268 – Recovered Memory Therapy

Post-Modern Counselling Theories – The ABC Grief Model

In Episode 268 of the Counselling Tutor Podcast, your hosts, Rory Lees-Oakes and Ken Kelly bring us this week’s three topics:

• Firstly with ‘Theory in Practice’, we look at what is post-modern counselling and its theories.
• Then in ‘Practice Today’, listen as Rory and Ken discuss recovered memory therapy.
• And lastly in ‘Practice Matters’, Rory speaks with Mandy Gosling about the ABC grief model.

Post-Modern Counselling Theories [starts at 02:25 mins]

For anyone that hasn’t previously looked at post-modern counselling theories, it can be difficult to grasp straight away. Listen as Rory and Ken have a discussion about the beliefs and approaches that make up post-modern counselling:

• The post-modern method of counselling focuses on solution-focused and narrative-focused ways of working with a client:
  • Solution – helping clients to find and work towards solutions rather than looking into the past.
  • Narrative – encourages the client to build their own stories and reconstruct their sense of selves.
• For post-modern counselling, there isn’t any real sense of any personality theory.
• A departure from traditional ideas.
• Deconstruction – thinking about how we believe ourselves to be and how we got there, creating our own truths.
• Not referencing what has come before.
• Disproving biases held before.
• Asking fundamental questions – is what I believe true, or it something I’ve always been told?
• Moves away from a fixed idea of personality.
• Constructing a reality between you and the client and seeing how you can move forwards.

Recovered Memory Therapy [starts at 17:20 mins]

In this section, Rory and Ken discuss recovered memory therapy, and some of the conversations that surround its use with clients:

• Therapist input – there is a chance these memories could be fabricated based on words said, or suggestions made, by the therapist.
• Implanted false memories.
• Recovered memory therapy is linked with hypnosis – a state where someone is more susceptible to suggestion.
• Sometimes traumatic memories can be locked/hidden away from us, but there is more often than not at least vague detail still in memory e.g. the build up to, or the aftermath of, the traumatic event.
• EMDR – use of timelines. By putting what happens in a timeline, you can unscramble memories and help the client make more sense of events that took place; however, this deals with things the client knows, and the memories they already have.
• Tread lightly with clients who believe they have repressed memories – they are vulnerable to suggestion.
• The difference between implicit and explicit memories.
• Look for things that are tangible – even if these memories are just in snapshots.

ABC Grief Model [starts at 34:37 mins]

In this week’s ‘Practice Matters’, Rory speaks with Mandy Gosling about the ABC grief model.

The key points of this discussion include:

• Some people don’t realise their difficulties are being caused as a result of their unresolved childhood grief.
• It can influence a person’s relationship with other people, their self-esteem, and possibly their career.
• It could be the cause of feelings of anxiety, e.g. health anxiety.
• The counselling should be carried out in a gentle and paced way – going straight to the grief could traumatise the client. Bring it into the conversation using gentle questioning.
• Second generation unresolved childhood grief – can result in under/over parenting and therefore show its effects in the next generation.
• Highlighting how it manifests and the effects and influences – showing the client why they have these feelings and help them to understand it is a normal response.
• Long-term work – it’s important to be gentle as you are quite often working with a child in an adult’s body. The client’s developmental stage was disrupted/ruptured, resulting in a child suspended in time.
• You’re reintegrating the person whilst also tackling the grief.

Links and Resources

• Counselling Skills Academy
• Advanced Certificate in Counselling Supervision
• Basic Counselling Skills: A Student Guide
• Counsellor CPD
• Counselling Study Resource
• Counselling Theory in Practice: A Student Guide
• Counselling Tutor Shop
• Facebook group
• Website
• Online and Telephone Counselling: A Practitioner’s Guide
• Online and Telephone Counselling Course