The Self Compass in Counseling and Therapy

Incorporating the Self Compass diagram in a session is simple and intriguing. 

Show a graphic of the Self Compass to your client and say something like: 

“One of the building blocks of your therapy is this compass diagram. Notice that it’s divided into four compass points that are essential to every person. 

“The Love compass point stands for all the love and caring you’ve ever received or given, but its opposite, the Assertion compass point, is just as important. Loving helps you care for others; Assertion lets you express yourself and stand up for your feelings and values. Now I wonder if you might explore how the Love/Assertion polarity relates to you.”

By asking clients to locate and elaborate on their own experiences within the Self Compass, you involve them in assessing and describing their own behavior. Two things happen. 

First, they begin to develop an observing self that will help them reflect on their behavior throughout the therapy. 

Second, they enjoy talking about themselves in compass terms by sharing significant life experiences that relate to a given compass point. This prepares for continued exploration of the relationship between their current functioning and their actualizing growth toward holistic health.

Personality researchers have frequently found that this process of developing "psychological mindedness" is associated with successful treatment outcomes.

By introducing the Self Compass early in therapy, you invite the person to become a motivated collaborator in the therapeutic alliance. Substantial evidence links proactive client participation with beneficial outcomes in therapy. 

Once you have explored the terrain of a client’s reflections on Love and Assertion, you launch the next expedition by saying: 

“The other polarity represents times in life when you’ve felt especially weak or particularly strong. The Weakness compass point equals anxiety, vulnerability, and uncertainty. The Strength compass point describes your experiences of confidence and adequacy. How would you say these two compass points relate to you?”

As vital information from your client’s life history comes forth, you discern how he or she has typically handled the Weakness/Strength polarity. Is he stuck overly exaggerating weakness at the expense of strength? Has she developed a superior attitude to compensate for her fear of showing weakness?

The rapport you build and the insights you gain help form a diagnostic impression of the client’s personality configuration. You may find out that the man who is a confident physics professor at work is a dependent depressive at home. Or the woman who has mastered yoga for relaxation goes to pieces when stressed by her hyperactive three-year-old son.

You and the client are working together like Sherlock Holmes and Watson, searching for relevant clues and deducing growth goals that will help to solve the mystery of why self-help that has eluded them. 

The spirit of mutual curiosity and discovery generated by exploring the Self Compass adds momentum to motivation, self-reflection, and personality integration. These are key ingredients for awakening clients to full engagement in their change process. 

Here’s a glimpse of how such dialogue can work. Let’s say you’ve just heard Nancy’s disclosure about how she sees herself and her significant relationships in terms of the Self Compass. You begin to formulate a treatment strategy with her.

Therapist: “So Nancy, it sounds like you could benefit from more assertion in order to hold your own with your husband. Is that right?”

Nancy: “Yes, he just makes so many choices about furniture, vacations, and where we eat out without getting my input. I don’t think he’s trying to be bossy. But I do need to let him know what I’d like more often.”

Therapist: “One of our goals can be strengthening your use of the assertion compass point. Working on how to diplomatically express yourself instead of not saying anything. Now what about strength and weakness?”

Nancy: “Well, in my nursing work I feel very confident. Everyone treats me with respect. So that’s okay. But where I get shaky inside is with my teenage daughter. She wants so many things! I give in too easily. I think I feel intimidated by her.”

Therapist: “It’s like you feel strong at work but weak in the presence of your daughter, especially when she puts pressure on you to buy her something.”

Nancy: “Exactly. I’ve tried to set boundaries but she just keeps on until I give in.”

Therapist: “Well, we can strengthen your staying power through some role-playing and help you develop more self confidence in her presence.”

Nancy: “That would be great.”

The Self Compass is a user-friendly tool that helps a therapist: 

• develop a diagnosis-to-treatment strategy
• form an estimate of how many sessions may be needed
• generate action techniques for intervention and growth-enhancement
• monitor a counselee’s progress
• determine when therapy is ready for termination

Sharing the Self Compass demystifies therapy and engages clients as dialogue partners in the therapeutic enterprise. People feel excited and empowered when they know they can directly influence their own functioning.

By adding the knowledge coming in future posts to the central model of the Self Compass, you'll become able comprehend a vast amount of clinically sophisticated material in a way that feels intuitive and easy to recall.

Most of all, you will grasp the link different personality rigidities and effective specific treatment strategies needed for guiding your clients toward health and happiness.

Compass Therapy Explains Borderline Personality Disorder

From a Compass Therapy perspective, the borderline is a flip-flop pattern. That is, the pattern favors one half of the Self Compass at the expense of the other, yet unpredictably flip-flops to its polar opposite.

Borderline-patterned persons primarily exaggerate the Strength and Assertion compass points as “top dogs,” yet make regular swings into the lower compass points of Love and Weakness. They feel boldly entitled in social situations, sweet-talking people to fill the emptiness inside. When others fail to fill this void, they shift into blame and attack mode without warning, aggressively challenging others to meet their insatiable dependency needs.

The borderline pattern’s self-system fluctuates drastically as emotional explosions alternate with the desperate need for reassurance. When caught in the grip of anxiety (Weakness compass point) or longing for nurturance (Love compass point), the person seeks assurance in the manner of the avoidant Worrier or dependent Pleaser patterns. This sends others an SOS signal that elicits a desire to rescue the borderline-patterned person from depression or loneliness. But since the borderline demands assurance that is absolute and comforting that is perfect, these demands are quickly frustrated.

Then self-righteous judgment erupts. Furiously accusing others of neglect and disregard, the behavior then more closely resembles that of the paranoid Arguer and narcissistic Boaster patterns.

Extreme emotional volatility, erratic shifts between aggression and neediness, and a lack of trust in self or others render the borderline’s Self Compass unstable; hence the Compass Therapy term, “borderline Challenger.”

Such shakiness is accentuated by ever-present and contradictory feelings toward others: dependent anger and anxiety-driven superiority. In other words, individuals with a borderline personality pattern experience life as a harrowing roller coaster ride.

For a clinical case study and successful treatment plan for treating the Borderline Personality Disorder, read

Compass Therapy: Christian Psychology in Action

Compass Therapy on Personality Disorders

The term "personality disorder" -- described in DSM-IV and DSM-V (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) -- captures the chronic and rigid inflexibility of a personality pattern. Unfortunately, this term can also have a side effect of diminishing a person's self-esteem and creating futility about the future. Even therapists can feel pessimistic about treating personality disorders.

Compass Therapy changes this by using the term "personality patterns," thus emphasizing that rigid patterns are merely growth deficiencies that can be replaced with healthy personality growth. People are familiar with the concept of laying aside old patterns, such as eating too much or driving too fast. They quickly grasp that growth stretches into unused compass points makes their behavior more resourceful and their life happier.

Therapists can remember nine major personality patterns by their location around the Self Compass. Each pattern is stuck on one or two compass points to the neglect of the others. Compass Therapy guides the expansion of personality into rhythmic use of all four complimentary points.

Personality Patterns Self Compass

*The dependent and histrionic patterns are located on the Love compass point, where the dependent trend intensifies into chronic pleasing and placating (dependent) or the melodramatic craving for attention (histrionic). Both patterns share intense needs for approval and affection, as well as a fixated focus on others that blocks access to the spiritual core.

*The paranoid and antisocial patterns are stuck on the Assertion compass point, where the aggressive trend develops into edgy suspicion (paranoid) or impenitent exploitation (antisocial). These two patterns frequently co-vary as personality mixtures, and share an undercurrent of hostility. They consider others as adversaries over whom they must triumph.

* The avoidant and schizoid patterns are located on the Weakness compass point, where the withdrawn trend intensifies into fearful loneliness (avoidant) or isolated detachment (schizoid). Both patterns create flat affect, a lack of motivation in personal development, and massive deficiencies in interpersonal skills.

* The narcissistic and compulsive patterns are lodged on the Strength compass point, where striving for superiority pushes the controlling trend into either the grandiose entitlement of the narcissist or the judgmental perfectionism of the compulsive. These two patterns share a common preoccupation with issues of adequacy, power, and prestige. Both patterns are quite comfortable taking control and dictating. Both patterns share the demand for perfection, the narcissist seeking the glory of ambition and the compulsive enforcing the status quo.

*The borderline pattern blends elements of the top and bottom halves of the Self Compass, flip-flopping in rapid swings from one extreme to its opposite. A built-in ambiguity within the pattern makes unpredictable whether the person will come across as a “top dog” (Strength and Assertion compass points) or an “underdog” (Love and Weakness compass points). This oscillating fluctuation forms the “rigid fluidity” of the borderline pattern.

I've taught students at several universities how to understand and treat these personality disorders. When I first used the material found in the Diagostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, my students remained puzzled, because they could never remember what distinguished one disorder from another, let alone how to construct an effective treatment plan based on each pattern's unique needs.

However, when I started using the Compass Therapy model, based on the user-friendly model of the Self Compass, students and veteran therapists alike said they could finally locate each disorder relative to the others, and understand the rationale regarding the facilitation of therapeutic growth toward a healthy and balanced personalty.

Here's what Lallene Rector, Professor of Psychology of Religion and Pastoral Psychotherapy, Garrett-Evangelical Seminary, Northwestern University, writes about the Compass Therapy perspective on Personality Disorders: 

"One of the real gems in the Montgomerys’ work is a systematic analysis of 'personality patterns' following DSM descriptions of the personality disorders. Attention is paid to the pattern’s interior, its origins, cognitive self-talk, emotional dynamics, and impact on others, as well as its way of relating to God."

To connect the diagnosis of a personality pattern
with a successful compass treatment, read

 COMPASS THERAPY

Compass Therapy Provides Hope Over the Lifespan

Compass Therapy offers hope for transformative growth  throughout the lifespan.

The Bible affirms this hope by assuring that God has a positive plan for each person’s life, “For I know the plans I have for you,” says the LORD. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope” (Jer 29:11).

Neuropsychology supports this hope by showing clearly that human personality is malleable. The brain can respond to new learning even into old age.

In the therapeutic alliance the counselor and client are not just working to solve presenting problems, but growing together as persons along life’s way. Through the counselor’s behavioral modeling of caring and courage, humility and esteem, the client comes to experience the interpersonal dimension of hope for fulfilling relationships, giving and receiving love, and if the client chooses, loving and trusting God.

This brings us to a diagram that helps inspire counselees with an overview for their lifetime growth in Christ: “The Actualizing Ascent.” Upon showing the diagram to a counselee, you might say, “This represents the human lifespan.”

You explain that the first half of the curve slopes upward, which represents human development the morning of life, from birth to midlife. The tasks of this phase of life include the acquisition of language and culture, education, experimentation with social roles, identity formation, employment, and marriage and

child-rearing if so chosen.

As shown by the curve’s peak, the middle vertical line designates the high noon of midlife, and sometimes precipitates an identity crisis as people shift from the morning to the afternoon of life. While ambition and ego satisfaction characterize the morning of human development, the afternoon of life requires a more interior search for meaning, wholeness, and interpersonal fulfillment.

Carl Jung reported that virtually all of his patients in the second half of life were grappling with religious concerns. Though an individual may get by the first half of life without cultivating actualizing virtues, the lack of development in the second half of life can lead to confusion, frustration and despair.

It’s almost as if God imbues aging with the power to arrest everyone’s attention -- to finally say, “Look. You really are finite and temporal! You’d better grow in me while there is still time, for without me, you will be nothing.” The down-sloped side of the lifespan curve shows the inexorable decline of bodily health and stamina. Wear and tear in the body shows up in wrinkling skin, slowed metabolism, sagging muscles, stiffened joints, vulnerability to disease, and eventually, diminished mental capacities.

For those who refuse to challenge their rigid personality trends during this time, these trends intensify and take a tragic toll. 

Aggressive persons become crankier and more belligerent, ever more paranoid and chronically suspicious. Dependent persons feel more anxiety-ridden and scattered. Withdrawn people shrivel up like leather left out in the sun too long, adapting to marginal levels of subsistence, barely getting by, and isolating from human contact. Controlling people grow obsessively worried about the things they can’t control, raising their blood pressure and shortening their tempers.

The goods news, though, is that people can grow increasingly wise, patient, and mature in the second half of life. This is represented by the upward-sloped dotted curve, you explain, which shows a person’s potential for actualizing psychological and spiritual growth. 

Indeed, Christians are blessed to know that Christ will help them become more whole through anything they face, and will personally welcome them to everlasting life at the moment of death.

Compass Therapy encourages continued growth and development throughout life. You explain to counselees that individuals who begin growing psychologically and spiritually in their thirties, forties, or fifties tend to keep growing in their sixties, seventies, and beyond.

Since the human personality is malleable, exercising the LAWS of personality (Love and Assertion; Weakness and Strength) and the compass virtues (caring and courage; humility and esteem) promote health and fulfillment even into old age.

Perhaps the single most important attitude that Compass Therapy seeks to impart is that change is normal and the need for growth common to all people. Equipped with an actualizing perspective, stagnation is forsaken in favor of the ongoing transformation of one’s personality and relationships, conjoined with a deepening trust in the Holy Spirit’s help and guidance.

When counselees internalize this health model for hope, grace, and transformation, they learn to face the coming years with increased flexibility and resourcefulness.

The Actualizing Ascent Diagram helps counselees see the importance of exchanging rigidity for rhythm, egocentricity for actualizing development, manipulation for authenticity, and personality   idiosyncrasies for compass virtues.

In this way, the invitation of Christ, the witness of the counselor, and the vision of the counselee converge in the pursuit of a life lived gracefully, accruing in wholeness and purpose. Though there are quintessential tough times and challenging adversities, the overall direction is toward an actualizing ascent in Jesus Christ.