Understanding Dan Montgomery's Compass Therapy

My fifteen years of collaboration with Everett Shostrom, a Stanford research psychologist and psychotherapist who carried out pioneering work in the field of counseling, planted the roots for Compass Therapy in what we at that time called Actualizing Therapy. Our approach combined a health model of personality with an explanatory system of psychopathology. We suggested that actualizing growth fosters maturity, flexibility, and purpose in life, and constitutes a reasonable goal of therapy. Further, that therapeutic gain always involves the integration of polar opposites within the personality and an acceptance of individual differences in relationships.

Historically, Dr. Shostrom had produced the “Gloria” films during which Carl Rogers, Fritz Perls, and Albert Ellis each worked in hour-long sessions with a counselee named Gloria. These films demonstrated the usefulness of showing exactly what happens in counseling sessions so that others can replicate beneficial techniques. Some years later Shostrom and I produced a second film series that featured Arnold Lazarus (Multimodal Therapy), Carl Rogers (Client-Centered Therapy), and Everett Shostrom (Actualizing Therapy) each working with a counselee named Cathy.

In the decades followed I continued this eclectic theory building by developing Compass Therapy, an approach that links together the Self Compass model of personality with operational definitions of psychopathology found in the universal standard for mental health professionals: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The use of compass-like diagrams made a user-friendly graphical interface that not only highlighted the principles of Compass Therapy, but also allowed counselees to readily understand how to participate more fully in their own transformation.

DSM

Though Compass Therapy has distinctions of its own, I was careful to construct an open-ended conversation with other major counseling theories. This partnering philosophy makes Compass Therapy a co-proponent of some of the most reliable therapeutic principles found in Psychoanalysis, Jungian Therapy, Gestalt Therapy, Transactional Analysis, Family Therapy, Existential Psychotherapy, Behavioral Therapy, Cognitive Therapy, and Positive Psychology. Perhaps this accounts for why Raymond Corsini, considered by many as the dean of American counseling and psychotherapy, has described my Compass Therapy approach as a “supersystem” that represents “the therapeutic system of the future.”

What has differentiated Compass Therapy from other theories is the idea that human nature and personality are comprised of dynamic opposites that need integration around the core self, and that action techniques are often required to move people forward in therapeutic progress. Like the alternating AC/DC current that powers an electric appliance, polar opposites in human beings create aliveness and health. For instance, healthy individuals find rhythms between solitude and sociability, activity and passivity, involvement and detachment, and work and play.

It’s when the dynamic movement between polarities breaks down and you get an extended flat line of stasis that people become sick, depressed, or devitalized. Dynamic movement fueled by the rhythmic swings of polar opposites expresses itself in mental health as well. Healthy individuals are spontaneous and flexible precisely because they are alive with new possibilities and passionate about the pursuit of creativity. If something doesn’t work, they try something else. If they are frustrated in fulfilling a goal, they explore novel options. They resist becoming stuck in a one-dimensional life.

Psychopathology, however, works differently. Rigidity replaces rhythm. Resourcefulness succumbs to sameness. Relationships perpetuate superficial actions and reactions. Life grows dull. Symptoms set in. The personality and human nature become frozen in intractable patterns that resist change and growth. Actually, the whole range of psychopathological alternatives to healthy living have a strangely attractive appeal, for they seem to make life safe, to make life predictable, and make life familiar.

The Compass Model

 

Healthy individuals can be loving or assertive, and weak or strong, as a situation requires. Rigid individuals are stuck in chronic behavior patterns that are too loving, too aggressive, too weak, or too strong. If healthy living lets you play the eighty-eight keys of the piano with both hands, then psychopathology makes you play only “Chopsticks” with two fingers.

Compass Therapy's Self Compass as well as the Human Nature Compass offer crucial dimensions for growth of personality and human nature that give a person all eight-eight keys, and unlimited capacity for composing the creative melodies and harmonies required for successful coping.

For more, read:  

Compass Therapy: Christian Psychology In Action 

Compass Therapy Liberates Rigid Personalities

Compass Therapy interprets personality rigidity as the way in which people unconsciously try to minimize anxiety by becoming inflexible, opting for stereotypic mind-sets that offer false security and impair actualizing development. These mind-sets congeal into rigid trends and patterns, defying the Self Compass LAWS (Love and Assertion, Weakness and Strength) of wholeness, even though this is not the person’s intention. 

Usually people are unaware of behavioral rigidity, simply thinking, “This is how I’ve always been.” Nevertheless, these trends and patterns are formidable barriers that arrest growth toward loving self, others, and God, constituting a hidden dimension of sin within the human condition.

Personality Rigidity

The Self Compass can help. It provides not only a model for comprehending personality dysfunction, but also places behavioral rigidity on a continuum with actualizing growth, thereby revealing a bridge of continuity that shows how to move from rigidity to the actualizing rhythms of personality health. 

A rigid personality trend strands individuals in a lifestyle characterized by too much dependency, too much aggression, too much withdrawal, too much control, or a combination of these trends.

This growth deficiency is held in place by an unconscious manipulative attitude, a way of treating both self and others as objects for manipulation rather than persons worthy of respect and love. As Buber suggested, manipulation reduces the “I - Thou” quality of life to “I - It.”

Anna Freud described how specific defense mechanisms, which we call manipulative trends, need challenging, so that individuals can come to grips with their underlying concerns. Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, Harry Stack Sullivan, Karen Horney, Eric Berne, Abraham Maslow, Virginia Satir, and Aaron Beck, among other theorists, describe from their own perspective the four manipulative trends of dependency, aggression, withdrawal, and compulsive control.

Compass personality theory locates these trends around the Self Compass, yielding an intelligible map for understanding and transforming them. 

The Trends Self Compass: Dr. Dan & Kate Montgomery

Notice how the Trends Self Compass shows the familiar healthy compass points on the outer circle and summarizes their actualizing expression. Expressing these polarities rhythmically helps generate personality health and relational fulfillment.

• Actualizing Love fosters nurturing and forgiving. 
• Healthy Weakness expresses vulnerability and uncertainty. 
• Diplomatic Assertion offers expressiveness and assertiveness. 
• Humble Strength yields confidence and adequacy. 

The shaded interior circle reveals the unconscious hidden agenda that governs each trend. This circle is smaller than the actualizing circle, and bordered by a thicker ring, indicating that manipulative trends contract the personality, constricting freedom by diminishing creativity. Trust in the spiritual core is infiltrated by core fear, the distorting force that underlies manipulative living.

While everyone is occasionally dependent or aggressive, withdrawn or controlling, a manipulative trend fixates into a predictable way of life that has dehumanizing repercussions.

• Wilhelm Reich observed that manipulation tenses body musculature, terming it character armor. 
• Karen Horney described manipulation as a tragic waste of human potential. 
• Carl Rogers viewed manipulation as a struggle for authenticity between an idealized self and a real self. 
• Joseph Wolpe described rigid trends as maladaptive behavior that can be unlearned. 
• Eric Berne construed the self-fulfilling nature of manipulative trends as negative life scripts. 
• Albert Ellis noted that a manipulative mindset is held in place by a set of irrational assumptions. 
• Aaron Beck referred to manipulations as exaggerated cognitive processes.

Compass Therapy adds that understanding the particular ways that core fear infuses and drives the manipulative trends (Dependent, Aggressive, Withdrawn, and Controlling) provides vital clues that facilitate healing and promote wholeness, regardless of whether this transformation is called personality integration, spiritual formation, sanctification, or self-actualizing in Christ.

For more, read:

CHRISTIAN PERSONALITY THEORY: 

A Self Compass for Humanity

Christian Personality Theory

Compass Therapy Helps Worriers and Loners

Most people would not consider being overly withdrawn, detached, or hermit-like as sinful, but Jesus sees it differently. In the parable of the three servants given funds to invest by their master, the first two take appropriate risks that bring a return on the investment. The third hides the money away and later says to the master, “I was afraid I might lose some so I didn’t invest any.” The master takes what has been entrusted to this servant and gives it to the other two, ordering punishment for the servant’s play-it-safe attitude (Mt 25:14-30).

One of the major ways people can sin against God and sabotage the purpose for which they are created is to withhold themselves from others. Of course there are many rationalizations for doing so: “I had a bad childhood,” “I was humiliated in school and never got over it,” or “My best friend stabbed me in the back so I decided never to trust anyone.” This same type of rationale occurs between the person and God. “I prayed for something really important and it never happened, so I quit praying.” “God has more important things to do than care about me.”

The pattern of withholding one’s self as a strategy through life forestalls self-development, triggering a premature abdication of identity. Within a Christian perspective, the pattern intercepts one’s identity and calling in Christ.

Jesus and The Avoidant Worrier

Jesus says to the Avoidant Worrier, “Can all your worries add a single moment to your life? And if worry can’t accomplish a little thing like that, what’s the use of worrying over bigger things?” (Lk 12:25-26). To stimulate the Worrier’s active trust in him, Christ says, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has chosen gladly to give you the kingdom” (Lk 12:32). What is this kingdom that the Father gives to the Worrier? It is the:

• richness of companionate relationships
• fullness of an active mind and expressive heart
• excitement of developing talents and hobbies
• joy of communion with the Trinity
• pleasure of having one’s name spoken by friends and acquaintances
• interest of days filled with growth and adventure
• serenity that replaces fear and worry with gratitude for being alive

No doubt some friends and family members have tried to awaken the Worrier to the pleasures of life and relationships, their words falling on deaf ears, the seeds of their encouragement lying on fallow ground. But when Worriers finally hear the voice of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit who passionately and gently witnesses to Christ’s presence in the soul, then Christianity delivers its message to Worriers, who begin to exchange the burden of worry for active steps that lead to a larger life.

How does the Bible approach the Schizoid Loner? Paul counsels, “And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some” (Heb 10:24-25). Obviously Paul knew some Christians who had succumbed to the Loner pattern by isolating from fellowship with others. Because Christ knows the damaging effects of the Loner pattern, he pursues Loners to bring them home to the friendship of Trinity love. 

Jesus says:

“Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep’” (Lk 15:3-6).

Jesus and the Schizoid Loner

How can the Loner overcome years of self-absorbed solitude? The answer is, “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Ro 13:14); that is to say, until Loners develop a modicum of social skill for communicating with others, it works to simply model Christ.

For more, read: 

CHRISTIAN PERSONALITY THEORY: A Self Compass for Humanity 

Christian Personality Theory

Compass Therapy Offers Hope for a Happy Life

Compass Therapy offers hope for transformative growth  throughout the lifespan. That means you can have a happy life, no matter what you go through.

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.

Christian Personality Theory Interprets Arguers & Rule-Breakers

Arguers build an airtight case for arguing. “Don’t you want me to tell you the truth?” “I have a right to tell it like it is.” “I only call things as I see them.” They tenaciously defend this freedom to speak with brutal honesty, even though their disparagement and rudeness cuts a swath of emotional casualties. Inner discontent oozes out through the body language of a sharp glare or contentious sneer. 

Arguer Personality Pattern

Yet Arguers employ discipline by standing resolutely against any person or policy they feel threatens their freedom. They will labor tirelessly to argue their case like a defense attorney, convinced they are one-hundred-percent right, seeing themselves as heroic figures fighting fearlessly for their principles in the face of persecution.

Because Rule-breakers disdain traditional ideals and hold conventional ethics in contempt, they feel more than free to exploit others, employing a concerted discipline by taking pleasure in canniness, calculation, and the transgression of social codes, championing a fierce pride in their disciplined skill for getting the best of others.

Rule-breaker Personality Pattern

James, the Lord’s brother, writes to those stuck on the Assertion compass point: “My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because our anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires” (James 1:20).

Christianity says to Arguers and Rule-keepers: 

• Please let go of your need to be special by nurturing the chip on your shoulder. 

• Give up the perception that the world owes you and therefore you can take whatever you want. 

• Please own your faults and confess your need for personality transformation. 

• Dare to develop love and humility, so that you can utilize your courage and creativity to help people and not hurt them.

Judas let his pattern grow unabated, moving from embezzling funds from the disciples’ treasury to selling Jesus to the Sanhedrin for thirty pieces of silver. Christ held Judas fully responsible for his antisocial Rule-breaker pattern and its behavioral consequences.

The Apostle John, Son of Thunder

On the other hand, Jesus saw redemptive promise in John. Although he nicknamed John a “Son of Thunder,” presumably because of his quick temper, John received Christ’s guidance and changed his ways, becoming the beloved disciple, the only disciple who stood with Jesus at the foot of the cross.

For more, read:

CHRISTIAN PERSONALITY THEORY:

A Self Compass for Humanity

 

 

Christian Personality Theory

Compass Therapy: Borderline Personality Disorder Thoughts

Compass Therapy sees the primary cognitive distortion of the borderline personality disorder as centering on the chronic use of mutually exclusive categories.

Borderline self-talk sounds like this:

• Either you love me or you hate me.
• I have every right to lash out when you don’t show enough love.
• To leave my presence when I need you is abandonment.
• Make my emptiness go away or I’ll punish you.
• People need to pay attention to me because I’m very important.
• I can’t stand to depend on people because they always disappoint me.
• You don’t love me as much as I love you.
• Give me what I want or I’ll hate you.
• Don’t leave me alone because I need you all the time.
• You should accept my explosions if you love me.

Borderline people lean on the structure of the environment to maintain their cognitive bearings, and hence regress to primitive ego states whenever the environment changes. For instance, when a person they rely upon has needs for privacy, or decides on a course of action that seems to exclude them, borderlines can panic and take desperate measures to counter the show of independence. Moments later, however, they forget their intimidation and threats, and sincerely proclaim themselves as the other person’s best friend.

Unintegrated Thoughts

Normal individuals tolerate cognitive dissonance through the integration of polar opposites. They can hold in mind both that a partner cares for them and that the partner needs alone times to function as an independent person.

Borderlines bypass developing a toleration of opposites, and instead think in stark “either/or” terms that call for ultimatums and showdowns, followed by emotional tirades or collapse.

Compass Therapy growth encourages the blending of opposing polarities by offering more sophisticated communications, like caring assertion, or humble requests.

Vulnerable to nightmares

Borderlines are particularly vulnerable to intrusive thoughts and images, including flashbacks and nightmares. When these occur, they tend to dump the toxic residue of these disturbing experiences straight into a current relationship. But it’s not long before they forget what they’ve just done, and expect an immediate return to a more congenial atmosphere.

Naturally, this relationship-shattering style creates approach-avoidance conflicts within the borderline’s partner or friends, causing them to seriously consider abandoning the borderline. The borderline, then, picks up on these cues and challenges with a vengeance the partner’s thoughts about leaving the relationship.

 For more, read: 

COMPASS THERAPY: CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION

Compass Therapy: The Mind of the Antisocial Personality Disorder

Compass theory employs the term “Rule-breaker” as a significant feature of the antisocial personality disorder mindset because it reflects a willful stand to live outside the boundaries of custom and the rule of law, and because counselees readily understand the term.

Antisocial Rule-breakers are notably resourceful. They learn from life experience that little will be achieved without substantial effort and cunning, and that desired goals must be accomplished by one’s actions.

Thus Rule-breakers overly use the Assertion and Strength compass points of the Self Compass. What happens to the lower quadrants? 

Antisocial Personality Disorder

The Love compass point is warped into a façade of charm that masks the hidden intent to exploit. The Rule-breaker represses feelings of tenderness, for this would give others the edge. 

The avoidance of healthy Weakness keeps them from empathizing with other’s pain or admitting any faults. It is precisely this lack of empathy combined with entitlement that creates a “superego lacunae”—a massive deficiency in social conscience. Thus a Rule-breaker is streetwise, glib, and able to lie convincingly, and is well equipped to exploit people’s weaknesses or trust.

THERAPY for ANTISOCIAL PERSONALITY DISORDER

1. The therapist can offer reflections and interpretations that not only show empathy for Antisocial Rule-breaker counselees, but also help them become aware of the cognitive self-talk that underlies the antisocial pattern:

• I disdain traditional ideals and hold conventional ethics in contempt.
• I have no guilt about using and discarding others when I no longer need them.
• I take pleasure in shrewdness, calculation, and the transgression of social codes.
• I can wear a mask of helpful civility to hide my true intentions.
• Openness and caring are signs of weakness. If I run into a kind and attentive psychotherapist, I’ll take him (or her) for a ride.
• I don’t mind escalating into verbal threats or physical violence if it gets me what I want.
• I will never be caught. I’m always ahead of the law, the regulatory boards, and the gatekeepers.
• I think people should have access to all the alcohol and drugs they want.

 

Antisocial Rule-breaker

2. Antisocials typically block a therapist from any transactions that resemble moralizing, yet respect tough-minded challenging that resonates with their strong-willed posture. In a way akin to Reality Therapy, Compass Therapy meets the antisocial at the level of concrete operations, where they are cognitively fixated, and nudges them forward toward abstract thinking.

3. By connecting behavior with its logical consequences, and developing interpersonal perspective that anticipates their behavioral impact on others, counselees learn how to increase non-exploitive exchanges with individuals and institutions in daily life. This growth strategy is very similar to coaching a rebellious teenager into a more proactive life.

For more, read: COMPASS THERAPY: Christian Psychology In Action 

Compass Therapy Drug Addiction Technique

Metaphors are especially needed when counselees lack proficiency in reasoning or verbal fluency. 

Sergio was a nineteen-year-old former gang member who saw me for a dozen sessions. He was on a year’s probation for getting caught with several bags of methamphetamine in his car. After doing some jail time, the police department had released him to work a residential drug treatment program (Narcotics Anonymous) and get some individual counseling. 

In this sixth session, Sergio was contemplating for the first time enrolling in a community college. Understandably, he had anxiety that all he had learned in gang life would work against him.

 

“One thing I’ve discovered about you, Sergio, is that you are a very resourceful guy.”

“In gang stuff. But I don’t know nothing about college.”

“I see that differently.”

“Like what?”

“Remember the things you shared about getting in tight with the gang, robbing an enemy’s stash, and living off drug sales?”

“Yeah.”

“When you put it all together, I think you had a high learning curve for figuring out how to deal drugs and carry on a successful business.”

“I did pretty good ‘til the cops popped me.”

“So what’s to keep you from that same high learning curve at community college?”

“I can’t sell drugs there. They’d bust my ass in two seconds.”

“Yeah, but think of all the social skills you’ve learned in the past few years. You’ve learned how to hang with people, how to watch out for them, how to be loyal to your friends and customers. College students are human just like you. Your social skills will work there as good as in a gang.”

Community College

“But what about all the bad things I know?”

“So what? The best students bring some life experience with them to college. You’ve survived on the street and that’s valuable experience. Now you’ll just be applying your intelligence to learning math instead of weighing and bagging dope.  I imagine you have good rudimentary math skills.”

“I was good at keeping a ledger for what people owed to me.”

“Just change the scene a bit and you’re passing college algebra so you can build a trade instead of rotting in jail.”

“What about reading? I don’t read good.”

“Neither do I. How did you handle it in the gang when you needed to learn how to turn a drug deal?”

“I talked to somebody who was good at it—somebody in the gang longer than me.”

“There you have it. Use that same determination to find a friend or tutoring course on campus to help you do the reading. And don’t forget that Hollywood smile you’ve got. You should use it more often, now that you’re not trying to scare people.”

Sergio smiled.

“So here’s the deal,” I said. “You’re a talented man with a sharp intelligence and considerable social skills. You’ve already proved how successful you are at the formidable challenges of gang life. Only you don’t like the jail time that goes with it. Now you’ve kicked your drug addiction through NA and your Higher Power. The way I see it, God is calling you forward into a whole new future. What’s keeping you from putting your courage and talent into a first semester at the community college?”

“Nothing. I think I’ll go over and check it out.”

Sergio did just that, and after two more months of thinking about it, Sergio entered the community college for the summer term.

For more, read:  

CHRISTIAN COUNSELING THAT REALLY WORKS 

 

Christian Counseling Book