Happiness, Healing, Enhancement

Your Casebook Collection For Applying Positive Psychology in Therapy

George W. Burns

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780470291153
• eBook ISBN: 9780470560846
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Psicoterapia

Praise for Happiness, Healing, Enhancement

"Filled with good strategies based in research, compelling case material, and most importantly, practical advice, this book belongs in the library of everyone interested in what it means to live well. It provides not only ample food for thought, but for action."
—Christopher Peterson, Professor of Psychology, University of Michigan

"If you are a therapist, a coach—or if you want to help yourself and others flourish—then this book is a must-read. It is an important theoretical and practical contribution to the field of positive psychology—and, in fact, to the field of psychology as a whole."
—Tal Ben-Shahar, author of Happier and The Pursuit of Perfect

A practical guide to applying the principles of positive psychology in your mental health practice

Edited by internationally recognized psychologist, author, and therapist trainer George Burns, Happiness, Healing, Enhancement: Your Casebook Collection for Applying Positive Psychology in Therapy provides thought-provoking yet realistic and practical contributions from practitioners of positive psychology from around the world who share how they have translated solid, positive psychology research into sound clinical practice.

Organized to make searching for a particular diagnostic category or therapeutic outcome fast and easy, this guide features:

• Contributions from some of the world's foremost positive psychology clinicians, researchers, and teachers, including P. Alex Linley, Betty Alice Erickson, Robert Weis, Antonella Delle Fave, Richard G. Tedeschi, Robert Biswas-Diener, Michael D. Yapko, and Bill O'Hanlon

• Examples and strategies including a "Putting It into Practice" feature that illustrates how readers can immediately apply the therapeutic applications covered in each chapter

Building on the proven benefits of the positive psychology movement, Happiness, Healing, Enhancement will teach you new skills that will strengthen your practice of therapy and equip your clients with the pathways to overcome challenging problems and live a full, satisfying life.

PART ONE

Happiness

CHAPTER 1

Strengthspotting

Finding and Developing Client Resources
in the Management of Intense Anger

P. Alex Linley and George W. Burns

MEET THE CONTRIBUTORS

P. Alex Linley is the founding director of the United Kingdom-based Centre of Applied Positive Psychology (www.cappeu.com), focused on the applications of strengths in organizations and schools as well as to individual and community development projects in the United Kingdom and Kolkata, India, through the charity The Strengths Project, of which Alex is a founding trustee. Alex holds the position of visiting professor in psychology at the University of Leicester and is an international speaker on strengths and positive psychology, having delivered keynote presentations throughout the United Kingdom, Europe, the Caribbean, the United States, and India. He has written, cowritten, and/or edited more than ninety research papers and book chapters and five books, including Positive Psychology in Practice (Wiley, 2004) and Average to A+: Realising Strengths in Yourself and Others (CAPP Press, 2008). His time outside work is spent with his wife and four children, listening to The Cure, and supporting the Nottingham Forest Football Club.

George W. Burns is an Australian clinical psychologist whose innovative work as a practitioner, teacher, and writer is recognized nationally and internationally. The author of numerous articles and book chapters, he has authored or edited seven books that have been widely translated, including Nature-Guided Therapy, 101 Healing Stories, and Healing with Stories. He is director of the Milton H. Erickson Institute of Western Australia and the Hypnotherapy Centre of Western Australia, is an adjunct senior lecturer at Edith Cowan University, and has a busy private practice with a brief, solution-focused, positive psychology orientation. He has served on the Practitioners Advisory Board of the first and second Australian Positive Psychology and Well-Being Conferences and was a presenter at the First World Congress on Positive Psychology. As a keen traveler, George enjoys combining his passions for nature, cultural tales, and psychotherapy into workshop/study tours for colleagues that venture into remote areas, such as the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan.

Is psychotherapy a place where clients would consider going to talk about their strengths? Is psychotherapy a place where therapists would routinely inquire about a client’s strengths as a part of their initial assessment and ongoing therapy? It is unlikely this is what Emma was expecting when she presented to therapy with a slight weight problem, saying “I eat when I am bored, frustrated, anxious and angry—for psychological reasons. It makes me happy.” However, it was not until the second session that she revealed the real, embarrassing, and distressing reason for attending.

What she believed made her happy was quite specific: chocolate. With almost any emotional swing she would gorge on a family-size block of chocolate, a full package or two of chocolate cookies, or a container of chocolate milk. Trying to stop any long-established behavior can be difficult, especially if it is an approach behavior, meets a psychological need, and offers such strong rewards as the chocolate was doing for Emma. It provided instant pleasure when she was in distress, and she had empowered it with the ability to “make” her happy. To direct therapy toward stopping something that served as an effective, though maladaptive, coping strategy with such powerful rewards was obviously going to be an uphill battle.

With the exception of one or two therapeutic approaches, such as Ericksonian or solution-focused therapy, or with the occasional therapist, few therapies or therapists have oriented themselves toward spotting, enabling, and developing client strengths. Therapists and therapeutic models usually are very well versed in, and have good clinical strengths in, problem-spotting and weakness-spotting.

This being so, what might psychotherapists need to know about strengths, how might they go about spotting strengths in the therapeutic session, and what can they do with those strengths once they have been spotted? And, perhaps most important of all, is there any evidence that it is worthwhile for them to do this with clients like Emma in the first place?

In this chapter, we first offer some evidence to show why it is worthwhile spotting, enabling, and developing strengths in the context of therapy. Then we explore several questions relevant to this: How do you spot strengths in a client? How do you help a client spot strengths? How do you enable and develop strengths? Most of the discussion in answer to these questions is provided by Alex (PAL) while a therapeutic example (the evolving case of Emma) is presented by George (GWB).

When talking of strengths, we are using this definition: “a strength is a preexisting capacity for a particular way of behaving, thinking, or feeling that is authentic and energizing to the user, and enables optimal functioning, development and performance” (Linley, 2008, p. 9). Simply put, strengths are natural propensities that each of us have—so natural, we argue, that they are evolved adaptations. When we are using our strengths, we are feeling in touch with our “true selves,” are doing the things that are right for us to do, and from them we derive a sense of energy as a result. When these factors coincide, as they do in strengths use, optimal functioning is enabled. Given that psychotherapy often is focused on undoing dysfunction and enabling more optimal functioning, helping clients to identify and use their strengths more would seem to be indicated.

WHY IS STRENGTHSPOTTING WORTHWHILE?

In a study with 214 university students, Reena Govindji and I (PAL) were interested in the question of whether using strengths was associated with greater levels of well-being, self-esteem, and self-efficacy. We found that it was: People who used their strengths more reported higher levels of self-esteem, self-efficacy, subjective well-being, psychological wellbeing, and vitality (Govindj & Linley, 2007). Further, they reported higher levels of organismic valuing, the Rogerian concept of being in touch with one’s inner nature and organismic valuing process (Joseph & Linley, 2006).

When we statistically controlled for self-esteem and self-efficacy, the use of strengths was still a significant predictor of psychological well-being and subjective well-being, indicating that the effect of using one’s strengths on well-being went over and above existing levels of self-esteem and self-efficacy. This is good news for psychotherapists, since it suggests that whatever a client’s current level of self-esteem and self-efficacy, using strengths is likely to lead to increased levels of well-being.

Further, in a study of positive psychotherapy with a clinically depressed population, Seligman, Rashid, and Parks (2007) found that identifying one’s signature strengths and finding ways to use them more led to clinically significant and sustained decreases in depression. And in my own (as yet unpublished) research, I (PAL) have been able to demonstrate that people achieve their goals more effectively when they are using their strengths. While, of course, it is still in the early days, the emerging evidence suggests that strengths may well have a place to take in the therapy room.

Given this evidence, mobilizing Emma’s strengths toward more desirable behaviors for managing her emotions and eating patterns seemed an appropriate therapeutic direction. To this end, I (GWB) first needed to spot what strengths she had. In the process, I learned that after graduating college, she committed herself to developing an academic career before having children. She had been married for 12 years and was in her late 30s when she had her first child. She was now a full-time mother of a 4-year-old-daughter, Samantha, and 1-year-old son, Jason.

HOW DO YOU SPOT STRENGTHS IN A CLIENT?

Listen for Strengths

Hearing the passion and energy that strengthspotting ignites in people, I (PAL) began to wonder what strengths “sound like.” Are there identifiable differences that we can listen for when people are talking about strengths, compared to other topics or other types of conversation? To explore this, I developed an exercise for a class that I used to teach by telephone to members from half a dozen countries around the world. First, I asked someone to speak for five minutes about a weakness or about something with which they were struggling. Then I asked them to spend the same time talking about a strength or about when they are at their best. As the exercise was by telephone, there were no additional physical cues, such as body language or facial expressions (Linley, 2008).

Other listeners in the telephone class were asked to describe their observations of what characterized the answers. In sum, they noticed that when people are talking about weaknesses, they are more negative, hesitant, and disengaged. Their energy levels drop and they sound more withdrawn. If we have access to body language, we might also notice they are more closed and defensive, and their attentional focus is narrowed.

When asked what she was good at, Emma replied in the negative. “Not much. All I seem to do is change pooey diapers and think about what to feed the kids next.” Her voice was flat and monotonal, her arms folded across her chest, her body hunched forward.

When people are talking about strengths, however, they are more positive, energetic, and engaged. They sound happier, more confident, and more relaxed. There is a passion in their tone, their conversation is free flowing, and they explain things graphically. If we were to observe body language—as one can in therapy—it is likely to be open and receptive.

When discussing singing, one of Emma’s strengths, there was a marked difference. Her voice was animated, her energy levels increased, she sat more upright and made eye contact—all signs of greater engagement and confidence.

Listening for, and observing, these shifts in your clients’ conversation and body language is a good indicator of when they are revealing a strength. However, this leads us to an important caveat. While there are certainly remarkable consistencies across these different groups and diverse populations, there can also be important individual differences. Not everyone responds in the same way, and it is very important to keep this in mind. If we do not, we run the risk of misinterpreting the responses of people who are simply different. Psychological research is almost always nomothetic in that it seeks to create generalized laws that apply across the majority of people. These laws, in turn, are generally applied in idiographic ways that are specific to a given individual—such as in a therapy session. As therapists we need to (a) be aware of the general trends and (b) be conscious that the person sitting with us in any one session may respond quite individually.

Inquire about Self-Perceived Strengths

A simple way to find out about a person’s strengths is to ask—just as you would discover a person’s history by asking standard questions about family of origin, education, relationships, and the like. All that is different with strengthspotting is that the nature and orientation of the questions shifts the therapeutic dialogue to a greater focus on strengths. Here are some of the questions that we have used to elicit strengths with people in challenging life circumstances:

• What are you good at?

• What do you enjoy doing?

• Tell me about the best experience you have had.

• What do you admire about other people? Do you see any of that in yourself?

• When do you think you have been at your best? What enabled that to happen?

• What are your aspirations for the future? What can you do to make them happen?

When Emma responded to the first question by saying she was not good at much (in the present tense), I (GWB) shifted direction to inquire about what she had been good at in the past.

“I think I was good at supervising research,” she answered. “I loved to challenge students, to ask questions, to ensure that their research design was sound. I think I was also good at lecturing. My courses were commonly rated highly by students, and I achieved several teaching awards.”

“Congratulations,” I validated, and leaned over to shake her hand as an action of affirmation for her abilities. With each strength she described, we spent some time discussing and affirming it before moving onto the next question.

“What would you say you enjoy doing most?” I continued.

“Research and supervision have to be high on the list. I enjoy the intellectual challenge. But I think my greatest enjoyment came from singing. I belonged to the university choir, and a quartet from the choir formed a small group. We used to sing for weddings, conference dinners, and those sorts of things.”

“When do you think you have been at your best?”

“Definitely when I was singing. I used to get a bit nervous before a performance, but once I started to sing it was like every other worry and thought just floated away.”

“That sounds like an important skill to have. How did you enable that to happen?” I asked.

“The four of us in the quartet were great friends, we had a lot of fun rehearsing and practicing and, I guess, I was so focused into what we were doing.”

“And what are your aspirations for the future?”

“I am planning to go back to teaching next year perhaps part time, and it would be nice to start singing again. But I don’t know if I’m going to have time now that I am a mom.”

Watch for Telltale Signs of a Strength

As you listen for and inquire about strengths, it is helpful to watch for the telltale signs of a strength, such as:

• A real sense of energy and engagement when using the strength

• Losing awareness of time because the client is so engrossed and engaged in the activity

• Very rapidly learning new information, activities, or approaches that are associated with the strength

• A repeated pattern of successful performance when using the strength

• Exemplary levels of performance when using the strength, especially performance that evokes the respect and admiration of others

• Always seeming to get the tasks done that require using the strength

• Prioritizing tasks that require using the strength over tasks that do not

• Feeling a yearning to use the strength while also feeling drained if you have not had the opportunity to use it for a time

• Being irrevocably drawn to do things that play to the strength—even when you feel tired, stressed, or disengaged (Linley, 2008, pp. 74-75).

In conversation, not only did Emma reveal a number of strengths, but she affirmed them through the telltale signs. There had been a shift in the tone of her voice and the degree of animation that she showed. It was possible to hear the difference between when she was talking about changing kids’ diapers and when she was talking about singing in her quartet. The signs were there in the sense of energy and engagement that was communicated about using her strength of singing. She spoke of being engr...

Table of contents

• Praise
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Quick Reference Guides
• Introduction
• PART ONE - Happiness
• PART TWO - Healing
• PART THREE - Enhancement
• Author Index
• Subject Index