CELEBRATING
This strategy involves people learning to appreciate themselves, their abilities and skills; learning to talk and think without putting themselves down or judging themselves to be inadequate. This goes against cultural instructions about not boasting and most people find this hard. Celebrating is needed in building a strong sense of self worth. Becoming more aware of strengths and skills means they are more available and increases effectiveness in tackling life situations. People whose sense of being worthwhile is tied up with what others think of them and who cannot do what they want unless they have the agreement or liking of others, are not likely to be effective in solving their own problems or in helping others.
ATTENTION SWITCHING
This strategy covers any technique for switching out of distress and into positive feeling states. Feelings follow attention focus, so Attention Switching exercises call for focusing our attention outside ourselves or on positive memories. These techniques are not trying to convince you that the world is a pleasanter place than it really is. Events are neutral--it is feelings which assign value to them. The same events can be viewed as an exciting challenge or a depressing problem. (And wearing shit-coloured spectacles is actually more debilitating than wearing rose-coloured spectacles.) When a person can choose what they do with their attention it means that they can choose when to tackle their Distresses, rather than get stuck in them at inconvenient moments.
DISCHARGING DISTRESS
By Distress we mean negative feeling states which are not serving an immediately useful purpose. Such feeling states do not just exist in the mind; they include changes in the body: chemical changes, temperature changes, physical tensions. As long as these physical changes exist the feelings are experienced. However, minds and bodies can return to a resting and alert state naturally, following appropriate action to deal with the situation which triggered the feelings (fight or flight in the case of fear). Many threats, however, are psychological and the feeling states evoked can stay around a long time, unless discharge processes take place.
Such discharge processes are sometimes called "catharsis," though this term tends to be associated with traumatic events. Discharge refers to any physical release of emotion which results in the person being returned to a state of physical relaxation and mental alertness with their attention no longer being trapped.
The conditions for discharging distresses do not readily occur in most peoples lives--particularly in our land of the stiff upper lip. This is the reason why in co-counselling, time is set aside to work on Distress and Patterns in a way that sets up the optimum conditions for success.
TARGET PRACTICE
This refers to anything you do that is practising new actions, thoughts, and skills that you want to be able to apply in your life. This will include ways of applying the other three strategies in order to remain free of unwanted Distress and to deal with it quickly and effectively when it hits. New thoughts and ways of acting frequently become apparent after Discharge. Target Practice techniques are to help maximise the use of the work put in to trying to change in our co-counselling sessions. These techniques can include roleplaying future events and action planning. A further important point is that you will learn skills in co-counselling sessions which are useful for the rest of life.
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