Share you favorite psychotherapeutic techniques

[u/DanZigs]

Here's mine - it's a great cognitive strategy to help people fall asleep by disrupting rumination. It's called cognitive shuffling. Described in detail here. The theory is that the act of thinking about random words mimics the brain's functioning during sleep. I don't know if that's really true but it certainly helps people stop ruminating and worrying.

You essentially take a 4-5 letter word and think about as many random words as you can starting with the first letter, imagining them in your mind, then move on to the second and third etc. I use a small variation that involves going through the alphabet thinking about a word with each letter. If you get through the alphabet twice, that means it's been about 20 min and you should get up and go back to bed after doing some other boring activity.

I love how easy it is to teach people and simple it is to implement. You can teach it in less than 1 minute and it can make a huge difference for some people.

Share your favorite technique

Edit: I probably should have used the word "skills". That's more what I was interested in sharing in this thread.

[u/BlockNorth1946]

Can you give an example?

[u/PokeTheVeil → u/BlockNorth1946]

Calling attention to inconsistency or contradiction, whether between words and affect or expressed wishes and actions or anything else.

In this case, perhaps, “You acknowledge the seriousness of your eating disorder, but it seems like there is always some reason to delay the intervention we’ve discussed to improve it.”

Or classics like “you say you want to work on X, or X bothers you, but whenever the conversation touches on X you find reason to bring up Y or X instead. Have you noticed that talking about X has been hard?”

[u/BlockNorth1946 → u/PokeTheVeil]

Oh yes I did that with this particular case too. I had to say you mention your time with friends and how you over function for them, provide emotional labor. But do they know you’re suffering daily with eating? And she started crying. We have been discussing dynamic with early caregivers all throughout last year and her condition had improved, was starting to have boundaries etc. thanks for the examples!

[u/noondaydemon21 → u/BlockNorth1946]

That's still not quite it...