of social interests and so the idea is to not just remediate weaknesses but to develop real strengths and again wellness as opposed to health where health can be defined as not being sick or ill in some way not having significant problems where wellness is more than that it is a sense of well being and feeling able to cope with life in that life is a joyous exciting in discovery and adventure which is a newer concept that has been emerging in the last couple decades so again the goal here is its evolved is developing not just social interest and social connection but also empathy and a social consciousness because all of these are correlated to happiness so in terms of developing and learing goal statements in the early phases you're going to be identifying and addressing crisis symptoms and or some other small achievable goals for the early phase when you could do the working phase again you're going to be really focusing on reducing the presenting problem and reducing symptoms related to that problem so this may involve increasing social interest in functioning and a lot areas and life tasks that are most closely related to the problem and then finally in the closing phases you're going to be really focusing on wellness and increasing overall social interest in all areas of functioning and so in this way you can see how the plan kind of starts with the presenting issues and then on that ideally helping the client achieve a more long-lasting sense of wellness some example of early middle phase goals and Adlerian counseling could be to reduce insecurities that lead to depressive thinking or jealousy in relationship or even under functioning at work you can also be to develop more realistic expectations of performance at work or more realistic more realistic expectations in one's you know marriage or partnership also it could be something like reducing the tendency to over generalize it leads to arguments with spouse increasing ability to take risks and relationships to increase sense of intimacy so you know also reducing the tendency to calculate self work Worth based on work performance so any of these can be goals that would work from an a deliriant perspective in terms of some of the late phase goals I can hear you're addressing larger issues of wellness and functioning in all areas of life so it could be something like increased intimacy and connection with family of origin or with friends and local community increase sense of connection to the divine by reconnecting with a spiritual practice increased self-acceptance related sexual orientation increase emotional connection and redefine relationships with adult children take steps to pursue a line of work or volunteering that is personally satisfying so there are lots of areas in which one can focus on for those for the last later phases of therapy now one of the most basic and commonly used interventions and then delirium counseling is psycho education and in fact psycho education looks quite different across the four phases of the counseling process so in the first phase the topics of education is helping the client understand you know the counseling relationship in the counseling process so that may include describing the client's roles and rights in the process including goals heading and deciding what to discuss in counseling and so explaining how Adlerian counseling would address the presenting problem and how it works and also defining social interest and its role in the play in a client's problem so as you can imagine psychoeducation is very useful here in helping clients set up realistic expectations for what they're going to get out of the process now in Phase two for psychoeducation if you remember phase two is the assessment phase and it's real important for providing a rationale for this actual assessment process if you remember they go back and they you know ask for early recollections and parenting style and and things that some people may say hey you know I came here to help you with a problem at work or in my current relationship and why in the world are we going back to the you know past all that's behind me it's not an issue right now they might say my parents are dead god knows what and so it can really help to explain to clients why and why they are why you are asking these questions so that they can be more cooperative and actually get something out of the process so in Phase three but that's the phase as you probably remember hopefully is where you're working on encouraging insight and self understanding and so in this phase psychoeducation may take the form of offering information and or even research results that help counter inaccurate or unrealistic assumptions about private logic that may be fueling the problem and so providing some kind of explanation of the style of life and psychological processes you know that are that Adlerian is based on can also be helpful in this process of helping clients begin to identify and and recognize that some of their assumptions about life are very unrealistic then finally in the last phase here the phase of education reorientation you probably would expect to be doing a lot of psycho at education and so this is where you're using either research or theory at it theoretically based information to motivate clients to take new action related to a specific problem and so offering this can also take the form of offering specific instructions or suggestions on how to best approach a change in behaviors or habits of thoughts and so again in phase for there is a real emphasis on psychoeducation to help clients take a motivating clients to take action and also figuring out what the best action to take is well it may seem like offering psychoeducation is a pretty simple straightforward thing to do but I've actually found it's actually a very hard thing to do well and I would say the primary mistake most people make is giving away too much information far more than a client can make a useful practical sense of and so the real trick is to give a little bit of information and then to really flesh out how the client can implement these with micro steps in for the real world and so it's one of the few interventions that I actually recommend you practice on your friends and loved ones because often another common error is especially for those early in their careers is to use way too much technical jargon and technical terms and so by practicing on real people who are not in the field it will help remind you that you need to use different language when discussing these concepts with clients that clients can can follow you and my general principle is if at all possible I don't use a technical term and try to translate everything into common everyday language rather than trying to get clients to memorize my language so that's the first thing practice use use words that um that are not technical whenever possible then the next thing is always to ask you know and before you go into that to just ask the client what they'd like to know more about X would they be open to learning about you know why and just by asking helps put them into a much more receptive form mind rather than just launching into it keep it brief literally a minute or two it's very rare extremely rare that I would even go up to five minutes it might be a few times in my career I've done that but I try to avoid it and so I try to be quiet just make one point try not to go into a whole lecture for every single parenting technique possible focus on exactly one we're gonna work on natural consequences and here's the principle of natural quants consequences you know whenever you know a child has done something that is maybe let's just say the parent doesn't want the child to have done to look for natural consequences and I always tell if you can't find a lot of natural consequences then you may be forcing your own you know winds on your client on your on your child so you may want to think about that if you don't if you're not identifying a lot of natural consequences but that's you want to keep it really brief and you're not gonna launch into for other parenting techniques if you're gonna just talk about one today and you'll always have another meeting to go into more and where we tend to get into trouble as we get on a roll and we're gonna add two or three four or five other parenting principles and the client probably shake their head and enjoy it they like it but the truth is they're probably not gonna go home and do anything useful with it over the week the clients who can do that have probably bought a self-help book and they didn't come to see you so most people actually come in you need to keep it brief because you need to break it down to smaller steps then you want to make sure the client understands it and it makes sense it seems to fit for them and then you wanted to try to apply it immediately by breaking it down into step-by-step tasks so the remaining 48 minutes of the session should go into how when where and what over the next week is a client gonna find ways to implement whatever piece of information this was and then the next session you want to follow up and ask if the information was used in to what extent if it worked if it didn't do we need to tweak it and go on from there and you really want to do that follow-up to see if the client even uses it or truly benefits a lot of us enjoy hearing psycho-educational information it's very interesting but if the clients not going to use it that you probably need to be looking at either doing it differently helping motivate them more and or finding another way of working with them because you're not on task then is his homework has to be completed between sessions things that clients are assigned to do based on conversations about what's working what needs to change so it may be calling the strange relative going on a date with your wife developing a list of things you're afraid of that holds you back so you know is anything that kind of emerges from the conversation about what a client can practically do between now in the next session and this is used as this is especially emphasized in the fourth phase of the counseling process so another type of intervention is called the interpretation of symptoms and this is identifying the purpose of the symptom and its role in the clients style of life so a common one is procrastination as a way of avoiding taking risks and possibly fail and so there's a real purpose the interpret the interpretation of the symptom should really focus on the goal or purpose of the behavior and avoid global ad labeling the person is lazy or fearful or lacking drive so the idea is is to see the symptom and look below it to see what purpose is is served in the client's life and these interpretations are very tentatively offered and so that the client is able to correct it revise it rephrase it in a way that really fits better for them so that they don't feel like the counselor is just judging them in some way and again this is most closely associated with the third phase of the counseling process and so another element of this interpretation of symptoms is really being open to revisions and emphasizing strengths whenever you can so the overall tone of the interpretation should allow to be encouraging highlighting potential strengths possibilities hope resilience you know so even saying something along the lines of so in some ways the procrastination is served to create a sense of safety for you but it seems that you may not need this as much as you did in the past so even something along those lines is quite an encouraging way to interpret the purpose of a symptom another type of intervention or area of intervention or looking at the client self-concept statements so helping clients explore comparison processes that make it more useful and fair and accurate for how they look at themselves so one type of self-concept statement is an inferior farah inferiority based doubt self statement where the client self-concept falls short of his or her personal self ideals so I'm stupid I'm worthless and this is compared with an adequacy based self to self statement with a client self-concept falls short of what the client believes is the world view or cultural values about who he or she should be so I'm incompetent I'm a fool and the loser so all of these are kind of comparison based ideas of adequacy there's so many ways to feel not good enough it's great the last is guilt based self assessments which is the client self-concept fails falls short of some kind of ethical or moral belief I'm bad or evil or unforgivable and so this this set of different ways of looking at self and categorizing self-concept statements can help counselors think about what's going on to the client and how best to help counter those some other commonly used interventions and count and Adlerian counseling include challenging or reframing based mistakes and private logic so directly challenging faulty assumptions reframing beliefs so that they are more useful to the client and so again this is done in a somewhat tentative way not in a harsh challenging way but you know challenging the idea that so it seems if you're living your life as though you have to always have achievements and more achievements and better achievements to be good enough you know what point have you achieved enough that you don't you can stop doing that it's something like it's a very gentle kind of way to challenge I'm also looking at natural and logical consequences this is most commonly used with children and to help encourage children to make better decisions but it's also can even be very useful with adults who sometimes need to be reminded of natural and logical consequences for example teasing people in such a way that you actually are insulting them the natural logical consequence for that in an intimate or long-term relationship is that eventually that does become a sore point in the relationship and so pointing out these sorts of things can be helpful even with adults finally the anti suggestion is a type of paradoxical technique that actually discourages change and/or encourages the symptom and this is a type of paradoxical technique that we'll see used in other more contemporary approaches and the most classic example had to use this would be for someone who claims they can't control their worrying the anti suggestion can be used to say something like so I want you to spend 10 minutes every single warning or two at a time yourself and I want you to worry for those 10 minutes and that experience of kind of focused choosing to consciously engage in a symptom often gives people a greater sense of control over it insight into it and enables them to handle the situation differently and finally perhaps one of the most fun named interventions is spitting the soup which refers to making the covert overt and emphasizing the covert benefits and the hidden power of having a symptom so this may sound something like you know one benefit of depression is that you've gotten everyone else in your family to pay more attention to you or you must have reached near Rockstar status to have everyone in the subway looking at you so these sorts of comments are obviously used very carefully well timed with clients that you have sufficient rapport and this is used in a way to help client side you know become more aware of why how these symptoms may actually have some kind of benefit which maybe part of the reason why they don't want to let go of them so in terms of the overall evidence-based for delirium counseling there's actually limited research and the general efficacy of the specific approach although it clearly embodies many principles that are you know associated with common factors research and however in particular this one very promising evidence-based approach the step parenting program and this is a parenting program that's been developed and around four years it's recognized by the National Institutes of mental health as a promising evidence-based approach which really uses emphasizes using encouragement to motivate children rather than classic behaviorism punishment and rewards and it really emphasizes the importance of encouraging social interest in cooperative behaviors and children so this is a specific parenting of program and that that embodies many of the alluring and puts into use many of the Adlerian principles in terms of working with diverse populations and leering that has a very respectable history especially given how long it's been around arguably Adler was one of the first feminists and culturally sensitive counselors he really espoused feminist values which again is pretty remarkable for the time in which he worked and the whole just basic concept of community interest really speaks to these values and so they're many concepts within a delirium that facilitate work with diverse populations first is the concept of social interest that we are all social beings we need each other to survive and so that emphasis on social interest in developing social interest in all aspects of life you know certainly supports the work with diverse populations there's also this sense that when one feels superior to someone else this is viewed as inherently a maladjustment from an Italian perspective and so also this emphasis from Italy Rian's and focusing on social factors when assessing mental health issues not seeing all problems within the individual but also related to their social context again this is very much in the spirit of working from a multicultural perspective so very much at the heart of Italy and our many principles and concepts that enable counselors to effectively work with a wide range of cultural populations so this was a somewhat you know brief overview an introduction to a delirium counseling I hope you found it helpful and you can find more details and specific examples of treatment plans and case studies in the text book and I wish you the best