Satir Therapy Flashcards
What are the underlying assumptions in Satir’s model?
- Learning as a basis for human behaviour
- Life is always positively directional for survival
- Expression towards stressors are based on what we have learnt
- Challenges and difficulties present losses to the clients
What are the four meta-goals in Satir therapy?
1.Higher self-esteem
2.Becoming client’s own choice-maker
3.Greater self-responsibility
4.Congruence: sense of coherence and unity within ourselves and with others; have emotional honesty
4 ‘A’s
What are the therapeutic goals of Satir therapy?
- Awareness: greater self-awareness and aware of context of other people
- Acknowledgement: to admit that what is going on within them IS going on within them
- Appreciation: let people realise their inner resources and strengths, and realise they are deserving of good things
- Action: Choice-exploration, decision, commitment and change
What is the counselling process like?
- focus on the internal mental and emotional patterns used in processing messages
- explore family rules (what people had followed for processing information)
- analyse coping styles
- explore alternative ways to perceive oneself, and change patterns to more healthy ways
What is the family reconstruction process like?
- Client’s life history: construct a family map, family life chronology and wheel of influence
- Sculpting of family origin
- identify perceptions and feelings when under stress
- focus on major learning within parent’s family of origin
- verbalise own unmet expectations and yearnings
- express feelings, identify strengths and weaknesses
- accept self and parents, similarities and differences, parents as human beings and build self-esteem
With Satir’s model in mind, what kind of questions can we ask in the initial session?
- separate the person from the problem
- how is the problem impacting the client? how does the client feel about the problem?
- what is the impact of the problem on interpersonal relationships?
- what is the function of the problem?
- what needs to happen before client can change?
OCFFPEYS
What are the components of Satir’s personal iceberg metaphor?
- Observed behaviour
- Coping stances
- Feelings
- Feelings about feelings
- Perceptions
- Expectations
- Yearnings
- Self - internal resources
What are examples of observed behaviour to look our for?
- The context/storyline/presenting problem
- E.g. addictive behaviour, insomnia, divorce
What are the four coping stances when under stress?
- Blaming
- Placating
- Super reasonable
- Irrelevant
Balancing the self, others and context
What are feelings? What are examples of feelings to look out for?
- Feelings are emotional reaction to our stressors
- Our feelings belong to us, but we are not our feelings
- Every feeling has a message or wisdom
- E.g. What is your anger telling you about what you deserve but did not get? What does this anger mean to you? If anger can speak to you, what would it say? How would you like to feel differently? What would help you?
What do feelings about feelings mean?
- Our decisions or judgements we make about our feelings
- Based on what we learn about them in the family
- E.g. client feels overwhelmed when confronted by mixed feelings of anger, guilt and helplessness
What do perceptions mean?
- How do we see ourselves, others and the situation
- What we make of others’ perceptions of us
- Belief systems, logic, reasoning
- E.g. what are some perceptions you have of your child? how do you think your perceptions might be affecting your child?
What kind of expectations do we have? What happens with unmet expectations?
- Expectations of (1) ourselves (2) others (3) others have of us
- We often notice expectations when they are unmet. The impact of unmet expectations surface through our thoughts and feelings
- E.g. what are some hopes you have for yourself/your child?
What are yearnings?
- Always positive and universal
- Deep longings underlying our expectations
- Examples: Love, peace, recognition, significance, freedom, creativity, spontaneity, etc
- E.g. Expectation to do well stems from yearning for significance
- Problem arises when we look to others to fulfill our yearnings; thus, we need to learn to do it for ourselves
What are internal resources within the Self?
The qualities and resources that make the person unique and gives the person the ability to grow and live beyond just surviving
