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 

The Self Compass Explains Personality Disorders

How does the Self Compass help you understand personality disorders?

Here's how. The LAWS of personality and relationships form four universal compass points of Love and Assertion, Weakness and Strength.

A personality pattern is a set of manipulative behaviors stemming from unconscious assumptions that directly affect how you perceive, think, feel, and act. Whether you became this way through how you were parented or other factors, you can only change a personality disorder through accurate insight and new choices.

There are primarily nine patterns that hamper personality growth, shown as they are located on the Self Compass. They are serious enough to undermine your attempts for love and happiness. But you can change them more easily than most people think. Self Compass knowledge is the key.

These descriptors are psychologically accurate, yet easy to remember because in the compass model, we pair the clinical name of the disorder with a descriptor that anyone can understand. You can think of these terms as temporary descriptions of a person’s behavior until that you make new choices that reflect personality balance and constructive change.

• Those stuck in the Dependent Pleaser and Histrionic Storyteller personality patterns exaggerate the Love compass point. Too much love makes them compliant or attention craving. They don't realize that they lack a stable identity within themselves. 
• Paranoid Arguer and Antisocial Rule-breaker patterned people are stuck on the Assertion compass point. Too much assertion makes them argumentative or exploitive. 
• Avoidant Worrier and Schizoid Loner patterned people are stuck on the Weakness compass point. Too much weakness makes them withdrawn or detached. 
• Narcissistic Boaster and Compulsive Controller patterned people are stuck on the Strength compass point. Too much strength makes them arrogant or compulsive.  
• Borderline Challengers flip-flop from the Top Dog patterns of Strength and Assertion into the Underdog patterns of Weakness and Love and back again. This unstable volatility makes the borderline person believe that everyone else is responsible for their troubles, when the truth is their own personality pattern is to blame.

Most people lay claim to several of these patterns at some point in their lives. But the Self Compass both diagnoses the problem and shows you how to fix it. Whatever compass point your personality is stuck on determines your path for getting unstuck. If you are stuck in the Worrier pattern on the Weakness compass point, you take growth stretches primarily toward the opposite compass point: Strength. Over time, you move from self-defeating thoughts like “No one feels as scared as I do. I may as well give up,” to “I might blow this, because I’m human. But I’m doing it anyway.”

In our book The Self Compass my wife Kate illustrates the Controller Pattern this way:

I hand Dan my printed-out chapter to edit. He picks up the red pen and starts in, crossing out here, adding words there, deleting whole sentences. I bite my tongue to keep from protesting. My shoulders tighten, my jaw clenches, and I watch him like a hawk, ready to swoop down in defense of a brilliant phrase that must be kept just so. 

Even though I know objectively that Dan’s editing greatly improves my writing, when the Controller pattern has the upper hand, I feel driven to present him with a draft so perfect he won’t need to change a thing. 

Without a compass correction, this inner tension would spill over into our relationship, making it difficult for Dan to give honest feedback for fear of upsetting me. Then we’d both be held hostage to the harsh taskmaster of perfection.

Personality patterns left unchecked can undermine and even destroy relationships. They hamper your ability to love God and others as yourself, keeping you from fulfilling Christ’s purpose for your personality. 

To find out more, read:

THE SELF COMPASS: CHARTING YOUR PERSONALITY IN CHRIST

Christian Personality Theory Interprets Boasters and Controllers

Strength-stuck persons are forced to live a lie that is apparent to all around them. They do make mistakes, do show errors of judgment, and do miss the mark of their own high standards. It’s just that they never admit it.

Scripture makes a prediction about strength-patterned people: “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18).

Haughty Spirit

When Boasters and Controllers really grasp the good news about the grace of Jesus Christ, they can lay down the burden of pride and begin enjoying life and people. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:8-10).

Though it is hard to believe and doesn’t have a counterpart in other world religions, the Gospel proclaims that individuals are made right with God and equipped for service to others through the redemptive atonement Christ has provided in his death and resurrection. There is no self-merit involved.

Saved by God's Grace

To the Boaster, God declares, “But let those who boast, boast about this: that they understand and know me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight” (Jeremiah 9:24).

Boasters can invite Christ’s love to shine through their personality and human nature, surrendering the need to gain everyone’s admiration, and praying for forgiveness about the many times they slighted others when striving for superior status. Over time, their self-importance is transformed from self-glorification into glorifying Christ and serving others with a humble heart. “Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves” (Romans 12:10).

Persons outgrowing the Boaster pattern can enjoy a new connection with humanity, one based on empathy instead of condescension, humility instead of hubris. Now the door of the heart can open to concern for others' well-being, consideration for others' feelings, and helping others rather than feeling competitive toward them. 

Helping Others

Controllers face a different set of growth challenges, since their proneness to legalism renders them resistant to grace and love. They want to impress God with their meritorious achievements. Grace seems to diminish what they are most sure of: how conscientious they are. 

But Jesus sees deeper into their hearts, understanding how Controllers must smash the illusion of their good intentions and perfectionist rule-keeping in order to let go of their judgmental attitude. 

So Christ says to the Controller, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you” (Matthew 7:1-2).

Repentance takes the form of giving up the need to always be right, to control every situation, and to constantly prove one’s capability—all preludes to developing a more humble personality, whose spiritual core expresses an interpersonal, rather than egocentric sense of self.

In an invitation that seems tailored to the Controller, Jesus says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30).

"Come to me, you who are burdened"

And now there is room for the Lord to introduce play, enjoyment, laughter, and fun into the lives of former Boasters and Controllers, the Holy Spirit helping them to feel God’s extravagant love, and Jesus showing them firsthand the unforced rhythms of grace.

For more, read:

CHRISTIAN PERSONALITY THEORY:

A Self Compass for Humanity 

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 

Borderline Personality Disorder Origins

The borderline personality pattern is formed in a family dynamic where frequent boundary incursions and crises make it difficult for the child to establish a reliable identity. Rather, the child experiences confluence with the parent, in which thoughts and feelings are all tangled into knots. It seems impossible to establish where one’s identity begins and another's ends. This amorphous merging prevents the child from successfully developing either attachment or individuation. Lacking sufficient self-boundaries, the child is stuck in an undifferentiated limbo. Communications are taken personally and reacted against, rather than responded to or understood.

Family Chaos

The child interprets these garbled communications as his or her fault or the fault of others. Parents may act out through incessant arguing, drunken fury, physical combativeness, suicide attempts, or incestuous abuse. The child learns to become center-stage in this chaos, discovering how to create a similar chaos in others.

Family members perceive attempts toward autonomy and individuality as betrayal, and punish the child accordingly. With no Self Compass for balance, the child remains dependent upon family members while feeling rage against them for the invasion of one’s personhood. Inner pain that erupts in volatile explosions seems perfectly normal.

CLINICAL LITERATURE

Schneider first employed the term “labile” to accentuate the volatile nature of the borderline pattern. Indeed, this term is more descriptive than “borderline,” capturing the pattern’s predictable inconsistency.

Stern characterized this pattern as a “borderline group of neuroses” exhibiting contradictory traits: narcissistic grandiosity combined with feelings of inferiority, and psychic rigidity combined with inordinate hypersensitivity. Stern coined the term “psychic bleeding” to convey the anxious desperation that drives this unstable pattern. 

Schmidberg viewed the borderline personality as “stable in his instability, whatever ups and downs he has, and often keeps constant his pattern of peculiarity.” More recently, Kernberg has described the pattern as a “mutual dissociation of contradictory ego states.” 

COMPASS THERAPY INTERPRETATION

Borderline Self Compass: Dr. Dan & Kate Montgomery

The self-system of the borderline pattern fluctuates drastically as emotional explosions are interspersed with the boundless 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 Worrier or Pleaser patterns. This sends others an SOS signal that elicits a desire to rescue the borderline patterned person from depression or loneliness. But since one demands assurance that is absolute and comforting that is perfect, these demands can never be met.

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

“Just look at this pizza. The crust is thick! You know I like thin crust. Some treat you brought me. You did this just to make me miserable. Well, you succeeded admirably. I’ll never trust you again!”

• Extreme lability of affect, erratic shifts between neediness and aggression, and a lack of basic trust make the Self Compass highly unstable. 
• Such instability is accentuated by the ever-present but contradictory feelings of dependent anger and anxious superiority toward others. 

For more read:

Compass Therapy: 

Christian Psychology In Action 

and

Compass Psychotheology: 

Where Psychology & Theology Really Meet

 

Compass Psychotheology

Counseling the Paranoid Personality Disorder

Treating the paranoid personality disorder involves embracing a paradox: the best therapeutic strategy is to give up the need to help them. 

Why? Because their radar will translate any conscious or unconscious need of yours as a devious attempt to influence them. If you want to help them, they will see this as condescension—that you’re really only interested in taking their money or building your ego at their expense.

In other words, they come in armed to the teeth to defend themselves against dependence upon you or learning anything from you. Fritz Perls called this the bear-trapping game, by which he meant that aggressive-oriented counselees lay out traps that spring into action when you least expect it. 

Springing A Trap

They may cajole you with questions about your qualifications, your personal life, or your intentions for them, then place your words or actions into a distorted context that is aimed at your humiliation. Or they may jump on a phrase you use and put you on the hot seat.

You would not be human if you didn’t feel the occasional sting from these machinations. Yet you can foresee and avoid most traps by:

1. Developing modest expectations for the therapy.
2. Engaging the counselee at a more objective than subjective level.
3. When appropriate, uncovering the structure and function of the paranoid Arguer pattern with calm aplomb. 
4. Equally important is keeping the motivation for every aspect of therapy squarely on the counselee’s shoulders. 

One might wonder why paranoid Arguers are willing to seek therapy, let alone pay for it.

The most common answer is that they are motivated to recruit a mental health professional into agreeing with them that someone in their interpersonal world is stupid, devious, and argumentative because they are not doing what the Arguer wants them to do.

If they can convince you to agree with them that the other person (usually a spouse, child, or work associate) is guilty and they are innocent victims, then they can use your expert opinion as a hammer for battering the other person.

By thoroughly mastering the paranoid mentality, you develop immunity from various paranoid tactics that could otherwise leave you rattled. 

If you know their pattern as well as they experience it from inside themselves, and yet don’t use your knowledge to blame and attack them, they detect that they can’t manipulate you. Their trust and respect

for you as a therapist increases.

Here are a few points to keep in mind:

1. Paranoid Arguers are stubborn and proud of it. 
2. Their views are always right. 
3. Criticize them and they become vindictive. 
4. Threaten them and they become stronger. 
5. Attack them and they make vengeful plans to make your life miserable.

Paranoid Arguer

 

Their thought patterns run along these lines:

• People can’t be trusted because they are devious and will side against you.
• I am honest in saying that my philosophy of life is how things really are.
• I must test those around me to see if they are loyal.
• Other people want to interfere with my freedom, put me down, and discriminate against me. 
• I have never received the good treatment that society owes me.
• If people seem friendly, they’re only trying to manipulate me.
• I need to be constantly on guard against adversaries who want to take advantage of me.
• I am hard-nosed and proud of it.
• People make me angry because they are untrustworthy and exasperating.

For more on techniques for working with the Paranoid Personality Disorder, read:

COMPASS THERAPY:

Christian Psychology in Action

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