Injunctive Messages 4
RESOLVING ACTIVITIES AND THE NEW PARENTAL STANCE THAT HEALS
In their desire to create an economical psychotherapy, Bob and Mary Goulding believed that people could change their lives dramatically from psychotherapy done intensively over a brief period of time. That was the idea behind the concept of Redecision, a new decision that could overturn an old decision. This new decision would then lead to new behavior patterns and, by implication, new thinking patterns. There were significant problems with this concept. It made for great theory, but did not work out as planned in practice.
It was not that people did not accomplish important and moving pieces of work. They did. It was not that some people did not change from a targeted piece of work, because some did. It is important to keep in mind that they demonstrated their therapeutic technique almost entirely with other psychotherapists, people who lived and breathed the language and thought of psychotherapy. There is an old saying, “The only place on earth where you can be an overnight success is Broadway……. (long pause) ……. after years of hard work.” But people who eat, drink, and breathe psychotherapy are pretty different “animals” from normal folk, and that is an understatement. This does not even take into consideration that very large group who are afflicted with some pretty daunting diagnoses having to do with mental illness or mood disorders.
I’ve had the good fortune to be one of the few people who was trained by the late Dr. Meyer Friedman and his staff at his institute at Mt. Zion Hospital in San Francisco. I have put in almost thirty years treating people, mostly men, for their Type A Behavior (TAB)*. The vast majority of the people we treated in groups for this disorder were not people who would have normally sought out any sort of counseling. Their lives worked pretty well as a group, even if they were manifesting TAB with its attendant strain on coronary health, personality, and relationships. They enlisted to change their behavior because they had been convinced it would be a good thing to do.
In contrast to the Gouldings, who espoused their firm belief that people could change their lives radically in a short span of time given exposure to intense therapy in a supportive environment, Dr. Friedman cautioned all of his participants, “Changing your TAB will be the hardest thing you will ever do.” He did not say this to be discouraging, but to place the goal into context. He did not wish to foster false expectations. He had great respect for the durability of these thinking and behavior patterns. And he was a scientist. He never used hyperbole.
Key injunctive messages inspire false, but deeply believed despairing decisions and lead to the reactive defiant decisions. This creates a very stable behavior pattern that is summed up in the coping behaviors. Rather than implying that people can radically change in a short time, it is more helpful to help people have respect for their afflictions with the caveat that change is possible. Change just does not happen the way most people imagine it. Change is its own animal. People most certainly change their lives for the better, whether through psychotherapy, personal determination, or religious or spiritual influences. But we don’t change our stripes overnight.
My wording for this is, “We can’t jump.” We can move in a healing direction, but we can’t jump. TAB is a good example. The basics of TAB can be taught in a day. The concepts are not difficult. In that way, it is easy. Actually changing those life-long behaviors and thinking patterns is challenging. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Two of the necessities to change TAB is building of an observing self we call a Monitor and drills. The drills are assignments to behave like a Type B, behaviors that are foreign to a Type A but normal for a Type B. The creation of a Monitor is to build a friend who looks over the individual while correcting his mistakes, but never in an angry or shaming fashion.
The parallels in Redecision Therapy are what we call Resolving Activities and a New Parental Stance That Heals. The Resolving Activities are similar to the drills in that they suggest new behavior and new thinking. Again, these thoughts and behaviors would be normal to someone without the particular injunctive message, but foreign to someone who is the recipient of that message. These are necessary to counter the years of habits, both cognitive and behavioral that the coping behavior inspired. The Resolving Activities are antithetical to the behaviors and thoughts that arose out of the defiant decisions.
The New Parental Stance That Heals is necessary for rewiring the Parent Ego State. Consciously or unconsciously, the original parental figures were “co-conspirators” with the Injunctive Messages, often the unwitting senders of them. They had to have been, most likely arising out of their own experiences growing up. These original parental voices would not have been able to counter the strength of the injunctive messages.
Dr. Friedman was asked once if he taught anything to people suffering from TAB other than common sense. In his piquant manner, he responded, “Not a goddam thing!” But he also said on another occasion, “Common sense seems fantastical to those who have lost their own.”
The primary basis for the New Parent is that the statements from it are grounded in love and in wisdom. They are not sentimental or saccharin, they don’t peddle sweet bromides or baseless optimism. They are durable and, most important, are useful in times of stress or crisis. They do not paint life in rose-colored glasses but are instrumental in dealing with the realities of life. They are mainstays and they are true.
Read through the list of all twenty-six of the suggested parental voices and you will have a pretty decent concept of what a warm, supportive, and truly nurturing parent looks and sounds like. In the same way, read the charts and read all of the Resolving Activities and notice if any of them sound foreign or particularly challenging. Remember, there are lots of people who practice those very things everyday and aren’t particularly aware of it because they seem natural. Just as mounting a merry-go-round or flying on an airplane is easy for the vast majority, these same activities take intentional effort and not a little bit of courage for others to do these very same things. And in that effort, they must learn the thoughts and strategies than are taken for granted by those not afflicted by these phobias.
The most effective way to change old habits is to focus one’s attention on creating new habits, not “getting rid” of the old ones. The Resolving Activities and the new parental voices help replace self-defeating voices and behaviors with effective and life-affirming ones. These become the new habits and they optimize the health and welfare of the individual.
*Located elsewhere on this website is my book on TAB: Aspiring to Kindness: Transforming Male Type A Behavior.