Answers to “Intro to Coherence Therapy Part 1” Comprehension Check:
1) “In the thinking of Coherence Therapy (CT), symptoms are assumed to be adaptive and responsive expressions of unconscious emotional learnings.”
TRUE.
2) “The CT therapist assumes that building skills and reframing symptoms are optimal approaches for relieving the client’s symptoms.”
FALSE.
EXPLANATION: Building skills and reframing are examples of counteractive techniques that stay focused on the level of the symptom rather than working to discover the underlying constructs of meaning or knowing that support the existence of the symptom.
3) “The therapist’s impulse to fix, or to push against the client’s presenting symptom is considered to be a helpful driving force in the Coherence Therapy approach.”
FALSE .
EXPLANATION: To practice Coherence Therapy it is necessary to overcome what Ecker and Hulley have called the “counteractive reflex”. Rather than focus on making the symptom go away, we immediately start to help the client recognize what makes sense of continued existence of the symptom.
4) “Counteractive approaches can be useful to manage symptoms, but those symptoms tend to reactivate in stressful or triggering situations.”
TRUE.
EXPLANATION: Coherence Therapy assumes that if all we do is counteract the client’s symptoms, those suppressed symptoms are likely to continue to emerge in response to stressful situations.
5) “From the Pro-Symptom position, the symptom is experienced as compellingly necessary to have and to maintain, and somehow begins to makes sense.”
TRUE.
EXPLANATION: This is often greatly relieving to the client, who begins to realize that the continued existence of the symptom does not mean he or she is irrational or crazy, rather begins to recognize the symptom as an unconscious solution to an unconscious problem.
6) “Symptoms are necessary to have according the client’s implicit knowing of how to…"
a) avoid suffering and have safety, well-being and/or a sense of things being right in the world
7) “Symptoms are…"
b) an adaptive response to unconscious “knowings” about self and/or the world held in the emotional (limbic) brain
8) “Clients at first present their Anti-Symptom Position (ASP) as…”
b) a way in which they are inadequate, broken, a mess, crazy, irrational, or some other negative self attribution
9) “Clients first discover their ‘Pro-Symptom position’ when…"
c) the previously unconscious but compelling necessity of the symptom becomes apparent to the client
10) “The ‘two sufferings’ are…"
b) the suffering due to the symptom that the client enters therapy consciously aware of, and the suffering that the client has been unconsciously but assiduously avoiding by maintaining the symptom