Attention Switching

Attention switching is the term used to describe any process whereby the person sets off to increase the amount of Free Attention they have. This involves focusing away from Distress in some fashion. This can be done by paying attention to a neutral but demanding stimulus, or by focusing on positive stimuli. Which technique you select at any one moment will depend on how much Free Attention you have available and how much you need to gain--enough to permit Discharge or enough to carry on with a task.

The techniques are arranged such so that the amount of Free Attention needed to undertake the task is likely to increase as you go down the list. They can be used as a sequence in counselling or at other times. All descriptive and memory tasks should be said out loud to the counsellor as this increases the attention needed. This does not however mean explaining things so that your counsellor understands what you are talking about! You are doing the exercise for you, and not for your counsellor. Any compulsion to explain or entertain your counsellor is part of a pattern.

Attention Out to the Environment

• Notice your immediate environment. Describe your counsellor, the room, look for six blue objects, ten different colours.
• Look at yourself from the outside. Follow your breathing with counting, count your pulse rate.

Physical Actions Demanding Some Attention

• Walk round the room placing your feet one immediately in front of the other.
• Balance on one leg.
• Build a tower with bricks.

Simple Mental Tasks

• Count up to a hundred in fives, or three hundred in fifteens.
• Say the alphabet backwards.
• Count the number of objects on shelves.
• Name all the objects beginning with "T" in the room.

Positive Memories

• Remember things you did earlier in the day which weren't distressing; give a literal description.
• Random pleasant memories, from any time in your life, in any order. Make a list and move on from one memory to the next quickly; if you hang around you are likely to surface something that was upsetting.
• News and Goods: Search for and list recent events that have been positive for you. These events do not have to be world shaking, anything which was pleasurable in a minor way--food, flowers, smiles--as well as any major ones. Again, do not hang around with any particular one.
• Positive themes in your life. (This begins to move into celebratory areas and this is fine, there is no hard and fast boundary.)

A note on jargon. Attention Switching techniques are also known as Present Time techniques, since Free Attention is the attention you have available for the present, as opposed to attention caught in Distress which is past.

There are two major uses of Attention Switching techniques in co-counselling:

A. To achieve a Balance of Attention in order to Discharge.

B. To return to an undistressed frame of mind at the end of a session. Attention Switching is useful any time you get distressed in your life--not just in counselling. It is also something you can use to help others--in family life, in learning situations, in upsetting situations, and whether they know about co-counselling or not.

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