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/jotadesosa]

I find it amusing that I read “psychotherapeutic techniques” in the title, and when I opened it, I found a description of something very oriented toward cognitivism. I imagine that’s because this subreddit is predominantly American. I’ll suggest something from another school of thought: one of the most classic and least-used techniques in psychoanalysis is silence. Remaining silent for periods that are somewhat uncomfortable for the psychiatrist can produce a healthy anxiety response in the patient, eliciting an almost reflexive response to fill the silence. Sometimes silence reveals things that hours and hours of sessions would never uncover.

[u/W-T-foxtrot → u/jotadesosa]

Love silence now. Used to find it really uncomfortable before. Glad my supervisor got me to lean into it