Positive Psychotherapy with a Pulse: Achieving Depth through Dialogue
- PDF / 443,324 Bytes
- 19 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 73 Downloads / 157 Views
Positive Psychotherapy with a Pulse: Achieving Depth through Dialogue Matthew Pugh 1
& Caroline
Salter 2
Accepted: 28 October 2020/ # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract The majority of psychotherapeutic approaches work on the basis that addressing what is “wrong” with individuals will facilitate recovery. Positive therapies adopt a different approach, demonstrating that adaptive change can be achieved by addressing wellbeing and what is “right”. Unfortunately, research indicates the effectiveness of positive psychotherapeutic interventions is sometimes suboptimal, perhaps due to their reliance on written and talk-based strategies. Drawing on evidence from leading theories of cognition (e.g. Interacting Cognitive Subsystems and Dual Representation theories), the present paper suggests that therapeutic effects positive interventions might be augmented through greater use of experiential methods, namely ‘chairwork’. The practice-focused paper sets out the PPIs in their current form and describes how chairwork could be applied in these areas of well-being, including gratitude, personal strengths, forgiveness, benefit-finding, and existential meaning. Research is needed to establish the efficacy of experiential PPIs and to determine whether are advantageous compared to traditional positive interventions. Keywords Chairwork . Experiential . Positive psychology . Positive psychotherapy . Role-
play
1 Introduction A common assumption of psychotherapy has been that elucidating what is ‘wrong’ with individuals will somehow promote functioning and recovery. Positive psychotherapeutic interventions (PPIs) take the opposite approach, recognising the human * Matthew Pugh [email protected]
1
Vincent Square Eating Disorders Service, Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust, 1 Nightingale Place, London SW10 9NG, UK
2
Adult Psychology and Psychotherapy Department, Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK
International Journal of Applied Positive Psychology
tendency to naturally orientate towards negatives (Baumeister et al. 2001). PPIs argue that if clinicians are to counter this bias, treatments should instead focus on what is ‘right’ with individuals, communities and institutions, alongside promoting the skills, characteristics, and reflectivity necessary for these to flourish (Rashid et al. 2015). 1.1 Positive Interventions and Positive Psychotherapies PPIs encourage individuals to recognise the good in their lives in order to enhance wellbeing and protect against mental and physical ill-health. Accordingly, PPIs seek to ameliorate suffering by increasing positive emotion, engagement, and meaning, rather than targeting suffering per se (Rashid and Seligman 2018a). In practice, PPIs utilise concrete, teachable strategies to promote flourishing, while at the same time acknowledging that, in some situations, ‘negative’ emotions may be more adaptive than ‘positive’ ones. In this way, PPIs do not seek to dismiss or deny distress, but instead give equal weight to both strengths a
Data Loading...
