Strategy is the steps you take when you have nowhere to go
Short-term strategic therapy is the approach that changed my life. I like it for the most banal reason — it helped me. So when I study it from a therapist’s perspective, I can tell how it works, and I fall in love with it more and more throughout each session.
The peculiarity of the strategic approach are brevity and directivity. In contrast to the classical areas (let’s say, psychoanalysis), the client’s problem can be solved in ten consultations (of course, this is the average number, there may be three, or even twenty). The approach is aimed at solving the present problem which a person is facing today and in the future that is coming, yet not at analyzing injuries originated from childhood.
I think this is a godsend for the twenty-first century. In our pace of life, when people simply do not have time to go to a psychologist for months or years, people come and solve their problems in a few meetings and live on — freely — without a problem.
Strategic therapy was built on practice and developed by three main groups, which were identified by Michael Nichols and Richard Schwartz in the book «Family therapy. Concepts and methods». The first group included John Wickland, Paul Watzlawick and Richard Fish from the Institute for psychical research in Palo Alto, the second — Cloe Madanes and Jay Haley from Washington, and the third — Milan group — Mara Selvini Palazzoli, Luigi Boscolo, Gianfranco Cecchin, Julian Pratt.
Psychotherapists, psychiatrists, psychologists, many of them came from family therapy, but all of them, relying on the works of Milton Erickson and subsequently interacting with each other, came together to create a strategic approach (the author of the term is Jay Haley).
Later in 1988, in Italy, Giorgio Nardone, one of Watzlawick’s students, with the participation of a teacher, created a center for strategic therapy. Nardone improved this strategic approach over and over again, eventually he created his own model — Advanced Brief Strategic Therapy.
There are special strategies that are used in sessions with clients in this therapy. It is chosen for a specific client, for example, changing the order of parts of the problem cycle, replacing the cycle element, paradoxical prescriptions, and many other things. Each strategy is selected individually. Actually, this is one of the reasons that make the approach suitable for beginners.
When choosing a strategy, the therapist relies on the client’s desire — whether you want to talk about the problem, write tasks, or work out the problem with your hands. Please! At the meeting, it is always discussed in what format a person will be more comfortable to work. If a person says he wants to talk about a problem, therapists use conversational practice, if he wants to remove a symptom (for example, anxiety), he can be given a written task, and so on.
Strategic therapy studies the cycle of the problem in order to break its «vicious circle». For example, by changing a small, even a physical action in the circle of the problem, you can resolve the problem.
With constant thoughts that you want to get rid of, a little bit strange and unusual, but the best way may be to deliberately recall them after waking up. When you are completely calm-every morning try to have twenty minutes for yourself and start thinking about unpleasant thoughts. It may seem wild, but just experiment and the result will surprise you. In practice, the routine will be like this: you wake up in the morning, wash your face, make a cup of coffee, and… sit down silently at the table, set the timer, and while the time goes on, without stopping, think about all the bad things that bother you, which you actually want to get rid of. Do not distract. Do not finish earlier or later. Do not take your thoughts the other way. Exactly twenty minutes deliberately.
Short-term strategic psychotherapy is an intervention that leads to radical and sustainable changes that are «embedded» in a person’s life by helping them learn to control their problems in reality, rather than suffer from its influence.
y, rather than suffer from its influence. Here I come to the theme of the issue- the theme of freedom. From the point of view of the therapist — there are certain techniques and strategies of work, yet, which of these the therapist chooses is solely his decision and task given to the client is also solely a flight of the therapist’s imagination. This is not a minefield where you can’t take a step to the right or left. For the therapist, this is freedom of action.
Freedom is how the therapist’s interaction with the client strives for. Live freely — without anxiety, without obsessive thoughts, patterns of behavior and fear. Fear of making mistakes, fear of the future, fear of communication.
Phobias, habits, and addictions threaten us, however, strategic approach helps us leave them behind, and relieves stiffness in problematic areas.
When a client comes to therapy, let’s say, with a panic fear of flying on airplanes, then he is deprived of the desire to have freedom in actions and opportunities. Every flight happens to become hell, the client is confined in panic. This strategic approach, smoothly by small «steps» shows a person that he has the resources to overcome his fear. In other words, the therapist shows the freedom is present in him, supports him, pushes him to solve the problem successfully, leads to complete liberation and eventually he can cope with his problem. Therapy does not give freedom — therapy shows freedom is always in him. The therapist tells you where to find it.
We help people to find resources in themselves, freedom that is shown is enough to see inside themselves to solve the problem. Some sense of control over a problem is an important aspect of improving your life. It has already changed thousands and thousands of lives, they change to be better, and I am not an exception.
text Daria Trubitsina
translated by Polina Strelova
edited by Lai Yen Xing, Reshma Durai
