(This is Part 5 of a series. Go back to Part 4.)
The third principle of helpful intervention is to find a way to contradict the distress. This is a phrase formulated by Harvey Jackins and in my opinion it nicely sums up what a good therapist does.
Byron Katie's four questions are a good example of contradicting the distress. Questions such as "Is it true?" and "Who would you be without that thought?" are very effective ways of putting some distance between the person and their stressful thought, of lessening the death grip of identification between the person and their stressful thought.
Katie's subsequent suggestion is to turn the thought around, and see if the turnaround isn't also true. So for example "I wasted my life" might become "I didn't waste my life," and we get to look at that thought and see if it isn't as true or truer. The turnaround thought is, in effect, a further contradiction of the distress.
The many varieties of Cognitive Therapy also make use of the principle of contradicting the distress, though it isn't called that. When aberrant, distorted thinking is encountered it's contradicted, in effect, by more constructive ways of thinking about the situation.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming, founded by Grinder and Bandler, also makes use of this principle in my opinion. One use among many would be their powerful method of reframing, where the same situation is reframed, or reformulated, in a different way.
For example, let's say something comes to an end in our life. It can be the end of a career or the end of a relationship. And let's say that we've been dwelling on what we've lost. A simple but effective reframing would be to redirect our attention onto what a gift it was that we had the career or the relationship or whatever for those many years. Same situation, different perspective—a contradiction of the old perspective.
The New Thought movement, out of which such churches as Unity and Christian Science and Science of Mind sprang, also uses this principle in what Ernest Holmes calls "spiritual mind treatment." To contradict a mental/emotional distress concerning not having enough, for instance, a phrase such as the following might be used: God's love in my life fulfills all my needs.
These are all powerful ways of contradicting the distress in someone. But perhaps the greatest method of all is love, for love represents the ultimate contradiction to distress. A subject to which we now turn:
(This is the end of Part 5. Go to Part 6.)
—jim sloman, 10.23.06
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