Techniques of reality therapy
Treatment Using Reality Therapy
Reality therapy is characterized by its own set of goals, relationships, and strategies.
Goals
Therapeutic Alliance
Reality therapy is characterized by its own set of goals, relationships, and strategies.
Goals
- Goal is to enable people to have greater control over their lives by making better choices
- Wise choices meet the following three criteria:
- They help people meet their innate needs and their specific wants, reflected by the pictures in their quality world.
- The choices are responsible; they not only help the person making the choices but also respect the rights of other people and contribute to their efforts to make wise choices.
- The choices are realistic and are likely to be attained through sound planning. (Seligman & Reichenberg, 2014, p.377)
Therapeutic Alliance
- Reality therapists are very much human beings in the treatment process
- They share their perceptions and experiences and frequently ask for feedback
- They pay little attention to transference and countertransference
- Client and clinician form a collaborative team to help clients explore, evaluate, and revise their choices
- Clinicians help people formulate realistic and viable plans
- Clinicians self-disclosure sometimes facilitate involvement; language is important- ask what rather than why
- Compassionate confrontation is used when necessary (Seligman & Reichenberg, 2014, p.377-78)
Strategies:
Metaphors:
Relationships:
Questions:
Metaphors:
- Metaphors, similes, images, analogies, anecdotes
- Give clients a powerful message in a creative way
- Clinicians listen for and use metaphors and themes that clients present
- Example: Your life is like a steady stream.
Relationships:
- Essential and rewarding to life
- Strong relationships: time spent together; it is effortful, valued by each person, enjoyable, focused on the positive, noncritical and non-argumentative, regular and repetitive, but time-limited and promotes awareness of each other
Questions:
- Clinician avoids telling client what is not working for them
- Use questions to lead the client in the right direction
- Example: What are you looking for? What are you seeking? (Wubbolding, 2011, p.113)
WDEP and SAMI2C3:
- Process of moving toward change by evaluating wants and direction and formulating plans
- Elements that maximize the success of plans: simple, attainable, measurable, immediate, involving, controlled, consistent, committed
Positive Addictions:
(Seligman & Reichenberg, 2014, p.378)
Using Verbs and "ING" Words:
Reasonable Consequences
Renegotiation
Paradoxical Interventions
Skill Development
(Seligman & Reichenberg, 2014, p.379)
- Provide mental strength, creativity, energy, confidence, and focus but do not dominate one's life
- Positive behavioral patterns:
- The behaviors should be noncompetitive and capable of being done alone.
- The behavior can be accomplished without inordinate mental or physical effort.
- The behavior should have value to you.
- The behavior should be one that you believe will lead you to improve some way if you persist in it.
- The behavior should be one that you can perform without criticizing yourself. (Glasser, 1976)
(Seligman & Reichenberg, 2014, p.378)
Using Verbs and "ING" Words:
- Want people to realize that they have control over their lives
- Use of active verbs
- Emotions are not fixed, can be changed
Reasonable Consequences
- People should be responsible and should experience consequences of behaviors
- Do not make excuses
- Rather than focusing on what was done wrong, the focus is what can be done differently the next time
Renegotiation
- When the client lapses or backslides
- Clinicians help client do something different
- Emphasis on developing a new or revised plan for success
Paradoxical Interventions
- Encourage people to take responsibility for themselves
- Take two forms of paradoxical intervention:
- Relabel or reframe to promote choice and control
- Paradoxical prescriptions: therapist encourage people to imagine the worst that could happen and find ways to cope with that, choose symptoms rather than fight them, do the opposite from what is not working, or to schedule a relapse (Wubbolding, 1988)
Skill Development
- Clinicians help clients develop the skills to help them fulfill their needs and wants in a responsible way.
- Teaching of assertiveness, rational thinking, development of positive addictions, planning and other skills that promote growth and responsibility
(Seligman & Reichenberg, 2014, p.379)