Our Evidence-Based Happiness: An Experiential Approach course through MOLLI at the University of Montana is starting soon. Note: THIS MOLLI COURSE IS OPEN TO ALL INTERESTED ADULTS, AND NOT JUST OLDER ADULTS.
This course combines one 90 min lecture, followed by 5 weeks of home assignments and small group discussion. We believe this format will offer a great balance of information, experiential learning, and talking and listening with others who are working on positive psychology practices.
You can get more info on the MOLLI course from my previous post . . . or on the MOLLI website. The clock is ticking on this one as the first meeting is Tuesday, April 2, at 1pm (Mountain Time).
Most people intuitively know that emotions are a central, complex, and multidimensional part of human experience. Emotions are typically in response to perceptions, include sensations, and are at the root of much of our existential meaning-making. Emotions are at the heart (not literally, of course) of much of the motivation that underlies behavior.
What follows is another excerpt from Clinical Interviewing (7th edition). In this excerpt, we define and explore the use of an interpretive reflection of feeling as a tool to go deeper into emotion and meaning with clients. As with all things interpretive, I recommend proceeding with caution, respect, and humility. . . because sometimes clients aren’t interested in going deeper and will push back in one way or another.
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Interpretive Reflection of Feeling (aka Advanced Empathy)
Interpretive reflections of feeling are emotion-focused statements that go beyond obvious emotional expressions. Sometimes referred to as advanced empathy (Egan, 2014), interpretive reflection of feeling is based on Rogers’s (1961) idea that sometimes person-centered therapists work on emotions that are barely within or just outside the client’s awareness.
By design, interpretive reflections of feeling go deeper than surface feelings or emotions, uncovering underlying emotions and potentially producing insight (i.e., the client becomes aware of something that was previously unconscious or partially conscious). Nondirective reflections of feeling focus on obvious, clear, and surface emotions; in contrast, interpretive reflections target partially hidden, deeper emotions.
Consider again the 15-year-old boy who was so angry with his teacher.
Client: That teacher pissed me off big time when she accused me of stealing her phone. I wanted to punch her.
Counselor: You were pretty pissed off. (reflection of feeling)
Client: Damn right.
Counselor: I also sense that you have other feelings about what your teacher did. Maybe you were hurt because she didn’t trust you. (interpretive reflection of feeling)
The counselor’s second statement probes deeper feelings that the client didn’t directly articulate.
An interpretive reflection of feeling may activate client defensiveness. Interpretations require good timing (Fenichel, 1945; Freud, 1949). That’s why, in the preceding example, the counselor initially used a nondirective reflection of feeling and then, after that reflection was affirmed, used a more interpretive response. W. R. Miller and Rollnick (2002) made this point in Motivational Interviewing:
Skillful reflection moves past what the person has already said, though not jumping too far ahead. The skill is not unlike the timing of interpretations in psychodynamic psychotherapy. If the person balks, you know you’ve jumped too far, too fast. (p. 72)
Interpretive reflections of feeling assume clients will benefit from going “vertical” or deeper into understanding underlying emotions; they can have many effects, the most prominent include the following:
If offered prematurely or without a good rationale, they may feel foreign or uncomfortable; this discomfort can lead to client resistance, reluctance, denial, or a relationship rupture (Parrow, 2023).
When well stated and when a positive therapy relationship exists, interpretive reflections of feeling may feel supportive because therapists are “hearing” clients at deeper emotional levels; this can lead to enhanced therapist credibility, strengthening of the therapeutic relationship, and collaborative pursuit of insight.
Interpretive reflections of feeling are naturally invasive. That’s why timing and a good working alliance are essential. When using interpretive reflections of feeling, follow these principles.
Wait until:
You have good rapport or a positive working alliance.
Your clients have experienced you accurately hearing and reflecting their surface emotions.
You have evidence (e.g., nonverbal signals, previous client statements) that provide a reasonable foundation for your interpretation.
Phrase your interpretive statement:
Tentatively (e.g., “If I were to guess, I’d say…”)
Collaboratively (e.g., “Correct me if I’m wrong, but…”)
The need to phrase statements tentatively and collaboratively is equally true when using any form of feedback or interpretation. Many different phrasings can be used to make such statements more acceptable.
I think I’m hearing that you’d like to speak directly to your father about your sexuality, but you’re afraid of his response.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it sounds like your anxiety in this relationship is based on a deeper belief that she’ll eventually discover you’re unlovable.
If I were to guess, I’d say you’re wishing you could find your way out of this relationship. Does that fit?
This may not be accurate, but the way you’re sitting seems to communicate not only sadness but also some irritation.
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I hope this content has been of some interest or use to you in your work. If you want a bit more, a couple of emotion-related case examples are at the link below (and you can always buy the book:)).
In my last post, I reviewed the most basic of all therapeutic emotional responses, the reflection of feeling. As noted yesterday, reflections of feeling are, by definition, neutral . . . and providing a neutral reflection has benefits and liabilities.
For clients who have a history of experiencing negative judgments and oppression, instead of remaining neutral, it may be necessary to be explicitly validating. In Chapter 5 of our Clinical Interviewing textbook, we begin by describing and providing examples of the technique called “Feeling Validation.”
If you’re tracking closely, you’ll recall that a reflection of feeling is on the left side of the “listening continuum” and feeling validation is in the center of the listening continuum. Below, you’ll find information on using feeling validation from the Clinical Interviewing text.
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Directive Listening Skills
Directive listening skills are advanced interviewing techniques that encourage clients to examine and possibly change their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Directive listening skills can be used for assessment, exploring client issues, and facilitating insight. They include:
Feeling validation
Interpretive reflection of feeling
Interpretation (psychoanalytic or reframing)
Confrontation
Immediacy
Questions
Directive listening skills place you in an expert role. The therapist’s behaviors in this chapter range from being mostly client centered to mostly therapist centered. Client-centered directives zero in on what the client is already talking about, but take clients deeper. Therapist-centered directives shift clients toward what they’re not yet talking about. Directive listening skills operate on the assumption that clients will benefit from guidance or direction.
Feeling Validation
Reflections of feeling (discussed in Chapter 4) are often confused with feeling validation. The difference is that reflections of feeling are more purely client centered, whereas feeling validation includes your opinion, approval, or validation of client emotions. A feeling validation is an emotion-focused technique that acknowledges and validates your client’s explicit feelings. It’s a message that communicates, “What you’re feeling is a natural or normal emotional response.” Feeling validation is an emotional affirmation.
The difference between reflecting feelings versus validating feelings may seem subtle, but it provides an excellent example of the complexities of skillful interviewing. Skilled interviewers use reflection of feeling as a method to prompt clients to evaluate their own emotions. In contrast, they use feeling validation as a method to support and reassure clients. Feeling validation includes a psychoeducational-authoritative-reassurance component. Novice interviewers may not be aware of the difference.
Psychoanalytic clinicians distinguish between supportive and expressive psychotherapy techniques. Based on this distinction, feeling validation is a supportive technique, and feeling reflection is an expressive technique. Clients usually feel supported and more normal when you validate their emotions. Clients may experience greater stress if you use reflections of feeling to have them examine and judge the validity of their own emotions.
Supportive techniques like feeling validation are outside-in self-esteem boosters. They’re based on the therapist (as an outside authority) saying something like “Your anger in response to being unfairly accused of stealing something seems natural.” One drawback of outside-in self-esteem boosters is that they don’t facilitate self-discovery. The boost that comes from external emotional validation may be temporary and not lead to lasting client change. If clients come to rely on validation of their feelings, they may continue to look outward for external validation.
All approaches to feeling validation give clients the message, “Your feelings are acceptable, and you have permission to feel them.” You might even use feeling validation to suggest to clients that they should be having particular feelings.
Client 1: I’ve been so sad since my mother died. I can’t seem to stop myself from crying. (Client begins sobbing.)
Therapist 1: It’s okay to feel sad about losing your mother. That’s perfectly normal. Crying in here as you talk about it is a natural response.
The preceding exchange involves validation. By openly stating that feeling sad and crying is normal, the therapist takes on an expert or educator role.
Another way to provide feeling validation is through self-disclosure:
Client 2: I get so anxious before taking tests, you wouldn’t believe it! All I can think about is how I’m going to freeze up and forget everything. Then, when I get to class and look at the test, my mind just goes blank.
Therapist 2: I remember feeling the same way about tests.
In this example, the therapist uses self-disclosure to validate the client’s anxiety. Although using self-disclosure to validate feelings can be reassuring, it’s not without risk. Clients may wonder if therapists can be helpful with anxiety symptoms if they have similar anxieties. Self-disclosure can also enhance therapist credibility, as a client may think, “Hmm. If my therapist went through test anxiety too, maybe he’ll understand and be able to help me.” Using self-disclosure to validate client emotions can diminish or enhance therapist credibility—depending on the client and the therapeutic relationship (see Case Example 5.1).
Therapists can also use universality to validate or reassure clients.
Client 3: I always compare myself to everyone else—and I usually come up short. I wonder if I’ll ever feel confident.
Therapist 3: You’re being hard on yourself. I don’t know anyone who feels a complete sense of confidence.
Clients may feel validated when they observe or are informed that nearly everyone else in the world (or universe) feels similar emotions. Yalom provided a personal example:
During my own 600-hour analysis I had a striking personal encounter with the therapeutic factor of universality… I was very much troubled by the fact that, despite my strong positive sentiments [towards my mother], I was beset with death wishes for her, as I stood to inherit part of her estate. My analyst responded simply, “That seems to be the way we’re built.” That artless statement not only offered considerable relief but enabled me to explore my ambivalence in great depth. (Yalom & Leszcz, 2020, p. 7)
Feeling validation is a common technique. People like to have their feelings validated; and, often, counselors like validating their clients’ feelings. However, open support, such as feeling validation, can reduce client exploration of important issues (i.e., clients assume they’re fine if their therapist says so).
Potential effects of feeling validation include:
Enhanced rapport
Increased or reduced client exploration of the problem or feeling (this could go either direction)
Reduction in client anxiety, at least temporarily
Enhanced client self-esteem or feelings of normality (perhaps only temporarily)
Possible increased client-therapist dependency
In many clinical scenarios, clinicians lead with less directive skills (i.e., Chapter 4) before using more directive skills (i.e., Chapter 5). However, there are some clinical situations where feeling validation or affirmation of clients take priority.
As you think about feeling validation, and all the complexities it can include, consider the following case example.
CASE EXAMPLE 5.1: Struggling to Manage the Impulse to Project My Disability Issues onto a Client
Eddy Fagundo, Ph.D., CRC, CVE, a Senior Manager of Education Content for the American Counseling Association wrote an essay on managing his impulse to project his own issues and lived experiences onto a client. Have you ever worked with someone who reminded you of yourself? Imagine yourself in Dr. Fagundo’s role. Would you be able to manage your impulses to be too comforting and too validating? Although this case is about countertransference, projection, and overidentification with the client, it’s also about appropriately validating self-disclosure and countertransference management.
“Mommy Rosemary, why does Eddy speak Russian?’” was an odd question that had become common for my friends (at age 5-years) to ask my mother . . . in Cuba. What my friends did not know was that I was not speaking Russian; I was speaking Spanish, or so I thought! Growing up, I had speech problems, but was determined to overcome them. I never missed any of my speech therapy appointments and was disciplined in practicing the difficult Spanish rolling Rs in front of the mirror before and after school. I did it! In third grade, I won the best reader in class award. Life was bright. Little did I know, that four years later, I would immigrate to the United States, and learn a new language. But I did this too!
These memories flashed before my eyes when counseling a young Cuban immigrant male with a speech impediment. The client felt defeated, isolated, and had low expectations of himself. I was conflicted; this young man was me as a child. If I could overcome my speech problems, I wanted to tell him: He could too! At the time, I was a new rehabilitation counselor. The situation made me keenly aware of potential projection issues. I knew I could not tell the client what to do. I knew I could not tell him he would be able to succeed, just as I did, because I was no more special than he was.
And so, I consulted my colleagues and supervisor. I focused on being aware of and bracketing my feelings and reactions, and on building a therapeutic relationship. I accepted the client unconditionally and respected his right to be himself without having me project my lived experiences onto him. Instead, I used my lived experiences therapeutically by professionally and appropriately self-disclosing my past struggles with speech problems. Counselor self-disclosure, when done sparingly and effectively, builds trust, fosters empathy, and strengthens the counseling relationship.
Today, the client is fully fluent in what some would argue to be the true universal language: mathematics. He holds a doctorate in mathematics, the speech impediments are improved, and he lives a fulfilling life. Even today, I wonder how different the outcome would have been had I not had the self-awareness and professional support to counter my projection impulses.
We will encounter clients similar to us in ways that make us struggle to avoid projecting our own lived experiences onto them. We need to identify those clients, but to do so, we must first ask, “Who am I, and who is standing beside me to support me in this journey of self-discovery?”
[End of Case Example 5.1]
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Our Clinical Interviewing text also includes specific learning activities. If you want to check out a learning activity designed to add nuance to your feeling (emotional) vocabulary, check out this handout:
We’ve been talking about emotions in our Group Counseling course at the University of Montana. Even though focusing on emotions has grown immensely in popularity within contemporary counseling and psychotherapy, some students seem to be missing a few basics. Last week, when I took time to talk about the differences between (a) reflection of feeling, (b) interpretive reflection of feeling, and (c) feeling validation most of the students found the information useful. Consequently, I’m including here (and in a following blog post or two) excerpts from the latest edition of our Clinical Interviewing textbook. https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Clinical+Interviewing%2C+7th+Edition-p-9781119981985
The foundation that guides how clinicians respond to clients is described in our “Listening Continuum” (see below).
This excerpt is from the section in Chapter 4 on Reflection of Feeling.
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Reflection of Feeling (aka Empathy)
The primary purpose of a reflection of feeling is to let clients know, through an emotionally focused paraphrase, that you’re tuned in to their emotional state. Nondirective reflections of feeling encourage further emotional expression. Consider the following example of a 15-year-old male (he/him) talking about his teacher:
Client: That teacher pissed me off big time when she accused me of stealing her phone. I wanted to punch her.
Counselor: You were pretty pissed off.
Client: Damn right.
In this example, the feeling reflection focuses only on what the client clearly articulated. This is the rule for nondirective feeling reflections: Restate or reflect only the emotional content that you clearly heard the client say. No probing, interpreting, or speculation are included. Although we might guess at underlying dynamics contributing to this boy’s fury, a nondirective feeling reflection focuses on obvious emotions.
Emotions are personal. Every attempt to reflect feelings is a move toward closeness or intimacy. Some clients who don’t want relational connection with you may react negatively to reflections of feeling. You can minimize negative reactions to reflections of feeling by phrasing them tentatively, especially during an initial interview:
When using reflection to encourage continued personal exploration, which is the broad goal of reflective listening, it is often useful to understate slightly what the person has offered. This is particularly so when emotional content is involved. (W. R. Miller & Rollnick, 2013, p. 59)
Emotional accuracy is your ultimate goal. However, if you miss the emotional target, it’s better to miss with an understatement than an overstatement. If you overstate emotional intensity, clients will often backtrack or deny their feelings. As we’ll discuss in Chapter 12, there’s a proper time to intentionally overstate client emotions. Generally, however, you should aim for accuracy while proceeding tentatively and understating rather than overstating clients’ emotions. Rogers (1961) would sometimes use clarification with clients after giving a reflection of feeling (e.g., “I’m hearing sadness and pain in your voice… am I getting that right?”).
If you understate a reflection of feeling, your client may correct you.
Client: That teacher pissed me off big time when she accused me of stealing her watch. I wanted to punch her.
Counselor: Seems like you were a little irritated about that. Is that right?
Client: Irritated? Fuck no—I was pissed.
Counselor: You were way more than irritated. You were pissed.
In this example, a stronger emotional descriptor is better because the client expressed more than irritation. However, any adverse effect of “missing” the emotion is minimized because the counselor phrased the reflection tentatively with “Seems like…” and then added a clarifying question at the end. Then, perhaps most important, when the client corrected the counselor, the counselor repaired the reflection to fit with the client’s emotional experience. From a psychoanalytic perspective, the repairing of emotional mirroring or empathy might be the most therapeutic part of listening (Kohut, 1984; see Practice and Reflection 4.3 to practice emotional responses to clients).
Reflections of feeling are often labeled as empathy. If only empathy were so simple. As Clark noted, “Rogers . . . was appalled by this . . . as the rich and nuanced process of empathy was reduced to trivial and repetitive expressions of a therapist identifying a client’s feelings” (p. 23). As we move forward through this chapter and other content on more directive interviewer responses, remember that empathy should be woven into nearly every therapist utterance, including confrontation, advice, and behavioral homework (Clark, 2023).
With clients, mental health professionals engage in emotional clarification, exploration, validation, and education. Your role varies depending on your clients’ needs and situation. As a technique, reflection of feeling aids clients in clarifying and exploring their emotions. For this chapter and reflection of feeling, the best path is a tentative one, wherein you function as a mirror to help clients experience and articulate their emotions with greater clarity. Doing so can serve to help clients explore and gain greater understanding of their emotional worlds. To accomplish your interviewing goals, you don’t need to know everything about the academic and popular debates over emotions; instead, you partner with clients to deepen your mutual understanding of the emotional experiences.
[Several pages of the text are skipped here]
Gender, Culture, and Emotion
Imagine you’re in an initial clinical interview with a Latino (he/him) cisgender male husband and father. He looks unhappy and your impression is that he’s angry about his wife’s employment outside the home. You’re aware that some Latine/x people have traditional ideas about male and female family roles. This knowledge provides you with a foundation for using a reflection of feeling to focus on his anger:
I’m getting the sense that you’re a little angry about your wife deciding to go back to work.
He responds,
Nah. She can do whatever she wants.
You hear his words. He seems to be empowering his wife to do as she pleases. But his voice is laden with annoyance. This leads you to try again to connect with him on a deeper level. You say,
Right. But I hear a little annoyance in your voice.
This reflection of feeling prompts an emotional response, but not the one you hoped for.
Sure. You’re right. I am annoyed. I’m fucking annoyed with you and the fact that you’re not listening to me and keep focusing on all this feelings shit.
This is a dreaded scenario for many clinicians. You take a risk to reflect what seems like an obvious emotion, and you get hostility in return. Your emotional sensitivity and effort at empathy backfires. The client moves to a defensive and aggressive place, and a relationship rupture occurs (see Chapter 7 for more on dealing with relationship ruptures).
It’s tempting to use culture and gender to explain this client’s negative reaction to your reflection of feeling. But it’s not that simple.
Although culture, gender, race, and other broad classification-based variables can sometimes predict whether specific clients will be comfortable with emotional expression, individual client differences are probably more substantial determinants. Comfort in expressing emotion is often a function of whether the client comes from a family-neighborhood-cultural context where emotional disclosure was a norm. For example, Knight (2014) reported that Black and Latino males who were unlikely to disclose to their peers attributed this tendency to their experiences living in violent communities. These young men learned that emotional expression and trusting others were bad ideas in their neighborhoods. Conversely, emotional disclosure is more likely in the comfort range of Black and Latine/x males raised in safer communities. This makes good common sense: Whether clients perceive you as safe to talk with about emotional concerns probably has more to do with their backgrounds and past experiences than you.
Overall, it’s likely that clients’ willingness to tolerate feeling reflections is based on a mix of their cultural, gender, and individual experiences. Although biogenetics may be involved too, how people handle emotions is largely socialized (McDermott et al., 2019). If you have reason to suspect that your client is socialized to be uncomfortable with emotions, you should avoid emotionally specific words. Examples of emotionally specific words include angry, sad, scared, and guilty.
Instead of emotionally specific words, you can substitute words that are emotionally vague (and less intense). Later, as trust develops, you might be able to use specific emotional words. Consider the following phrases:
You found that frustrating.
It seems like that bothered you a bit.
It’s a little upsetting to think about that.
Practice and Reflection 4.4 lists examples of emotionally vague words you might use instead of emotionally specific words.
PRACTICE AND REFLECTION 4.4: USING VAGUE AND EMOTIONALLY SAFE WORDS
Emotionally Specific Words
Substitute (Safer) Words
Angry
Frustrated, upset, bothered, annoyed
Sad
Down, bad, unlucky, “that sucked”
Scared
Bothered, “didn’t need that,” “felt like leaving”
Guilty
Bad, sorry, unfortunate, “bad shit”
Note: These words may work as substitutes for more emotionally specific words, but they also may not. It will be more effective for you to work with your classmates or in your work setting to generate less emotionally threatening words and phrases that are culturally and locally specific.
[End of Practice and Reflection 4.4]
Gender diverse clients may be emotionally sensitive in ways different than clients on the gender binary. Due to their neutrality, reflections of feeling—even when accurate—can be activating if clients are sensing you’re coming from a place of judgment. Consider the following:
Counselor: You said your family is rejecting your sexual identity, and you’re feeling terribly sad about that.
Client: Wouldn’t you?
When clients have a substantial history of interpersonal rejection, emotional invalidation, and/or oppression, neutral comments from clinicians can be perceived as judgmental. In this exchange, the counselor uses an accurate simple paraphrase along, with an emotional reflection, but the client feels judged and responds defensively. Given the client’s history, feeling judged in response to neutral reflections is natural. What the client needs (to feel connected and supported) is a response that’s explicitly affirming or validating (Alessi et al., 2019). In this case, at least until rapport is established, rather than a feeling reflection, the client would likely react better to a feeling validation (“Your sadness in response to your family’s rejection of your sexual identity seems totally normal”; see Chapter 5 for information on feeling validations).
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Thanks for reading. In the coming week, there will be additional posts on the basics and nuances of working with emotions in counseling and psychotherapy.
While I blog away, WordPress counts things. I don’t exactly understand how it works, but apparently my little blog just passed the 1.0 million visitor and 1.5 million views thresholds. Wow.
You may be wondering, what does passing that million-visitor pinnacle mean, and why is JSF sharing about his blogging achievements?
The answer to that important question is: All this means it’s time to celebrate!
In honor of this blogging achievement, I’m doing what bloggers are supposed to do. I’m honoring my million visitors by giving out five free books.
To “win” a book, all you have to do is post here, a nice, supportive, celebratory comment of at least 20 words about this blog. If you’re one of the first five to post a comment in response to this historic blog celebration, you should also email me your best mailing address. Then, if you’re quick at the blog commenting draw, in the next couple weeks, you will receive one shiny new copy of the exciting thriller titled, “Suicide Assessment and Treatment Planning: A Strengths-Based Approach” by John and Rita Sommers-Flanagan.
Thanks for following and reading my blog. Today’s news means, quite literally, that “You are one in a million!”
I very much appreciate your support. I hope you’ve enjoyed, or appreciated, or at least not hated my idiosyncratic and sometimes irreverent posts.
In my Group Counseling class, I’ve experienced predictable questioning of or resistance to evidence-based happiness ideas from positive psychology. . . and so I wrote out some of my thoughts . . . which went on and on and ended with a video clip.
Hello Group Class,
I’m writing my group takeaway to your all this week. Feel free to read at your leisure . . . or not at all . . . because I’m a writer and obviously, sometimes I get carried away and write too much.
When I responded to a question last week expressing reservations about the use of positive psychology—perhaps generally and perhaps more specifically with oppressed populations—I launched into a psychoeducational lecture. Upon reflection, I wish I had been more receptive to the concerns and encouraged the class as a group chew on the pros and cons of positive psychology in general and positive psychology with oppressed populations, in particular. I suspect this would have been an excellent discussion.
Given that we have limited time for discussion in class, I’ll share more reflections on this topic here.
1. The concerns that were expressed (and others have expressed in your takeaways) are absolutely legitimate. I’m glad you all spoke up. Some people have used positive psychology as a bludgeon (claiming things like “happiness is a choice”) in ways that make people feel worse about themselves. Never do that!
2. Positive psychology is poorly named (even the great positive psych researcher, Sonja Lyubomirsky, hates the name). Among its many naming problems, the word positive implies that it’s better, preferable, and the opposite of negative—which must then be the correct descriptor for all other psychology. None of this is true; positive psychology is not “better” and, in fact, it’s not even exclusively positive.
3. The point of positive psychology is not to “take over” psychology, but to balance our focus from being nearly always on psychopathology, to being equally about strengths, joy, happiness, etc., and psychopathology. If you think of it as an effort to balance how we work with individuals, it makes more sense. The point isn’t, and never has been, that we should only focus on positive mental health regardless of how our clients and students are feeling. That would be silly and insensitive.
4. As someone reminded me in the takeaways, the sort of happiness we focus on in positive psych is called eudaimonic happiness. This term comes from Aristotle. It refers to a longer form of happiness that emphasizes meaning, interpersonal connection, and finding the sweet spot where our own virtues intersect with the needs of the community. The other side of happiness is referred to as “hedonic” happiness. Hedonic happiness is more about hedonism, which involves immediate pleasure and material acquisitions. Nearly everyone in positive psychology advocates primarily for eudaimonic happiness, but also recognizes that we all usually need some pleasure as well.
5. Individuals and groups who have been historically (and currently) oppressed are naturally sensitive to coercion, judgment, and possibility of repeated oppression. What this means for counselors (among many things) is that we need to careful, sensitive, and responsive to their needs and not our assumptions of their needs. They may appreciate us being positive and supportive. Or they may appreciate us explicitly acknowledging their pain and affirming the legitimacy of the reasons for their pain. There’s substantial research indicating that certain ethnic group expect counselors to be experts and offer guidance. If that’s the case, should we avoid offering guidance because a particular theorist (or supervisor) said not to offer guidance? I think not. Many clients benefit from going deep and processing their disturbing emotions and sensations. There are probably just as many who don’t really want to go deep and would prefer a surface-focused problem-solving approach. Either way, my point is that we respond to them, rather than forcing them to try to benefit from a narrow approach we learned in grad school.
6. Good counselors . . . and you will all become good counselors . . . can use virtually any approach to make connection, begin collaborating, remain sensitive to what clients and students are saying (verbally and non-verbally), and work constructively with them on their emotions, thoughts, sensations/somatics, behaviors, and the current and/or historical conditions contributing to their distress.
7. We should not blame clients for their symptoms or distress, because often their symptoms and distress are a product of an oppressive, traumatic, or invalidating environment. This is why reflections of feeling can fall flat or be resisted. Feeling reflections are tools for having clients sit with and own their feelings. While that can be incredibly important, if you do a feeling reflection and you don’t have rapport or a rationale, feeling reflections will often create defensiveness. Instead, it can be important to do what the narrative and behavioral folks do, and externalize the problem. When it comes to issues like historical trauma, often clients or students have internalized negative messages from a historically oppressive society, and so it makes perfect sense to NOT contribute to their further internalization of limits, judgments, discrimination, and trauma that has already unjustly taken hold in their psyche. The problem is often not in the person.
8. I know I said this in class, but it bears repeating that many people practice simple, superficial, and educational positive psychology using bludgeon-like strategies. Obviously, I’m not in support of that. That said, many people practice simplistic implementation of technical interventions in counseling (think: syncretism from theories class), and many counselors do bad CBT, bad ACT, bad DBT, bad behaviorism, bad existentialist therapy, and bad versions of every form of counseling out there. No matter which approach you embrace, you should do so using your excellent fundamental listening skills . . . so that if your client or student doesn’t like or isn’t benefiting from your approach, you can change it!
I want to end this little 1K word writing project with a video. In the linked clip, I’m doing about a 3 1/2 minute opening demonstrating a “Strengths-based approach” to suicide assessment and treatment planning with a 15-year-old. As you watch, ask yourself, “Is this strengths-based?” Can you identify anything that makes this approach strengths-based or as including even a whiff of positive psychology. [Again, you’re not required to watch this, I’m just rambling.]
Group this week was chaotic, great, and disconcerting. As the leader-instructor, I felt perhaps I didn’t get the students prepared enough to run their in-class discussion and color groups. I worried that now we’ve got too much experiencing and not enough educational content.
These feelings and thoughts are familiar; maybe they’re familiar to other educators. To learn, students need experiences, but they also need knowledge, information, and educational content to put experiences in context. They also need external feedback, to go along with the internal feedback process in which they naturally engage. How hard is it to hit the sweet spot? Very hard!
While observing one group, I noticed conflict emerging between co-leaders. I didn’t intervene. During their self-evaluation process, the leaders acknowledged their tension. My response? I normalized their experience of co-leader conflict and the challenges of co-leader conflict management.
Later, while debriefing the various group experiences with the whole class, I spontaneously began speaking about group leader conflict. Words came out of my mouth in advance of a clear mental formulation of what I wanted to say.
“Group co-leader conflict will occur. Sometimes your co-leader will go a different direction. You’ll be watching and wondering, ‘What’s going on here?’ You may have a negative reaction. You may feel critical and annoyed. When this happens, we need to give each other grace.”
Another theme bubbling up this week involved vulnerability. The group leaders feel vulnerable and on-the-spot for obvious reasons; I expected that. What I’ve been less prepared for is the vulnerability students felt as group members who were prompted to share “happy” and “meaningful” songs. Here’s their group leadership assignment:
Some students seemed sensitive to perceived coercion, and the related expectation that they were obligated to be vulnerable. I got enough takeaway emails about vulnerability that I’m sharing a few of my responses (I’m not sharing the emails from the students; I’m sharing my email responses)
Emails on Vulnerability
I’m glad to hear the music activity felt connecting for you with your group. It’s interesting how music might seem like a “light” topic, but it certainly can get emotional and vulnerable, sometimes very quickly.
Thanks for sharing your reactions from your color group experience. I’ve heard similar reactions from others. I too, found myself surprised that some members felt the activity involved vulnerability . . . but then I remembered several things, not the least of which is the emotional power of music and the fact that talking about happiness nearly always, at some point, elicits sadness and vulnerability.
Your comments about the diverse reactions to the music assignment reminds me of a point I want to make in class tomorrow. The point being: When we talk about happiness, the emotional reaction is often the opposite! Initially, I felt surprised that some groups felt the assignment was pretty vulnerable, but then I thought, of course! Sharing anything feels vulnerable. . . and music is a powerful emotional activator.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts/reactions from your Color Group. Noticing and appreciating others’ discomfort is so important, partly because it involves empathy, but also because what causes some people discomfort may not even be a blip for others, including you. It IS a great thing to be mindful about.
Reading and responding to student emails is helping me be more thoughtful and accepting of their experiences. Although their experiences naturally activate my memories about my grad school group experiences, more importantly, reading about their experiences helps me move past my own memories and my own narrow lived experiences. My students are giving me a chance to have greater appreciation for the wide range of simple and complex factors that activate their vulnerabilities. For me, that’s one (of many) lessons from this week: My surprise regarding students’ feeling vulnerable is countertransference. As countertransference, it’s a good thing to notice. But the point is to give myself grace around my countertransference, while nurturing and growing my ability to move around my surprise and seek deeper understanding of my students’ experiences . . . just as I hope they will do with their clients.
Spring is coming: it’s a good time to try something new.
In collaboration with the MOLLI program on campus at the University of Montana, I’m offering a unique “Happiness” class that combines an initial lecture with 5 small group experiential discussions. The course begins in about 1 month (April 2, 2024). Here’s the course description:
Evidence-Based Happiness: An Experiential Approach
In this course, participants will learn about and experience seven different research-based approaches to achieving greater happiness. Using a unique format, participants will have one week of traditional lecture, followed by five weeks of small-group experiential learning sessions. Each small group (aka happiness lab) will meet to practice, experience, and discuss specific happiness interventions. Before each lab group, participants will be provided with a short reading and a short video to guide their weekly happiness practice. Specific positive psychology interventions to be covered include (a) three good things, (b) savoring, (c) gratitude, (d) cognitive behavior therapy, (e) forgiveness, (f) acts of kindness, (g) and the best possible self. Labs will be facilitated by graduate students in counseling and supervised by John Sommers-Flanagan.
The course is live and offered simultaneously in virtual and in-person formats. To enroll, you need to become a MOLLI member, which costs $0. The cost of the course is $70. If you do the math, you’ll see that’s about $12 per educational hour . . . which is a fantastic deal. The other fantastic part is that research indicates your participation may contribute to you feeling greater meaning and happiness.
For remote users, there are no borders. You can take it from anywhere: To enroll in the VIRTUAL (remote) course, click here, and if you’re not a MOLLI member, start by clicking on sign-in to become a member and then register: https://www.campusce.net/umtmolli/course/course.aspx?C=844&pc=38&mc=42&sc=0
In group class, we’re covering content related to group stage called “Storming.” The Coreys’, who’ve written about and led many groups, call this the “Transition” stage. During the storming or transition stage, group members start to push against or question group norms and/or the group leader’s authority. Not to be trite, but like roses, no matter what name it, the smell and tension of storming feels the same.
I’ve been waiting and watching for storming to emerge within my class. I know group process unfolds during class groups, just as it unfolds in psychoeducational, counseling, and psychotherapy groups. I thought I might ignite storming, by asking my counseling graduate students to focus on positive psychology. I did get a little push-back from students who emailed me about their “mixed” feelings about positive psychology. My response was to share that I also hold mixed feelings about positive psychology, along with mixed feelings about psychoanalytic theory, behavioral theory, CBT, feminist theory, acceptance and commitment therapy, and every other theory or approach I can think of.
This past week an ever-so-minor edge of a storm found its way into class. After class started, one student expressed negative feelings about a reading I’d assigned, noting that she thought the article was “shaming” to mandated clients. As often occurs with storming, I had an immediate and complex emotional and impulse-ridden response. Rather than acting on my emotions or defending the reading, I managed to welcome the critique. When I say “managed” I mean to communicate that IMHO, welcoming critiques is not easy, and maybe not natural. A few minutes later, I acknowledged that although I wished everyone would love all the class readings, I also wanted people to feel they had permission to not love the readings and speak openly about their opinions. Later that evening, I received an email takeaway from the student who didn’t like the reading. As you may recall, one of my group class assignments is for students to email me two takeaways in the days following class. Because she expressed what I want to communicate better than I can, here’s her email (shared with her permission).
Hey John,
My biggest takeaway from today was watching your modeling of working with storming, both with myself and [with another student]. The way that you allowed for expression of our feelings, were vulnerable with your own, and then used the material to create more conversations, norms, etc., was really helpful to see. I also want to share on this topic that when my oldest kiddo and I were talking this morning about what our days were looking like, I was talking to her about my feelings about an article we read for class that I didn’t agree with, and that I was going to bring it up in class. And her response was, “You’re going to tell your professor that?!?!” She was shocked that I felt like I could say that in class, and I wanted to thank you for creating a space where I felt like that was alright.
My other takeaway is your quote from class today, “We want to give people the chance to be interesting.” I think there are so few opportunities that people have to be seen and heard by others in a way that is meaningful. Coupled with the big, sort of inherent opportunity as a group leader to take up ‘too much space,’ your advice feels like a really important nugget that I want to take with me into leading groups in the future.
What I love best about this email (and I love a lot of it) is my student’s anecdote about her daughter’s reaction: “You’re going to tell your professor that?!?!” And what I love best about that is—consistent with other conversations we’ve been having in class—we should not run groups like cults. As leaders, professors, administrators, clergy, and politicians, we need to be open to independence of thought and listen to unique perspectives. What I think is not the truth and what I value is not necessarily the correct moral philosophy for everyone.
Today. . . I am very happy to have handled a little storming with acceptance and openness. Tomorrow may be different. But for today, I get to feel the good feelings of being able to live my best group leader values—even if it didn’t involve me being right about anything.
Lately, when presenting, I find myself naturally saying, “I’m a university professor. That means I can talk all day long.”
But because I know that me talking too much is a bad idea, I complement my university professor disclosure with, “I’d rather have a conversation, so please interrupt me with comments, questions, and reactions.” I also try to offer an experiential learning or reflection activity.
In group class, I have so many stories to tell that I can feel my already prodigious talking urges escalate. I could unleash my breathless wordy-self for three straight hours. The students would leave having been entertained (I am funny), and with a bit of knowledge, but without skills for running counseling groups.
All this circles back to my plan to make the course as experiential as possible. I want students to feel the feelings of being in the group facilitator chair. Some of those feelings will be nerves, but it’s better for students to feel more nerves in group class, and fewer nerves when they’re leading real groups.
We recently hit Day 1 of the transformative experiential chaos.
I know from the takeaways that students write me every week that there were nerves. In a fishbowl group, I asked members to share one positive interpersonal quality. As a second and optional prompt, I suggested they could also share one less positive interpersonal quality.
My goal was for us to briefly look at and talk about Yalom’s concept of interpersonal learning.
I shared first (to demo leader self-disclosure and modeling); I intentionally described a positive and less positive interpersonal quality. The first student to disclose felt instant awareness of the past, present, and future. Afterward, she described feeling a burden to follow my lead, anxiety in the moment, along with instant recognition that she was about to become a role model. She shared both (a positive and less positive interpersonal quality). Everyone followed her lead. Some members felt more anxiety when sharing the positive qualities; for others, it was the opposite.
One takeaway involved the speed and power of norm-setting. I’m reminded of the social psych compliance research. More or less, people consciously or less consciously feel the “norm” and comply. The corollary takeaway is that when leaders set the norm, we need to do so carefully so as to not imply everyone needs to fall in line.
Jumping ahead, the next week I discussed Kelman’s theory of group cohesion. Although I absolutely love Yalom’s definition (“Cohesion is the attraction of the group for its members”), Kelman’s theory is complementary, and was introduced to my be my 1975 Mount Hood Community College football coach. Kelman (and my coach) identified three phases: Compliance, Identification, and Internalization. After talking about Kelman’s theory, several students reflected in their email takeaways about the nature of cult groups. . . and how compliance can become leader-driven. Wow. So good.
In response to one student’s takeaway, part of my email included the following:
“For groups to be safe, IMHO, that also means freedom; freedom to have dissenting beliefs and different experiences and different values. The “internalization” shouldn’t be too tight, or it does feel like a cult. I’m not sure I have great answers about safeguards to the abuse of group processes, and so you’ve given me things to chew on as well.”
Maybe the right recipe is for there to be leader-guided modeling, combined with clear rules and norms that support independent thinking and personal freedom. This is a VERY tricky balance. It’s easy for leaders (including me) to get too enamored with the sound of our own voices and the rightness of our own values.
This brings me back to reflecting on how much leaders should talk and how much leaders should listen. Of course, this depends on the type of group: psychoeducational groups involve more group leader talking. In contrast, counseling groups—even discussion-based groups or support groups—benefit from the group talking more and the leader talking less. This has been a repeated epiphany for students and for me: being aware of the need to balance leader-talk and leader modeling with group member talk and group member modeling.
For the next class, I gave everyone an electronic copy of a long list of 23 group counseling skills to integrate into one of their experiential groups. Here’s the list:
John Sommers-Flanagan 