I’ve been listening to the Gottmans for hours on the CD as they talk at the 2010 Imago conference. I’m finding it very useful, perhaps their research is somewhat sociometric! I appreciate mostly the language and processes they add to the field:
- Soft start
- Four Horseman
- Repair
- Questions
- C L Alt
And lots more…
… more to integrate/translate into psychodrama interactive relationship therapy.
I’m really interested in warm up. Thinking as the Dialogue as a tool for repair is useful. That also makes more of an event than just good communication, its therapy. The dilemma I had re the self help and therapy (see post about Stolp) is reduced.
So to see the Dialogue as repair is a warm up and also leads to the need to create a good warm up to it. … Its all in the warm up.
In my draft handout for the training I have this:
- Appreciation
- Collaboration
- Intention
- Identify feelings under anger & frustration
- Yearning
- Self soothing
- Kindness
Warm up is a central concept in psychodrama, it means ready, willing and able. It can describe a state, eg they were warmed up to fighting, for example ready, willing and able to fight! Or as something we can create, individually or as a group. For example the director with a few crisp instructions warmed people up to being aware of their physical sensations, and a willingness to name them. The director can play a big part in creating a warm up. As a therapist every move we make helps create what will come next. How then does a the couple prepare to work on their relationship? How can we assist them in their warm up? It is complex in that if they have a constructive warm up we could just go with it, tweak it enhance it. Or if they are full of blame and stonewalling then there are many ways to assist the couple to cut across that warm up and engage and prepare them couple to be more conscious and constructive. It might take a while!
(I began this post a while back and it is related to the last one on warm up)