Choice Theory (17 page)

The list is endless, and the severity of the conflict is proportional
to the strength of the conflicting pictures. When both pictures are strong, the conflict is very painful. The severest conflicts, which have been grist for plays and novels since the Greek tragedies, are between love and loyalty. Should Anna Karenina stay with Vronsky or return to her husband and son?

What makes conflict so severe is that there is no immediate solution. But there may be something you can do even though it does not solve the conflict. My great teacher, Dr. Harrington, said, “If it’s at all possible, when you don’t know what to do, do nothing in either direction.” At least, you won’t make things worse. In the end, time will move the conflict in one direction or the other, and the decision will become less painful. But there are many times you can’t wait; if you don’t decide, one of the pictures may be lost forever.

Another solution is good counseling. The counselor can’t tell you what to do, but he or she can frame the options. In doing so the counselor may be able to help you see that what seem to be equal choices are not in fact equal at all. And while you are talking to the counselor, time is passing. The talking helps you to stand pat for a while. But many times you decide what to do. You settle for one side and give the other up. Now you are miserable because the other side is still in your quality world. The suffering won’t end until you remove one or both sides from your quality world. The most common thing to do when you are in conflict is to depress strongly, and this may provide you with both the incentive to see a counselor and to stand pat. Seeing how down you are, the people around you may encourage you to seek help, giving you the support you need to go.

What the counselor may do, which I have done successfully in helping people in conflict, is to lead the conflicted person in the direction of a third option, one that is not in conflict and may lead to satisfying the same need or needs that were frustrated by the conflict. In this chapter, I show you how I used the reality therapy I introduced in chapter 4 with a forty-five-year-old woman who was suffering from her unsuccessful effort to resolve a severe conflict. I take you, word by word, through the first counseling session and,
as I go along, explain what I did as I did it. By doing so, I give you direct access to the counseling process. By now you know enough choice theory to understand what I was trying to do.

Choice theory provides a framework for reality therapy, the counseling method I developed in the early 1960s. But it is only a framework; it does not tell me what to say. Each client is different, and I have to figure out how to tailor what I say so that it best serves the client. As I have already explained, through the use of choice theory, which explains how we function, I know a lot about any client I see. As with Todd, even before I saw the client discussed here, I knew that she had a severe relationship problem. I also knew that she was choosing to depress and that to help her, I would have to persuade her to make a better choice. As you will see, she needed to focus on getting something she wanted that was not in conflict. As long as she was in the conflict, nothing she chose to do would resolve it.

Most people who need help are similar to this client. They can’t afford months and months of counseling. Because so many people would benefit from counseling if they could afford it, it is important that the time for counseling be reduced. With the addition of choice theory to the reality therapy I have taught and practiced for years, a lot can be accomplished in ten sessions or less.

Most of what takes so much time in traditional psychotherapy is eliminated in the way I counsel. Specifically, what can be eliminated are the following:

1. There is no need to probe at length for the problem. It is always an unsatisfying present relationship. Usually, the problem is obvious, but even so, sometimes the client denies that it is the case. If I accept that denial, I may spend a lot of time probing for something else or someone in the client’s past. I should be able to handle that denial and get to the current relationship in the first session.

2. Since the problem is always in the present, there is no need to make a long intensive investigation into the client’s past. For example, if a client never learned to trust people because he was
abused as a child, it would be impossible for him to have a satisfying present relationship. However, if too much time is spent on the past, he may be misdirected and believe that he cannot solve his present relationship problem unless he understands what went wrong in the past. A long examination of the past may even lead him to believe that so much happened there that he will never be able to be effective in the present. It is much more important for me to tell him the truth: The past is over; he cannot change what he or anyone else did. All he can do now is, with my help, build a more effective present.

3. In traditional counseling, a lot of time is spent both inquiring into and listening to clients complain about their symptoms, the actions of other people, the world they live in, and on and on—the list is endless. The more they are encouraged or allowed to do so, the more important the complaints become and the harder it is to get to the real problem,
what the client is choosing to do now.
Choice theory does not deny that clients have legitimate complaints, but it teaches that the only persons we can control are ourselves. We can’t control anyone else, including our counselors, with these complaints. Reality therapy emphasizes what clients can do to help themselves and to improve the present relationship that is the problem. Doing so not only saves a lot of time but focuses the counseling and makes it more effective.

But finding the present relationship, avoiding the past and excessive complaints about the present, and sticking to what clients can do not only shortens therapy, it also helps clients understand that they are free to lead more effective lives. They are not free to have all the freedom they may want in a present relationship, but free to forget the past and stop blaming others, which is taking up a lot of time that would be much better spent making more helpful choices now in their lives. To do so, I begin to teach the clients choice theory, which they can then use to make better choices and learn to handle many problems that might have lengthened the therapy. It’s kind of a therapeutic stitch in time that saves nine.

To set the stage, imagine that in 1965 I had an office in a suburb
of Des Moines, where a woman named Francesca
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came for counseling. I began with a little speech to help her settle down. I could see she was nervousing, and I think what I said helped.

“I have your name and address, and that’s all I need to get started. On the phone, you told me you’ve never been to a counselor and you were a little nervous. The best way to deal with that is for you to start right in and tell me the story. Don’t worry that I’ll judge you. I won’t. Everyone who comes has a story. Please tell me yours.”

Quite often (especially in the fifties and sixties), people feel ashamed about coming to a counselor, as if they should be able to take care of this themselves without help. They worry about being judged inadequate, so I tried to dispel that concern.

Francesca then started to tell her story:

“About six weeks ago, I died. You are looking at a dead woman. I thought about killing myself, but then I realized I didn’t need to, I’m already dead.”

For me this is a new opener. This woman is seriously depressing and is trying to impress me with how down she is. She succeeded; I am impressed. Usually, I try to inject a little humor when people start out so far down, but I don’t think I’ll try that now. She may take it the wrong way. But part of her choice to depress is a test. She’s trying to see how I deal with it. Will I get nervous and show upset or will I be strong enough to deal with her misery? Right from the start I have to communicate that I appreciate that she is suffering, but I’m quite adequate to help her deal with her pain.

“Francesca, you drove fifty miles for a good reason. I’d like very much to hear your story.”

“I don’t know where to begin.”

“Begin anywhere, it doesn’t make any difference.”

“I’m married and I have two teenage children, a girl and a boy. We live on a farm in Madison County. Up to six weeks ago I was OK, not happy but OK. I’m Italian, I guess you can hear my accent. I married Richard while he was in Italy with the army just after the second World War. I came here as soon as he could make arrangements. He’s a good man, a very good father. We’ve lived on that farm all our married life. The farm does OK. We aren’t close, but we get along. But then, God it sounds so banal, about six weeks ago I met Robert. He was in the neighborhood and drove up to the house for directions. He was looking for a bridge. He said he was a photographer and had an assignment to take pictures of some of the old covered bridges around where we live. I was there alone, Richard and the kids had gone to Illinois for the fair. They’re 4H; they go to all the fairs with their animals. … Look at me, I’m a farmwife. I was in an old cotton house-dress. I’m forty-five years old, look at my hands, look at my face. I looked a sight.”

“I think you looked OK to Robert.”

Francesca burst into tears and sobbed uncontrollably. Of course, she looked OK to Robert. She was a good-looking woman. Even if she wasn’t dressed up, a photographer would see that in a minute. I could see that she had made an effort to look good for me. Whatever she may want to do with her life, her looks would be an advantage. I waited while she cried for a few minutes, and then I interrupted. She was suffering, but it would do no good for her to cry too long. Her tears would take up too much of her time. If crying would do any good, she wouldn’t be here. What I’ll do with her is what I usually do, try to go on with the counseling while she is crying. She came for help, and I owe it to her to get started. Once she starts talking, she’ll be OK.

“Tell me more of the story; you can cry while you talk, you came here for help.”

“I’m ashamed.”

“Tell me about it.”

“It’s a short story. I fell in love with him. We had four days, and then he left. And now I’m dead.”

“You sent him away?”

“I couldn’t go with him. I thought about it. I wanted to, but I couldn’t just up and leave my husband. My kids. How could I? I don’t see how anyone could do that.”

Now we see the oldest conflict in the world, the conflict between loyalty and love. She is being torn apart by it. There is nothing I can do immediately to help her resolve it. Only time will resolve it. But I can help her take a good look at it and maybe help her choose to do something need satisfying while she waits that has nothing to do with the conflict.

“It was hard, but you made a choice to stay. And you made a choice to come here. I’ll bet this wasn’t an easy choice either.”

In recognizing that she made a difficult choice to come here, I’m appreciating the fact that she is an independent person who is used to trying to solve her own problems, not to reaching out for help, but that her decision to come here may have been a good choice.

“You’re right. I hung up that phone after I dialed you a half a dozen times before I let it ring. Some woman at the church had mentioned you about a year ago. For some reason your name stuck in my mind. But now that I’m here, I keep thinking, what for? What can you do? What’s the sense of going through it all again? It happened, it’s over, he’s gone. I’m not here to ask you how to get him back.”

The reason my name stuck in her mind is that she was unhappy long before Robert came into her life. I won’t mention this to her now, but I’ll keep it in mind. And as she began to talk, she stopped crying. That’s good. She asked an important question, “What can you do?” I have to answer it.

“I’m here to try to help you deal with what brought you here. I have helped a lot of unhappy people and I should be able to help you. All you have to do is to talk with me, think about what we both say, and be honest. It may be difficult for you. If I get off base, tell me. This much I know. He’s been gone for six weeks. You haven’t been able to talk to anyone about what happened. You’re in pain. You need to talk. As long as you keep talking, listening, and thinking, I can help you.”

That was the truth. Robert is not in the past; he is very much in the present. If she talks, listens, and thinks, I will help her. I think it’s important to tell this to clients as soon as possible.

“But I feel so hopeless. I feel dead.”

“Think about this: Suppose I could wave my magic wand and whatever you had with Robert would never have occurred. You’d be the same woman in the same marriage on the same farm as you were before he came to your door. Would you like me to wave the wand and make it all disappear?”

As bad as she feels, I have to establish that there was some good in what happened. If she’s “dead,” at least she didn’t die in vain. If she can tell me that she doesn’t regret what happened and I don’t put her down or criticize her for what she did, she will see that I am on her side. The only use I have for what I hope will soon be in the past is if there is something good in it.

“No, no, I’d never give up those four days. They were the best four days of my life. Please, don’t even suggest taking them away.”

“I was hoping you’d say they were good. These things happen, but there is usually some good in them. If there weren’t, you wouldn’t be so upset. Sometimes the woman who’s left behind is so upset that she doesn’t think what happened had any good in it. And sometimes there isn’t, and she hates herself. I think the way you feel about what happened is better. You say you’re dead, but when you think about him, you seem alive.”

“If I didn’t think about him, I’d really die. I think about him all the time. I keep seeing him, feeling him. That’s why it hurts so much. That’s why talking about him hurts so much. That’s why I was so nervous about coming here. I knew I’d have to talk about him. But I also knew I desperately wanted to talk about him.”

Here, you can clearly see the thinking component of the total behavior of depressing. How could she have normal brain chemicals thinking and feeling as she does?