Compass Therapy: Warming Up Clients to The Truth

Diplomatic Warm-up Technique 

Counselees want to be trusted with the truth you perceive about them and their life situation. Yet while they value straight talk, they don’t want to feel embarrassed or emotionally wounded by what you tell them. So take it easy. Stay mindful of their feelings.

Communication should minimize counselee distress. Wachtel suggests that therapists cultivate the art of gentle inquiry, so that exchanges build trust by proceeding in a spirit of exploration rather than interrogation.

Diplomatic Warm-up

In other words, when you are shifting into a phase where you are about to offer realistic but painful information, warm up the counselee and proceed kindly.

Dan: “Ellen, we’ve been talking a lot about how hard you’re trying to make your son behave. But I’m wondering a bit why your husband seems so out of the loop. It’s like you’re doing the disciplining all by yourself.”

Ellen: “Well, that’s more or less true. But Larry is very busy at the bank just now. They’ve opened a new branch and he’s actually saddled with two jobs.”

Dan: “So you empathize with the pressure Larry is under. But I’m wondering who is empathizing for you?”

Ellen: (Looks down, her eyes momentarily tearing). “Maybe that’s why I feel so alone in this. I have to enforce all these boundaries. I didn’t have any brothers, so I don’t know much about teenage boys.”

Proceed kindly

Notice that Ellen has changed the subject. And even though she is deepening her disclosure about her feelings of loneliness and anxiety in handling her son, I need to diplomatically bring Larry into the equation so that he is not completely off the hook.

Dan: “That sounds doubly troubling. Not only are you feeling overwhelmed, but you’re very uncertain about what is appropriate or not in your son’s behavior.”

Ellen: “That’s right. I’m really floundering. But I’m determined to make Jeffrey shape up. If I can’t control him, who will?”

Dan: “Now back to your husband. When was the last time you two had a date, good sex, or a heart-to-heart conversation?” 

I am moving beyond emotional reflection in order to stimulate her thinking about the quality of the marriage bond. My clinical hunch is that Larry may have become so invisible to her as an absentee spouse and father that she is afraid to even broach the topic. However she responds, at least we are laying the foundation for more specific exploration in future sessions.

Ellen: (Looks me directly in the eye). “I’ve gotten so used to how things are at home that I don’t even think about Larry and me. It was good between us until he got this job last year. I don’t think we’ve had sex since then. We never talk about Jeffrey. He doesn’t ask and I don’t want to burden him.”

Without knowing it, Ellen has strengthened my working hypothesis that she is stuck on the Love compass point in the Dependent pattern as far as she and Larry are concerned. But on the other hand, she has become stuck on the Strength compass point in the Compulsive Controlling pattern with regard to the teenage son. I jot this in my notes but do not pursue it for our time is running out. I move into summarizing to help Ellen develop emotional closure for this particular session.

Dan: “Ellen, you are a brave person to single-parent your son, and I appreciate how openly you’ve talked today about the strained relationship with Larry. We’ve got to end for now, but notice how these dynamics are played out this week, and we’ll keep exploring next time.”

Now Ellen’s unconscious can retrieve recent memories that paint in bolder strokes the gap between her and Larry (both how it developed and where it’s headed) and she will become more ready to accept what would otherwise be a startling revelation: that her son Jeffrey has replaced Larry as a surrogate spouse in her life.

For more, read:

Compass Therapy:

Christian Psychology In Action

 

Compass Therapy Growth Strategy for Dependent Personality Disorder

Compass Therapy partners with other theories of counseling so that therapists are encouraged to draw upon their own approaches and clinical experience, even while applying compass tools. This means that therapist creativity, as well as sensitivity to the unique needs of each counselee, work together to determine the growth strategy that a therapist selects.

Psychotherapy

Here is a sample growth strategy that may prove helpful when working with Dependent counselees.

Therapy with the Dependent Pleaser usually starts well and proceeds rapidly for a few sessions, since the Pleaser wants to feel your approval. This is a good time to build rapport and lay the foundation for Strength and Assertion by commending any insights the person expresses or behavioral qualities they show that reveal the least bit of individuality.

The next step is to integrate psychodynamic insights with the kind of parenting they experienced, how they handled any brothers and sisters, and when they first noticed the onset of marked dependent behavior. Now is the time to let them talk about possible advantages of dependency, submissiveness, and non-competitiveness—what they gained from these behaviors and how the behaviors seemed to work for them at the time. This leads naturally into an exploration of the disadvantages of one-sided dependency: the opportunities they missed, the ways certain people took advantage, the lack of social visibility, the secret loneliness that came with a lack of identity, and the lack of assertion and confidence that they admired in others but lacked in themselves. 

Dependent Personailty Disorder

The novice therapist can get trapped in this phase of exploration and discussion by not shifting into the next phase of active coaching and skill building. In other words, while the Pleaser will comply with superficial talking therapy, sometimes giving the therapist what the therapist seems to want, they will begin to resist active strength-enhancement and assertiveness training steps.

Here lies the difference between therapy that meanders in undifferentiated directions and therapy that moves forward in providing counselees what is needed to outgrow defeating patterns.

To move into the action phase of therapy, you maintain rapport and conversational ease, but add the ingredient of behavioral experiments. Just as a coach training athletes, you teach and encourage counselees to handle current interpersonal relationships in new ways that bring gradual advances in personal presence. “What were you feeling when Judy said that to you…How could you have handled her more assertively…?” “When Ben picked you up thirty minutes late, what did you really want to say to him?” “When you wanted to change banks and the teller frowned at you, how might you have held your ground instead of capitulating?”

To outgrow habitual responses, the counselee needs new perceptions to support this risk-taking. For instance, the counselee says, “My buddy Jason wants to borrow my new car, but he’s wrecked two other cars and I don’t trust him. What can I say?” The therapist suggests, “This is probably one of those instances that everybody faces if they’re going to becoming more of an individual. You just tell him the truth and then relax your body and breathing to help counter your usual anxiety. And you say in your head, ‘There, I’ve stood up for myself and Jason can think what he wants about it. But I feel great that my car won’t get wrecked!’”

By now the counselee is getting acclimated to transferring insights and growth suggestions from therapy sessions into real life. Although there will be occasional relapses, you can show patience when they occur, stop long enough to troubleshoot them, and keep focused on complimenting the counselee for any increments of change in the directions of Assertion and Strength.

Dependent Personality Disorder

 Eventually, when the counselee has become fairly adept at self-preservation and self-expression, the question will arise about how to integrate newfound strengths with the lower quadrants of Love and Weakness. After all, the counselee doesn’t want to change from a clinging vine to a know-it-all arrogant bully.

So you now use cognition, emotion, physiology, and spirituality to cover the new ground of how to apologize or make amends if the counselee shows too much aggression, and how to experience forgiveness and caring for those in the counselee’s life who are making behavioral adjustments to the counselee’s use of the LAWS of the Self Compass.

For example, your counselee’s friend Jason may make a promise that he doesn’t keep. You guide your counselee to form a rhythm between Love and Assertion, first by calling Jason on his misbehavior. If Jason develops a reliable track record, then the counselee can move toward trusting again. But if Jason lies or makes another shallow promise, the counselee firms up the self-boundary by assessing whether further trust is warranted. A mature quality of love with discernment replaces the naïve gullibility of the dependent pattern.

You can tell when you are nearing completion of therapy, because there is less need for the therapist to guide sessions, and more autonomy with less distraction in the counselee’s life. At this time you can move from once a week to every two or three weeks, to help the counselee make a successful separation and get on with life beyond therapy. 

For more, read:

COMPASS THERAPY:

CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION 

Dependent Personality Disorder, Emotions & Body Language

Dependent Pattern Emotions

A therapist can build counselee trust by foretelling the most frequently experienced emotions that Pleasers are prone to feel. In terms of DSM this dependent personality disorder may exist at a lesser level of intensity as a nagging need for approval and support. Compass Therapy predicts that Pleasers are secretly haunted by anxiety, guilt, and doubt because dependency exaggerates both the Love and the adjacent Weakness compass points. 

The dependent Pleaser’s anxiety stems from the fear of disapproval, particularly if they think they have upset someone. Guilt constantly invades because they fear they haven’t done enough. Doubt dogs their days because there is no inner center of gravity, no way of saying to one’s self and other people: this is my choice (or my feeling, preference, or opinion) whether you like it or not. A relentless insecurity pervades their relationships with spouse, children, relatives, and co-workers. Even the Pleaser pattern’s affability is riddled with a sense of inadequacy, the fear of not coming across just right.

An ironic consequence of the pattern makes Pleasers disown the very approval they seek from others.  Someone says, “You sure are a great mother,” and the dependent person replies, “Oh no, I just do what any mother does.” Or the boss presents a Certificate of Achievement at a company banquet, and the dependent response is, “I haven’t done anything to deserve this.”

While feelings of anxiety, guilt, and doubt abound, there is one emotion the Pleaser altogether denies from consciousness: anger. Assertive feelings like anger might disrupt one’s security and acceptance. Therefore, anger, annoyance, or irritation are summarily repressed, and if accidentally expressed, apologized for profusely because they threaten the very nature of one’s dependency on others for support.

Body Language

For Pleaser counselees, there is no “there” there. The therapist does well to realize how completely body awareness and sensorimotor activity is suppressed by the lifelong habit of looking outward to others for how they should feel and act. This outer-directed “radar” readily picks up external signals but is not attuned to the person’s emotional and somatic functioning. Thus, rather than feeling like “some-body,” they instead feel more like a “no-body.” 

Breathing shallowly from the thorax contributes to somatic anxiety that can leave them breathless when under stress. The lack of relaxed abdominal breathing deprives the brain and body of oxygenated red blood cells. Such a devitalized state interferes with cognition and promotes panicky feelings. Hyperventilation can occur during times of tension or conflict. For this reason relaxation techniques and training in abdominal breathing are powerful therapeutic allies for helping dependent counselees transform their incessant undercurrent of uneasiness into a solid foundation of visceral and psychological serenity.

The body language of counselees stuck in the dependent pattern reveals that interpersonal contact is made largely through the top third of the body, particularly the face and arms. The pattern’s ready smiles, soft-spoken voice, and friendly eyes evince appeals for love and support. Not wanting to give the impression that they are in any way critical or confronting, a confident gaze is avoided. In contrast to the torso, the legs seem limp and unsteady. This works against “standing up for one’s self” or challenging unfairness in the world. A tendency for slumped posture owes in part to an underdeveloped muscular system and the inner psychological habit of leaning on others for support. 

For a multifaceted treatment plan to successfully heal the codependency of the dependent personality disorder, read:

COMPASS THERAPY: 

CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION 

Dependent Personality Disorder: Therapeutic Impasse

Compass Therapy asserts that a person's personality pattern is largely responsible for the problems in living that they face. In the case of a dependent person, this pattern makes them a personal slave to those around them, and this results in hidden anxiety, guilt, and depression that drives them into therapy.

The therapeutic impasse of every personality pattern centers on the point of greatest resistance to a more rhythmic and actualizing life. For Dependent Pleasers to move beyond this impasse requires giving up the need for others' support and approval in order to develop self-support and self-approval. The success of the therapeutic alliance and treatment outcome depends upon making this transition.

The therapist does well to recognize how spouses, children, or friends take the Dependent counselee for granted and order them around. One young woman’s parents lived sixty miles away, yet left a message on her answer-machine saying, “We’ll be out of town for a week. Be sure and feed the dog in the morning and evening.” 

This demeaning treatment bewilders the love-stuck person and heaps up piles of hurt and resentment in the basement of the unconsciousness. Even so, the dependent keeps trying to put on a happy face. As one husband put it, “I just keep smiling and being a doormat.”

On the other hand, the very reason for coming into therapy often involves a rupture in their co-dependent way of life, some fresh and painful experience of rejection or abandonment in which they feel their very existence is threatened.

It is a fact of life that Dependent counselees—in order to make progress in developing serenity and personal power—will receive disapproval, the withdrawal of support, and loss of protection from unhealthy persons who have thrived on their lack of identity, especially those who are themselves stuck in narcissistic or aggressive patterns. 

Compass Therapy suggests helping counselees develop insights not only about their own pattern, but also about the manipulations of anyone who takes unfair advantage, imposes guilt trips, or causes undue duress.

Once dependent counselees begin to open up, they will pour out long-buried feelings of insecurity, anxiety, disappointment, and dejection. This is an excellent development because even though they feel like they are coming apart at the seams, in actuality they are becoming less of a stereotype and more of an individual self. 

Therapeutic Questions for Dependent Pleasers

The therapist can frame the characteristics that comprise the thinking, feeling, and behavior of Pleaser-patterned counselees as questions, reflections, or interpretations designed to help them gradually understand and differentiate their core selves from the constraints of the pattern:

• Are you aware of an inner need to take care of others and make them feel loved?
• Whenever there is an argument do you automatically take a peacekeeping role?
• When you were growing up, did you feel responsible for making your parents happy?
• Were you discouraged from assertive behavior in the name of being a “good boy” or “good girl?”
• When faced with a decision do you usually worry about what other people will think?
• Do you feel guilty about spending time and money on yourself?
• Do you feel happy if people are approving of you—and sad, guilty, and anxious if they don’t?
• Do you have difficulty in understanding people’s motives, especially if they take advantage of you? 
• If someone compliments you, do you play it down and quickly forget it?

When the therapist stands in strong support of former people-pleaser counselees, they can draw courage to stand up for themselves, discover their authentic wants and needs, and negotiate more successfully with reality.

An effective book for Dependent Pleasers to read while in therapy:

THE SELF COMPASS

The Dependent Pleaser Pattern's Interior

Therapists encounter the dependent pattern frequently because people suffering from it are accustomed to seeking support and advice from others. The upper quadrants of the Self Compass are deactivated to such a degree that counselees possess little self-esteem (Strength Compass) or courage (Assertion compass point). An overly exaggerated Love compass point leads them to submissively seek approval by pleasing and placating, while an inflated Weakness compass point creates an undercurrent of anxiety.

The Pattern’s Interior

As in all personality patterns, the actualizing quality of a compass point is lost when taken to an extreme and left unbalanced by the opposite compass point. Therefore, even though dependent counselees want to give and receive love more than anything else in the world, genuine love—which requires the integration of Strength and Assertion with Love and Weakness—eludes them. The overblown Love compass point skews behavior toward self-sacrifice without self-preservation, submissiveness without assertion, and giving without receiving. Beneath their warmth and niceness lies a desperate search for acceptance and approval.

Rejection is feared more than aloneness, so the dependent person takes no risks toward individuality or independent thought or action that might lead to alienation from sources of nurturance.

Unconscious forces are set in motion by these dynamics. A dependent-patterned person can be seen as cooperative and gracious by others, yet has actually undergone identity foreclosure, meaning that self-development is arrested with a childlike focus on safety and gratification, much like a fetus needs the mother to feed it and provide oxygen through the umbilical cord. Not knowing they can cut the psychological umbilical cord by developing the healthy expressions of Strength and Assertion, they fear independence instead of acquiring it. Nor do they comprehend that healthy people would find them more lovable for replacing clinging vine dependency with authentic selfhood.

The over-exaggeration of the Love compass point alone strands a counselee in a sea of masochism. It’s not that dependent Pleasers like pain, because they don’t. It’s just that they don’t realize how this subservient pattern creates the fundamental reason for this distress: the pain of feeling constantly on edge about keeping people happy and the pain of needing other’s approval for whatever they do.

The dependent pattern exists as a pure prototype of fixation on the Love compass point, but can occur in combination with the adjacent compass points of either Strength or Weakness. When combined with the Strength compass point, counselees develop compulsive controlling features; combined with the Weakness compass point, the dependent develops avoidant depressive features. In all cases, however, the Assertion compass point is decommissioned.

For more on the Dependent Pleaser pattern see:

Compass Therapy In Action: Christian Psychology In Action