Introducing
Resilient Self Therapy

​​Elaborating the Self-Concept

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To increase-value efficacy, focus is on elaborating the self-concept. After assessment this is almost always the first phase of therapy because a more complex, realistic self-concept, in which the person becomes aware of personal strengths, weaknesses and values is needed in order to  successfully resolve barriers to self-efficacy.  Elaborating the self-concept is distinctly different to challenging negative thinking styles or learning to think positively.  It is based on the way development occurs in living things by starting very simply from or of two joined cells that become gradually more complex over time. Think of the way a tree develops from an initial shoot to a trunk and branches up and out continuously during its life span.  Our brains and ways of anticipating do something similar in response to the increasing complexity of life experience.  Very often however our conscious self concept lags behind and does not adequately represent the complexity of the person our enjoyable activities show us to be.  The processes we enjoy in life disclose our strengths, natural aptitudes and the things that matter to us. In fact these things are so ingrained that they operate unconsciously, on auto pilot and we take them for granted without realising the difference they would make if were were consciously aware of them.   So self elaboration is about making the client's unconscious strengths and values conscious so that the self-concept becomes both positive and more complex. This greatly increases value-awareness and expectations of their achievability.  A more complex selff image also enables a person to pick and choose to focus on expressing different facets of their self to match changing life circumstances.  When life events destroy one aspect of the self or capacity to experience something that really matters a person with an elaborated self-concept can draw on other strengths and orient living towards other things of personal value. Thus an elaborated self become resilient.  The person may still experience temporary loss of meaning while they reorienting. As Eric Klinger (1977) postulated such temporary losses are a type of grief response which may resolve over time but will certainly resolve provided the self concept retains the awareness of strengths which form the framework of the person's life.  in this respect the conscious self concept is like a building's framework. For happiness is matters little whether the framework is covered in gold or wood.  Living to express who you are and what is important to you is to live with meaning and purpose.

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 Resolving Barriers through Elaboration

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In practice there is often movement back and forth between self elaboration and elaborating beliefs that constrict the self such as "my work depends on others approval" or "valuing your self is arrogant' . Sometimes such beliefs are so strong that they prevent progress on self elaboration.  When this is the case and indeed any work on restraints proceeds by elaborating ideas born from past experience rather than challenging them.  A good analogy that helps clients understand the therapy process is the analogy of a coin which contains all the value accumulated from life experience.  But what brings people to therapy is that the coin is not useful in correctly anticipating the dilemma they are facing. It  is like a coin with too much value to be used at the supermarket.  The solution is not to discard it. Therapists adoption to do so will be strongly resisted. rather the task of therapy is equivalent to exchanging the coin for usable coinage.  No value is lost instead it becomes usable to correctly predict and deal with all kinds of real life situations. That is what is meant by elaboration of restraints.

 

Reprocessing trauma

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Work on traumatic barriers to progress almost always needs to be deferred until the conscious self is strong enough to withstand even discussion about trauma.  Through its very nature , unresolved trauma is avoided both consciously and through automatic brain responses but without eventually integrating and reprocessing this avoided material it will keep the individual trapped in meaninglessness.  Furthermore, because trauma involves intense emotional activation it cements associated anticipations and stops the hypothetical tree from becoming more complex.   This is why clients often can know there are more hel[ful ways of thinking but do not feel different. In these cases trauma reprocessing strategies are needed to reorganise the way trauma is saved in the brain by associating it with elaborated meanings for the self-concept.anticipations.

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Spontaneous change

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As the above processes proceed, my clinical experience is that clients do not need to be challenged to start living towards personally valued self-congruent goals. They make this change spontaneously and come to therapy sessions, reporting the evidence. Such changes are signs that therapy is no longer needed.

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