Single Session Therapy – Professor Windy Dryden

[Music] okay I'm delighted to be here I have a request and that is if you know the score of the Norwich Arsenal game please keep it to yourself I'm an avid Arsenal fan and I've got it on recall for when I go home so when I go home I'll probably get the bad news then but till then I want to be at least optimistic so today I'm going to be talking to you about single session and one at a time counseling or therapy and I will be later after the short break hopefully doing a demonstration of how I work within a single session framework and for that purpose I will require a volunteer from from one of your one of you good people who has a problem a an emotional problem not a financial problem on an emotion or behavioral problem that you would like help with and that you're keen to be helped today and that you don't mind talking about in front of an audience of your peers if you volunteer you get a copy of the an audio that I'll take with your permission and later on you get a transcript of the session so I cure you you can listen to me cure you and then read about me curing you that's the theory anyway so so I'm going to start with them a little a little competition because I do have a booklet that I'm hoping to sell you all at the end for a 4/5 pounds because I I get plagiarized sometimes with my powerpoint so so I'm a bit kind of reluctant to give those out but just to kind of get the the room warmed up I'm gonna give you opportunity to get a free copy of this so we're going to play I'll name that tune in so I'm not going to sing to you so don't worry about that I'm going to put the lyrics one at a time and your goal is to put your hand up if one you know the title of the track to the artist and three the film that it is in so no shouting outs is not too difficult if it turns out to be difficult I'll give you two out of the three but okay I'll make it easy for you you probably will get it from the first line which is the you know yes look if you had one shot yes madam please stand up have you got all three madam please come up [Applause] this woman is not my niece or my daughter or anything like that thank you yeah there you go write it up close let's just finish this off and I'll show you why I've chosen this is the signature tune for single session one of the time counseling look if you had one shot or one opportunity to seize everything you ever wanted in one moment would you capture it or let it slip which which is I think just a very nice way of encapsulating single session therapy so what is this thing called single session and one at a time counseling well it is an intentional endeavor the counselor the therapist and the client get together with the intention they both know that this that's setting out on on the on this short journey where the therapist seeks to help the client in one session but knowing that more help is available there are times when single session therapy is what i call ron seal which is means it does exactly what it says on the tin so for example the demonstrations that I do and the demonstration that I would do this afternoon will be a one session therapy I will only be speaking to this person once and once only but the one-at-a-time aspect if we want to emphasize that is that both parties set out with the intention of helping the client in one session knowing that more help is available now at the end of the session rather than book a session straight away another session straight away which is probably much more common in in other ways of working the client is engaged to in his encouraged to engage in a process of reflection of what they've learned digesting what they've learned taking some action letting time pass before they make a decision whether they need another session one thing in my practice that I found out that when people come to a session they have done much preparation for it and when they leave the session they they tend to go out in the world without much reflection so I think generally this is a good thing to encourage people to do to prepare for the session beforehand to reflect and digest on what they've learned to take some action and then to to actually wait and destroy before they make another appointment so single session therapy or counseling is a mindset and a mode of service delivery rather than a specific therapeutic approach so somebody who says I'm a single session therapist will be telling you about what mindset they hold under certain circumstances and the fact that they are involved in a mode of service delivery which office which offers a single session rather than an ongoing or a block as a matter of course it's not a specific counseling approach or a technique and it's based on the idea that a brief encounter between two people can be therapeutic okay I don't know if you've had the opportunity at the experience of meeting somebody and speaking to them and finding what they had to say helpful and I'm never seeing them again or even have the experience of actually meeting somebody and helping the other person in a brief period of time my own experience was that in 1968 67 68 I was listening to a radio interview with a man called Michael Benteen who was one probably most famous as a goon or had a TV program called the potty men I don't know if you remember the potty men those of you who could probably guess that this was M&M we'll probably think that we're all crazy because a different time I have a stammer you may be able to pick it up but at the time it's a lot worse and during that course of the radio interview Michael Benteen was sharing his experience than he had a stammer and that he said that what he found quite helpful was to adopt the attitude if I stammer i stammer too bad now that struck me at the time it was something that I then implemented and helped me quite a bit and so I was helped by very brief encounter virtual encounter because I never get to speak to meet him and it was about that portion was about a minute of an hour's interview so human beings are organisms that can be helped quickly and can help other people quickly now therapy length is expandable this is called Parkinson's law of psychotherapy it has got a a specific name and it is that therapy expands and contracts to the extent to which you assign particular time to it so if if you want to give people two years then and they you know embark on that then they'll take the two years if you give them or if you offer them something shorter they will tend to use the time that is available to them actually found this out as a university lecturer on my courses when at the beginning of my course I'd hand out something a coarse booklet which outlined the time in September students knew that they had to hand in their work by the end of April and so the end of April came and most people would hand it in about a quarter of an hour before the deadline and a few people would rush in papers going all over the place we were able to help them to calm down staple everything and so they accused me of being unfair and they needed more time so then I gave them an extra month and guess what happened exactly the same so if you give people a long period of time they will still procrastinate at the end of it so what are the favorable conditions that exist for single session and one at the time therapy to thrive first of all it's best done within a context where help is provided quickly in response to help being sought in other words it's help provided within the context of need rather than in the context of availability most times if you want psychological help particularly from a public or a charitable organisation you start off being assessed and then you will have to wait so you have to wait for an assessment and then you'll have to wait for therapy when single session therapy is offered within a walk in context you walk in to a therapy agency that provides the service you fill out a brief form and you're seen about 30 minutes later for a session of therapy there's no assessment no triaging just therapy so this is help provided quickly in response to help being sought it's important that both therapist and client hold realistic expectations about this work if both think that nothing can be done then nothing will be done however it's unlikely that in a single session we're going to bring about thought and a fundamental change in personality for example and so there is an example in literature where Scrooge went to bed a commercially mean-spirited old man and then after three single sessions with three single session ghosty therapists emerged completely different that tends not to happen so when both therapist and client hold realistic expectations about what can be achieved then that is a favorable condition so the client needs to understand what's on offer and gives informed consent this is not something which is foisted on somebody they get to choose whether they want to engage in this process or not and time between help seeking an appointment is used when single session therapy is done by appointments then when the appointment is made then the process of change is is underway because they are invited to engage in a process where they prepare themselves to get the most out of the session and feed back the information so that the therapist can prepare him or herself to help the person to get the most out of the session what normally happens is that when you ring up for an appointment you're given an appointment you may be sent information about the service but you're not really helped to engage in a process where time is used effectively so this is another important condition an organizational and a militated support is provided so you may be as a therapist very gung-ho rushed back to set up a mega session part of a service within the agency in which you work unless you've got the support of the organization and the administrative structure then your your enthusiasm will not will not really bear fruit so on the other hand unfavorable conditions is that there is a long gap between helped sort and help provide it makes no sense if there's going to be a long gap for a single session therapy to be offered help is provided after certain conditions have been met so if you're going to be if you like going for an assessment or where the person believes as and unfortunately increasingly cognitive behavior therapists believe that you can't do therapy without a case formulation look I've got nothing against pay's formulations perfect but not for single session therapy so if you believe that that can only a therapy can only be done on the basis of a case formulation that's not a favorable condition and case history quite often when therapists do a case history they gather a lot of information which is not used rather than do that ask the clients what do I need to know about your history that will be crucial for me to know in order to in order for me to help you today that's a much better question to ask time between an initial contact and how being provided is not used or not used well as I say nothing is you're not encouraged to do anything on the basis of having made a particular appointment now blocks of sessions are offered again I've got nothing against blocks of counseling sessions in fact if there is a good indication for a block of session to be offered that's fine I'm against the routine offering of blocks of sessions how many of you by the way are counselors in the audience just put your hand up okay now what do you think is the most common number of sessions that is offered in a block six it's six and then I asked a question why six people say because it's always been six you can ask the question about why 50 minutes why not more or less why once a week you know and so so so this this type of work does seem to challenge your number of cherished ideas so the more you have blocks the more you have waiting lists and the more and and the greater number of sessions within the block the longer the waiting list so blocks of sessions routinely offered are really not the great climate for single session therapy to thrive and and there is a lack of organizational and an administrative support now let me ask you a question do you know what the mode is do you know what mode is I'm not talk about fashion now on to what the statistical mode anybody like to give me a definition of the mode yeah the most frequently occurring number okay the freak the most frequently occurring number in a series now let me ask you a question what do you think is the modal number of sessions throughout the world internationally in public and non-governmental charitable organizations who who offer therapy what do you think the modal number of sessions is six is a famous six sorry three twelve ten okay let's see what the arcs are if shall we it's one followed by two followed by three right now this graph you can see it we just zip over here I've been told not to not to stand him I'm sorry so this is a data that comes from a very large data collection study in Victoria Australia in the early 2000s forty five between 40 and 45 have came from one session and then two it is over a three-year period there's a there's a brief recovery at twenty because all the data beyond twenty were combined okay so we have the situation that the most frequently occurring number of sessions that we have is one but the counselors and therapists are not trained in single session therapy you know it's a strange thing we're trained to see on the assumption that people are going to come back and you know and that's fine they do come back and we of course we need to hear to have the ongoing training as well but we don't get trained to see somebody just once and and guess what people say I yes but that's because they would dissatisfy they've dropped out they were they thought that they had lousy counseling well sorry to tell you folks but 70 to 80 percent of those who have one session are satisfied with that session given their current circumstances all right that does mean of course of 20 to 30 percent aren't so we we we don't wanna we don't we don't want to gloss over that but this finding has occurred like the other finding across different studies and populations clients are more satisfied with the outcome of a single session than their therapists are weird it's a bit like you're going to the dentist and after one session they helped you with a toothache and you were happy they say yeah but there was more work to be done yeah it was cleaning to me darlin now the third interesting foundation here is that therapist are not good at predicting who's gonna come back and who's not going to come back so you know when I was training we used to have these very I don't think they have them that much these days they used to have sessions whereby somebody was assessed and we used to have a discussion and so yes this person's got this problem that person I think they need to be helped by somebody of their own gender who's younger who practices this kind of therapy so we used to have great conversation about ten people there having great conversations and then the person didn't turn up again you know so again we're not good at that so all we know all we know is that when a client is in front of you all you know is that you're seeing them on that occasion at that point how do you want to spend the time do you want to spend the time doing a case history do you want to spend the time doing an assessment or do you want to spend the time helping them according to what they nominate to be to be the topic of help now let's suppose I I gave you the opportunity to have a single session with any therapist who's still alive that you really favor now who would it be with yellow if it's interesting how yellow keeps cropping up right you know hopefully when I'm when I'm when I'm in my 80s they'll say when he drive but it's yellow okay so you see okay so we we fly you over to see yel um and he does a case history are you happy no I actually some people say just to be in the same room it's sufficient but we'll kind of gloss over then all right so all you know when you're seeing somebody is that you're seeing them for that moment you don't know that they're going to come back or not so the crucial idea and the pinning help a single session therapy is helped provided at the point of need now this in itself is is based on a number of ideas and I'll just like to go over them with you the first idea is it's better to respond to client need by providing some help straight away rather than by waiting to provide the best possible help or at least you give them a choice you can say to somebody look I can see you for a single session of therapy now or you can wait four or five months for 12 sessions of this well well researched evidence piece of work him the choice but single session therapy is based on the idea is that when people want help help them okay because they're ready when they come along they're in a state of readiness and what happens generally is when people are in a state of readiness we ask them to wait for an assessment and then they get the assessment and we wait and the more they wait the more the readiness tends to drain away and so sometimes I've heard of cases where people get invited by phone for their long-awaited single sessions of therapy and they're forgotten about it because it's been so long providing immediate help is more important than carrying out an assessment or a case formulation therapy can be initiated in the absence of a case history we don't need to have a case history we can ask the question that I asked you earlier as you said earlier what do I need to know about that before we start about you before we start people have the resources to make use of help provided at the point of need if they did you single session therapy wouldn't exist but they do sooner is rather better rather than more is better we often seem to argue that more is better rather than sooner is better now the best way to see if a client will respond to therapy is by offering them therapy and see how they respond I so people say um who is most suitable for single session therapy and I'll say well let's have a single session of therapy and I'll tell you because I don't know therapy can be initiated and risk managed if this becomes an issue I'll take questions at the end thinking so here's the art the idea is that people say yeah but what about risk and I say well you know you do exactly the same once you've discovered in the course of of talking to somebody rather than them putting it on a forum somewhere talking to somebody that they they are rich you you you manage that risk in the same way as you would in any other context but you find out about it more quickly so appropriate therapy length is best determined by the clients we can come up with twelve sessions of cognitive behavior therapy for this disorder or that disorder but if the client doesn't turn up for them the client is actually making the decision about you know what is right for them when a person does not return for another session this may well indicate that the person is satisfied with what they've achieved although it may be the case that they were dissatisfied with the help provided as I said earlier now what are the goals of this work well I think as a therapist the goal is to help the client to get unstuck in some way I have a an image my signature image if the Eminem song was my signature tune my signature image is that somebody has got their car stuck in the snow and has tried to get themselves out of the snow by revving their engine all they do is to is getting herself deeper and so they can't get themselves out of being stuck on their own but together working with somebody to push the part out of the snow they managed to get unstuck and move and move away so and also to help the client to take a few steps forward which may help them to travel the rest of the journey without professional assistance is particularly useful to help the client address a specific concern is a it's another goal to help the client to see that they have the wherewithal to achieve their goals and this this way of working does really encourage people to identify and see the use of their own strengths and resources and to see and to help them to select a possible solution and to give them the experience of the solution in the session if possible through roleplay imagery to chair dialogue even by dancing apparently you can help people to help the client to develop an action plan and I meant to actually initiate that action plan by but by nominating a specific way of doing so so who is suitable for this work well when I first engage with this work myself and I became interested in this way of working [Music] probably ran about time I was retiring from goals for about 2014 although whenever I gave a lecture or on rebt I would always give a demonstration I I fervently believe if somebody is going to be talking to you about a therapeutic approach you know they should demonstrate that approach because it brings it to life and that's why I have always tended to do these demonstrations and also that's the way people tend to learn I learnt more from a video series where Carl Rogers Albert Ellis and Fritz Perls interviewed Gloria than I did about reading about all these approaches so I think it's some issues for now within this I first started to get my own ideas together and I thought okay let me engage seriously with the idea that there are indications and contraindications so I came up with a long list of indications and contraindications and then I thought in a blinding flash that what I was doing is coming up with a single session to see who is a who was suitable for a single session which is a bit ridiculous so if you are going to engage with this you want to do so but without that trap when people walk into a counseling service for help they're making their own decision what I do when somebody rings me up for an appointment I tend to list the range of services and have them choose and if they choose a single session I'll help them prepare to prepare for that and if it turns out that they need further help then we've discovered that as a result of the single session rather than engage in any pre session criteria which may be theoretically plausible but not necessarily specific to the person concerned now there's a place in Australia called the bouverie centre and they have what they call the embedded approach everybody who comes into the bouverie centre for help gets a single session because they know that about 40% will require no further help the rest of the people require so another session a little bit later or referral to a specialist service or some other type of help so they can actually save a lot of time and respond to people when they need to be responding by having what they call the embedded approach so let me talk a little bit more about what I spoke about earlier which is the single session at one at a time mindset it's based on the idea of celebrating the power of now and creating a realistic expectation for single session therapy I've got a clock in my office and instead of there being an hour of 1 2 3 4 5 etc it's got now now now now now to ring you know to remind me and to revive the client this all we have is now let's see what we can do now and to see if we can actually help you move on based on what we've discussed in the counseling session its client centered in the sense that it's focused on what the client wants to work on one of the things about therapy training is we're very good at finding of actually hearing underneath what what problems the client may have in fact when I was training we used to make a distinction between the presenting problem and the real problem and of course whatever the client would present therefore was not the real problem think about that for a moment how disrespectful that is it may well be true but to assume that it is so we unashamedly deal with the presenting problem why because that's what the client wants help with now counselors often say yeah but how do you engage people quickly through the work you can't do that the therapeutic relationship needs time to develop well it can do but in this type of work you can engage people very quickly one by focusing on what they want to achieve - by really indicating to them that you're keen to help them as quickly as possible and three to be as to be open and give feedback on honest feedback about various things so that it's done within the context of authenticity and we do have research that shows that the clients who get more out of single session work have a good alliance with their clients then client than clients who don't get as much out of the single session now Mik Cooper who you've heard this morning with his pluralistic hat on he has another hat which is the relational depth hat I don't if he spoke about that did he speak about relational depth today no okay so he's got this idea about relational depth and and counselors love that because you know we we like to have deep meaningful relationships with our clients now again I'm not knocking that because some people require that but not across the board not everybody requires that so I sometimes say to Mick why don't we do a joint joint session you can start off and talk about relational depth and I can finish up by talking about relational speed you know and sometimes where I'm brave I do say that single session therapy is the therapeutic version of speed dating where you very very quickly find out who you're not interested in right I don't offend any of you done speed dating but apparently that's what actually happens ask the client how best can you help them this is one of my favorite questions how can I best help you today is it by helping you to solve a problem is it just by listening to you is it just by encouraging you to get things off your chest with that interruption how can I best help you today and rather than ask the question the most frequently asked question what would you like to achieve at the end of therapy ask the client what would you like to achieve at the end of today a question that I like if you go home reflect on what we've discussed and you were pleased of what you've achieved what would you have achieved and I then help the person to achieve that if if possible now that doesn't mean that I'm prepared to go along with whatever the client says and because if sometimes the client nominates a goal which i think is is actually counterproductive I will not for my opinion if they're interested so it's not just about going along with what the client wants but if you don't go along with what the client wants then that's not a good thing either so the important thing is to agree on a focus for the session and then to keep on track one of the skills that we don't necessarily train people when we train counselors is how to interupt tactfully in fact we encourage not to do that you know quite often but we do that and what I often say is there may be a time during the session that I may have to interrupt you do I have your permission to do that so give a rationale asking for permission which is an important thing and to have good pacing you know a good single session therapists think that 50 minutes for example if that's the amount of time that you allocate to it is a long time rather than you know as other people say oh my god I've only got 50 minutes they tend to rush and if you rush you're not going to be a very effective single session therapist in my view a clarity of where you you're clear about what you can or you can't offer you're clearing your communications one of the things that I don't like doing is watching American films these days because they mumble and I say that good single session therapists do not mumble they're clear in their communication with people and they they make an emotional impact it's not done within the context of a drier theoretical discussion but it also isn't done within the context where the client is overwhelmed with ethics and if the client is overwhelmed with effect that might be an indication that they need more help than you can provide them within the context of a single session and therefore that's discussed with them as well another feature of this as I've mentioned before is important to help the client to identify and see that they can use their strengths which to address their problem and quite often people have gotten out of touch with arm recognizing that they have strengths and don't see how their pre-existing strengths can be utilized by themselves to actually help themselves and that's one of the things that we try to do and also to encourage the client to utilize their environmental resources people in their lives I had one experience where somebody I had a a pre-session telephone contact with somebody which is which is what I use in my own practice help the person to get the most out of the face-to-face session the guy then came over from the face to face session I think he lived in one of the Channel Islands the night before he met with his friends who hadn't seen for a while he they asked him why he was here he said quite openly that he was here to consult a therapist because he got stuck it's grieving for his mother and his friends would open up to him and say how they got stuck and that he found that enormous ly helpful and when he came to see me effectively he he didn't need the session because his friends were helpful to him so never underestimate the potential therapeutic power of the environment and helped the person to see that they can use people in their lives and other and other resources to help them finding out how people have addressed their problem and what the outcome of that is also an important part of the schema so what you want to do is to encourage them to distance themselves from strategies that they've tried that haven't been helpful and to capitalize on elements of attempts that have been helpful even though that haven't been fully helpful they may be incorporated into the work itself and the idea is you want to negotiate a solution to the problem if possible with the client based on an understanding of the problem based on what their goal is and based on what you've discussed in the session you can get together and actually help the person to see what might be a good way forward and to encourage them to rehearse the solution in the session to try it out how many of you have bought a car recently did you test-drive it why yeah exactly because you want to find out you know that the car suits you because you have you might have a great car but it may not suit you and so you may come up with a you know a great solution that's underpinned by a lot of research but it may not suit the person okay and quite often when one of my weaknesses in the past has been that you know in this work I want them to take away as much as possible this is based on my Jewish heritage in my mother because you should go and see my mother and if I didn't go home with the chicken three loaves of bread 14 scones or whatever it is my mother felt you know that she wasn't a good mother so the idea is the more you offer people the less they'll take away and if they take away one thing that's meaningful that they can put into practice that's what you want to help them to achieve and then you want to help them to develop an action plan and this is an important point encourage the client to summarize at the end what they've what you've covered what they're gonna take away don't summarize yourself because if you summarize yourself you don't know what they're going to be taking away you may be accurate in your summary from your perspective but you don't know what they're going to be taking away from their perspective and it's always best to know what they're taking away from their perspective at the end you want to tie up the loose ends and clarify the next steps important for the person to go away in an optimistic frame of mind some old research done by Jerome Frank in his book persuasion and healing and he argued that the the kind of a common feature of why people sought help was because they were in a state of of demoralization and so what we want to do is they in a sense help them to go away with a sense of hope that they can take what you've covered with them and they can implement implement it and to put it into practice knowing that they can come back and have more help if needed and to finally to a range of follow-up there are some purists in the field that argue that single session therapy should not involve a follow-up because it involves another contact and that that really goes against the spirit of single session work but in this day and age you're not going to get anywhere if you don't at least show people what the you know what people get out of this work so ladies and gentlemen let me tie this thing together by trying to show in a way that a single session work has actually a pluralistic features in terms of what Mick Cooper was talking about I've written a short blog on there on the pluralistic practice website on the pluralistic features of single session therapy and also in terms of dance therapy when I first met the woman who was to become my wife I knew after one dance that I was going to marry her so hopefully before we break for tea or coffee I've given you an opportunity and some time to ask awesome questions so thank you very much well if there is a risk of suicide and self-harm that's where you start because you know the well-being of a person is actually you know a priority but if people find it difficult to nominate what strengths they have I ask the question if me if they were going for a job that they really wanted and there are asked to nominate with or with genuineness what strengths that they had would they say that they didn't have any and that's doubtful because because they would really want the job so if you ask that question you can actually you know get some sense but you know risk you know if if the course of any therapeutic encounter you get a sense that the client is at risk then that pre heard that predominates this gentleman has been dying to ask a question for ages yeah so we're going to give him the opportunity nice to meet you one-stop-shop yeah I was gonna say that yeah well I mean you can offer it privately but you can offer but you know what I'm trying to do is to encourage you know or to interest the NHS to to actually kind of at least pilot it and so and so the the the agency that this is offered is increasingly in universities they don't have to pay for it and also increasingly in certain non-governmental charitable organizations which again are low cost so so so financially this not be you know this should not be a particular burden the other thing about the finance is that you know we often as therapists charge for per session we don't necessarily charge per treatment see say you could actually charge per treatment if you want to you know charge more in possession I don't know but financial you know should not be a particular impediment to answer your question okay right well can we get more and more have you got any other doubts reservations no okay well we'll go on well I do have a preference that we stop using one stop I want to put a stop to the one stop see what see what you started you see ah well the longest that I've found exists in the literature is three hours that's the type of work that's done by a man who pioneered it called Aust OST who pioneered a one sink a one session treatment of specific phobias and I was always envious of I've asked because asked oh s T invented a therapy called one session therapy OST so I kind of thought well if I was going to do that for windy what would it be and it would be wait I need Dryden yes but it doesn't quite have the same ring to it so hit they do three hours kind of but they're quite clear about you know what's going to happen in that three hours it's gonna be a very uncomfortable ride you know if you're going to really hold spiders in your hand at the end of it you know in your spider phobic you know you can have to so people will only go in for that if they're prepared to put up with that level of discomfort the shortest time that I have done a single session were three minutes 30 seconds so but that was under you know specific circumstances where somebody was desperate to be helped you know just as I was going away so now please please come three minutes thirty seconds so you're going to get more than that yeah so you're not limited you know according to how you work there's no specific my own approach is to say I'll see you up to 50 minutes because if I've helped somebody after 40 minutes I'd only spend the next you know 10 minutes undoing that because they're expecting 50 minutes so up to 15 minutes is what I would say yeah well okay you've asked two separate questions and there have been cases where I have been contacted by therapists saying look I have a client I'm seeing them in ongoing normally psychodynamic work but you know they have this particular anxiety would you prepared it to see them for a single session and I say yes if everybody agrees now your second issue is that if people have multiple problems then quite often being able to focus on one and getting something out of that gives them a sense that they can they can address the other particular problems you're not going to necessarily be able to just that's all of them of course although what I do is try to help the person to reflect on whether what we've discussed can be generalized to other issues that they have okay [Music] [Music] yeah the moment has been missed yeah I think the two reasons are one we we tend to be wedded to the idea of assessment before therapy and secondly we don't have a tradition in this country of walk-in therapy now we may have a drop-in services but if you look at the drop-in services they tend to be not all of them but they tend to be signposting services where somebody comes in meets with somebody and that person helps them to see where to go for their problem rather than be helped with their problem so I would love to have the opportunity to pilot this stuff in a you know whatever setting you know you would like me to come and in a piloted because you know this I mean I share your frustration as well going on in America at the moment with Tony Robbins yeah yeah being in front of psychologists okay okay good yeah well I'm a great believer of how do you get confidence is it is to do things and confidently until you learn from your mistakes and you then you know to develop an opportunity to kind of have the confidence it's the same thing is when I had a stammer and I you know the idea of standing up in front of a you know a group of people for an hour and speaking I'd rather you know throw myself off of a building you know but but when I did it I did it and competently I learned from my experience and then that's the way to develop confidence be nice to have confidence before doing things okay yeah well I mean that's one of the that's one of my mentors both in general and in single session work as well so can we have one more question because then yeah over there okay so anybody with the right mindset from any specific approach can practice single session therapy and if anybody writes a manual for how to do single session therapy I will be the first to tear it up because there are good ideas but against the step-by-step manualized in any treatment in fact in in CBT there is we have a concept for departure from the manual when it's called therapist drift and if you heard about that and so I'm so against the manualized of of of treatment I've I actually decided a while ago to to set up a group came home I called the Drifters and we had our first session up on the roof and our second session under the boardwalk and on that groan I think it's a good opportunity to have a break and then we'll come back and I'll show you how at least how I do it [Music] you

Channel: The Weekend University

Views: 16,693

Keywords: the weekend university, psychology lectures, psychology talks, psychology lecture, Single Session Therapy, Windy Dryden, Brief Therapy, Short Therapy

Id: iT_XmacU83U

Length: 62min 9sec (3729 seconds)

Published: Sun May 17 2020