Theory of contracts - Part 3.

In the previous post on contracts KYLady makes some good comments about lying to self, others and breaking them.

Thanx for that as it allows me to clarify what I mean by lying to self. In one sense people lie to themselves regularly and indeed one could say it is the role of the counsellor to ‘expose’ these lies in some way. Any time one packages off part of their thinking, feeling or behaving to the unconscious you could say they are lying to self. They are pretending to self that they are one way when they are in fact another. Every projection is a lie to self as is every denial that we all have.

For example, I was working with a woman recently and she expressed much sadness about being sent to boarding school as a child. Within just a few minutes it became obvious to me (as an outside observer) she also had considerable anger at her mother for doing such a thing. She was completely unaware of this and she had used the defence mechanism of denial. To be angry at her mother was unacceptable to her so she moved it into her unconscious and then could pretend to herself that she was not angry. 

For some of us our own inner angry child is unacceptable. To deal with this we place it in the unconscious and then can pretend it does not exist.

I suppose one could call this a lie, and one of my jobs as the counsellor is to expose the lie and bring it into her conscious which I did. I had to say it on 4 different occasion before she acknowledged what I was saying. Finally she did let in what I saying and then expressed some surprise that she felt such anger.

However this is not really what I am talking about when it comes to contracts. I often suggest homework contracts to the client at the end of the session. When they make them I will often ask, “Do you think there is any chance you will do it” and people generally can answer that question quite readily and easily. Sometimes they say yes with certainty and other times they will say no. If they say no then I suggest they forget the contract. This is what I am really talking about when it comes to lying to self.

If you know you are not going to do it or there is quite a probability you wont then don’t make the contract in the first place. What I am communicating to the client is - Contracts are not promises or statements from you to me. If you know you wont do it then don’t make it and most people quickly see that is a senseless task, as indeed it is. I not only do this with homework contracts but will do it with every contract including a no suicide contract. If a person will not make a no suicide contract that does not mean they are necessarily a current suicide risk.

In this sense the process of contracting is changed. Consider the contract, 

“I will tell my husband I am angry he wont keep to the budget each week”.  

Bill Holloway makes this point about contracts:

My preference is that the client elaborates the objective to include behavioral confirmation that the objective had been reached. A simple question by the therapist is often useful, “How will you know and how will I know that you have achieved the change you desire and intend?” (end quote)

Others would agree with him as this is not an uncommon thing to do with contracts. The client and counsellor define what behaviors will show the contract has been completed. This works on the basis that the client may or may not carry out the contract and effort is expended in the contracting to establish if they have or have not. For example the wife may say, “I will sit down with him after dinner on Wednesday and tell him about my angry feelings”. After Wednesday the client and the counsellor will know if she carried out the contract or not.

The contracting I am suggesting here is that even before the contract is made the client has established they are going to complete it so there is no need to ask the question suggested by Holloway. The ambivalence or reluctance to complete the contract is dealt with before the contract is made rather than setting the contract and then seeing if it is completed or not. 

If a contact is a statement the individual makes to self then this alternative approach has to be the case. They will not make a contract in the first place if they do not intend to complete it.

Finally KYLady:

If you break promises to self all the time I would suggest  you don’t make them. If you break most of them what is the point. If you stop making them, after some time you may find a new attitude developing in yourself about this.

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The theory of contracts - Part 2

It is proposed that the best contract is where the client makes a statement to self about a change they want in their behaviour, thinking and/or feeling. This is how the counsellor wants the client to view it in her mind.

The reason why this is seen as the best is that it involves no other people which is why I have a problem with Eric Berne’s definition of a contract.

Berne - A contract is an explicit bilateral commitment to a well defined course of action.

The logic behind my proposal rests on the assumption that very few people will lie to themselves. There is no point. It’s like cheating in a game of solitaire. There is no point. Why would someone say to self, “I will finish my assignment by Tuesday” when they know they have no intention of doing so. There is no use making the contract in the first place.

If however there is another person involved in making the contract then there may be a reason to lie, even unconsciously. If there is no other person involved then this cannot happen. Hence the statement that the best contract is one where the client perceives them self making a contract with self and no one else.

The worst contract one can make, is where the client perceives the contract as a promise. This is for a number of reasons. A promise is where a person is manipulated into behaving in a particular way by the use of guilt. For example on the way to christmas lunch mother may ask the children to promise they wont make rude noises in front of grandma. The children want to make rude noises in front of grandma because its fun. If they agree to the promise they have moved into the Conforming Child ego state (CC). A promise is made by the Conforming Child ego state. If the child subsequently breaks the promise then he will feel guilty because he has made a promise to mummy and knows she will feel disappointed or hurt because he broke the promise.

 

He promised not to do it. It is inevitable there will be a switch into RC at some point.

On thing you do not want to do is create a situation where the client is manipulated in behaving a certain way so as not to disappoint or hurt the feelings of the counsellor. If this does happen then the therapeutic relationship could be seen to be quite dysfunctional and the long term therapeutic outcomes are going to be poor. In addition, if a person is in CC then it is highly likely they will at some point in the future switch to Rebellious Child (RC) and break the promise. If the client perceives the contract to be a promise to the counsellor then they will eventually break the contract simply because they will have an urge to switch into RC in relation to the counsellor. 

As I discuss in my book, Working with suicidal individuals this is especially important when a client is making a no suicide contract. One thing you do not want is for the client to perceive the no suicide contract as a promise to the counsellor. If someone is in CC for a period of time then it is very likely they will sooner or later move to RC. You do not want this to happen with a no suicide contract where the person moves into RC and breaks the contract simply as a means to rebel against the contract/promise.

This is one problem I have with the Berne definition of a contract. It relates to his use of the word commitment. What is a commitment? My computer definition states:

the state or quality of being dedicated to a cause, activity

a pledge or undertaking

an engagement or obligation that restricts freedom of action

If you are presenting to a client that a contract is a commitment it would not be too hard for them to start perceiving it to be ‘promise’ like. Of course it does not matter what the actual definition of the word commitment is, all that matters is how the client perceives the contract in his own mind. If he is told it is a commitment then he could more easily begin to see it as having promise like qualities.

Thus we have a reason why it is more productive to view the contract as a statement by the client to self, as it does not involve another party and all the dynamics just described can be avoided. This of course is easier said than done but if the counsellor consistently presents to the client that a contract is a statement they make to self it is harder for them to see it as having promise like qualities.

The bilateral aspect of contracting

Whilst it is suggested that contracting is best to stated by the client to the client Berne’s point about it being bilateral is also true. In Part 1 of this I presented the contract transaction and that did involve the counsellor so it is bilateral in that way. Also as has been pointed out by Bill Holloway the counsellor is also going to make his assessment as to the validity of the contract. That is, the counsellor will not work with a client to achieve the contract unless he thinks the contract is OK. 

Recently I worked with a man who complained of procrastination. He reported that when he got home from work instead of putting in an an hour or two of work he would tend to procrastinate and do non work activities. He presented a contract to stop procrastinating in this way. Upon further discussion I discovered he was already working a 50 hour week and he wanted to work an extra 5 to 10 hours per week when he got home from work. I thought this was a not OK contract that simply allowed him to live out his work hard driver in his life script so I refused to work with him on it. 

In this way it could be argued that contracting is not simply a client making a statement to self.

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The Parent contract and the no run contract (Part 1)

Here is another request.




A “No run” contract. I certainly have used this contract in the past, and it is that the client makes at least one more appointment before ending treatment. The motive behind it is that for some reason you want to lock the client in to this relationship. That maybe to close the escape hatch of running from a relationship when you feel reliance or for some other reason. The counsellor is seeking to increase the clients distress by not allowing them to ‘run’. Or indeed it may heighten a sense of security for the client. There could be a whole range of motives for a therapist to suggest such a contract to a client.



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Contracts and promises

I was talking with someone the other day about therapy and contracts and an interesting notion came up about contracts and promises.

All therapy has a contract of some kind. That is the client must have a contract. Some times it will be explicitly stated and at other times it may be ill-defined but it is still there. It is the goal the client has. If they did not have a goal then they wouldn’t be there in the first place, assuming they are not a coerced client of course.

I was asked if a contract was a promise. Most would be clear that a contract in the Transactional Analysis sense is not a promise of the client to the therapist. Not many would accept the contracts like:

I promise to use relaxation exercises when I have a panic attack.

I promise to be assertive with my mother this week.

However one does hear other words used such as assurance and commitment. “A contract is a commitment” one would find in the literature. According to my dictionary assurance and commitment are synonyms for a promise. Of course it is not the word that is important it is the psychological process that the word defines that is important.

A common treatment contracting process would usually be drawn as such

It is an Adult ego state process of the client

A promise would probably be drawn as such

As one can see it involves the Conforming Child ego state and not the Adult ego state and thus is quite a different psychological process.

Is there anything wrong with a contact being a promise or an assurance? It seems one needs to look at the psychology of the promise.

If a child is asked to promise to its parents to tidy its bedroom a number of things could happen. Promises work on the basis of guilt. The child knows that if it breaks its promise then the parents will feel distress of some kind such as disappointed, hurt, let down, betrayed and so forth. If the child lets them down then it knows they will feel distress and thus it may feel guilt about ‘hurting’ the parents.

The parents are using guilt to get the child to do something it does not want to do. If the child is highly compliant it will clean its room because the guilt is too much for it to deal with.

However when one is in Conforming Child it is usually not all that hard to switch to the Rebellious Child ego state. If the child is less compliant then that could easily happen as the child will realise at some level that it is being manipulated by the parents using guilt.

If the switch to Rebellious Child occurs then anger in the child will arise so the child will either

Not tidy its room at all and live through the guilt or their anger may become its predominant emotion instead of guilt.

Tidy its room and feel resentful

Tidy its room poorly as a passive expression of its anger against the parents.

If one changes the context from cleaning a room to making a therapeutic contract one can see the potential problems. If the client perceives the therapist to be asking him to make a promise type of contract then the outcomes described above are also likely to occur. Of course the therapist may not even be doing that and the client may still perceive the therapist to be requesting a promise and thus the outcomes would be the same regardless.

If the client goes into the Conforming Child ego state in their relationship with the therapist when asked to make promise contracts, it is so easy for them to switch into the Rebellious Child. Most will do this at some point so the therapist is wanting to avoid such a dynamic developing in the therapeutic alliance.

In addition in such circumstances the initial problem often gets lost. The young child may in fact want to have a tidy room but because he has been made to promise to make it tidy his initial want can be forgotten. The parents are pressuring him to either comply to or rebel against their conditions and thus he moves away from his own Free Child want. If such conflict with the parents continues for an extended period the child can eventually loose touch with his Free Child and ends up not knowing what he wants.

From a therapeutic point of view this gains considerable importance especially when one considers the no suicide contract. Indeed it is in this area of contracting where one in particular hears of the promise type of contracting. Of all the areas of contracting this is the one where promises are wanting to be avoided for the reasons cited above.

The desire for the promise is usually generated from the anxiety of the therapist who does not want their client to kill self. Understandable indeed, but to request a client to promise not to kill self for ‘x’ amount of time is a counter productive plan of action to take. One is not wanting a NSC to be made from the client’s Conforming Child ego state as happens when it is a promise.

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Highs, lows & life

I like it when an idea comes together. This post has its roots in two separate writings that are far apart but that I did just happen to read at about the same time. They worked as a catalyst for each other and bingo!! I ended up with this.

My delay in writing this is because it comes from a Parent ego state contract given to me by Kahless - yes it’s all her fault!

She wrote about her teenage years (see here) and then said that I had to because she did. She says that her teenage years were a bit boring. Well I must admit, from what she wrote one could conclude that but I suspect there were bits that she deleted or didn’t elaborate on that could have spiced it up a bit.

So I thought about my teenage years and what I could write. As I did this I also read a brief article written by a psychologist about what in essence amounts to a meditation and relaxation approach to therapy. It stated that when ever one had a negative emotion (she actually used that phrase) like anger or sadness or fear then one can basically meditate it away, and she describes how that is done.

This disturbed me and made me question what I do as a therapist.

My teenage years weren’t boring, like some others may have been. It was charged with a lot of highs and a lot of lows (and a few mediums as well). There were not a lot of dull moments and there was plenty of action both physically and emotionally. The good times were great and the low times were sometimes very low.

Then I thought, well if I successfully did the meditative therapy as suggested by this woman then there would be very few low times. I would of only had highs and mediums in my teenage years.

OMG!! Is that what I am doing with my clients? I hope not.

But then I was left with another conundrum. As I reflected on my teenage years I felt good about them because there were highs and also because there were lows. I wouldn’t want a life where I only had highs and mediums so I felt good about the lows as well. It made me feel like I had lived that part of my life such that it had texture and varied experience which is what I want in my life. It gave me a feeling that my life at least at that time had some depth and was full flavoured. I liked that.

But then came the conundrum. The low times gave my life some depth and also it allowed me a more fuller and complete understanding of the highs and the mediums. If I had never had any lows then my understanding of the highs and mediums would be limited and one dimensional.

Upon reflection I was glad that I had had the lows but at the time of the lows I was not glad at all and wanted the lows to go away. If I had successfully done the mediative therapy then I would have achieved that but then on later reflection my life would only have highs and mediums and thus be one dimensional and boring.

So are the lows a good thing or a bad thing?

As a therapist am I stopping clients having lows so their lives are more one dimensional, lack a depth and rich texture?

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