Favorite Counseling and Therapy Homework Assignments

Howard G. Rosenthal, Howard G. Rosenthal

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781135195946
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Psicologia
• Subtopic: Consulenza psicoterapeutica

This companion to Favorite Counseling and Therapy Techniques contains more than fifty handouts and homework assignments used by some of the finest and most renowned therapists in the world, such as Albert Ellis, William Glasser, Richard B. Bolles, Allen E. Ivey, Marianne Schneider Corey, Gerald Corey, Maxie C. Maultsby, Jr., and Peter R. Breggin. Several new entries have been added to reflect the newest advancements in the counseling field. This is sure to be a highly useful and insightful read for any practitioner wishing to learn new techniques to benefit their practice and patients.

Chapter 1
Crime Scenes and Crazy Cola Cures

An Introduction to the Wonderful World of Psychotherapeutic Homework

Howard G. Rosenthal

Psychotherapy can begin in the office, but it must be lived outside of the office. Homework while therapy is going on is a good way to get this process started.

—Dr. William Glasser, Father of Reality Therapy, Personal correspondence to Dr. Howard Rosenthal, July 28, 1999

Sarah prided herself on the fact that the men who patronized her retail establishment referred to her as the “Merchant of Venom” when they thought she wasn’t listening. Like so many other therapists, I had spent countless hours counseling abusive men, but this client was the exception: Sarah—by her own admission—was a male batterer, and proud of it. Her psychiatrist referred her to my aftercare group after discharging her from the local stress unit. Sarah had been admitted after she brutally beat her husband Don with a wrought iron lamp. Don was treated at the local emergency room for some nasty cuts, scrapes, bruises, and abrasions. This was not the first time Don was the recipient of a vicious assault.

When I asked Sarah why she had attacked her husband with a wrought iron living room lamp, she glared at me and barked back, “Look, he stupidly came home with an ice cream treat and didn’t purchase one for me, okay?”

Had the couple tried marriage counseling? “Many times,” Don replied when I saw him for an individual session, “but I always paid for it after the sessions.”

“Paid for it,” I asked, “How so?”

Sarah would nitpick at every statement Don uttered during the session that was even remotely critical of her and then often would physically assault him. Pots and pans often were cited as the weapons of choice in addition to the aforementioned living room lamp.

“I love her,” he sheepishly confessed. “Nevertheless, I may need to leave her soon. To be frank, Dr. Rosenthal, I’m afraid for my life.”

Her intense hatred toward males was evident in all of her transactions in our therapy group. Let me assure the reader that my therapist status did not render me exempt from her caustic wrath.

Therapeutic dialogue with this bright, well-educated, attractive 34-year-old revealed that she behaved in a similar fashion outside of the confines of her marriage. No inappropriate hostility, I might add, was ever shown toward females either in or out of the group therapy setting.

On a number of occasions Sarah would “hit the sleazy local bars” as she so eloquently put it, for the sole purpose of picking a fight with the meanest-looking fellow in the establishment. Sarah went in “packed” with a concealed knife or an ice pick just in case she needed a little extra firepower. This behavior hardly could be considered commensurate with her status as an upper-middleclass businesswoman who refrained from drinking alcohol.

Interestingly enough, the fact that Sarah physically and verbally abused men was clearly an ego syntonic disorder. That is to say, she didn’t really feel her behavior was abnormal nor did I ever hear her express a desire to make changes in this respect.

Sarah did want therapy, nevertheless, and she wanted it in the worst way. Her panic attacks were predictable and unrelenting. Every night she would wake up at almost precisely 3:50 a.m. She would then hyperventilate, sweat profusely, and experience profound cardiac awareness. A sense of intense terror would invade her entire being, and this woman who was so mean, tough, and arrogant during her waking hours would be overcome by panic and a fear that she was dying. Night after night this horrifying scenario manifested itself.

Sarah had been treated by myriad highly creative inpatient and outpatient therapists to no avail. Helpers of every persuasion sporting MDs, PhDs, MSWs, DSWs, MEds, EdDs, and PsyDs after their names graced the pages of her record. Although I marveled at many of their insights and interventions, the end result was that the anxiety monster always was ready to flash its ugly fangs as the hands of the clock slowly made their sojourn toward the 4 a.m. mark.

A host of psychiatric medicinals and natural remedies failed to ameliorate this horrendous condition.

Had she seen a female therapist? “Yes, I’ve seen a number of them. They were very nice, but nothing changed.” So much for that hypothesis.

Was she ever hypnotized? “Yes, many times.”

Biofeedback? “Get serious, of course.”

I must confide in the reader that despite a wealth of experience and training, I did not have the foggiest notion of how I was going to help this woman.

When I implemented cognitive strategies, they were generally met with, “Don’t tell me how to think,” whereas my empathy responses usually yielded something like, “Don’t tell me how I feel.”

I whipped out the miracle question and was told by my client, “Save your brief strategic solution oriented stuff for someone who also believes in Santa Claus, Rosenthal. Been there, done that, and it didn’t do squat.”

Then it happened. Like a scene from a Freudian epic, it was just the therapeutic break we needed, or so I thought. After a session in which we spent an inordinate amount of time dwelling on the specifics of the client’s childhood, she went home and vividly relived a repressed memory that I was convinced had monumental therapeutic value.

Sarah recalled that when she was approximately 6 years of age she and her father lived in a small apartment located upstairs from a tavern. (Sarah’s mother died from unknown medical complications when Sarah was just an infant.) Sarah remembered that she was sitting in the stairwell that went from their apartment to the sidewalk in front of the bar. One night as she was sitting on the steps playing with her doll, an inebriated man who was leaving the bar charged up the stairs and announced that he was going to rape her. Sarah didn’t truly comprehend what the man meant, but she knew it wasn’t going to be a positive experience. As the man raped her, Sarah repeated again and again in her mind: “Where is my daddy? Where is my daddy? He’s downstairs in the bar getting drunk. He should be here to protect me. He should be here to protect me.”

If this were a Hollywood movie, Sarah—armed with this insight—would have mounted her horse and ridden off into a picture-perfect sunset to live happily ever after. Real life, nevertheless, dealt her a hand that was far cry from the psychodynamic Tinseltown version.

In reality, Sarah’s nightly panic attacks continued with a vengeance, while her hostility toward men, including her husband, exacerbated until it had reached a new zenith. Several of the men in the group confided in me that—like Sarah’s husband Don—they, too, were afraid for their own physical safety.

I knew my time was running out. I could not ethically keep Sarah Crown (not her real name) in my group much longer. Although my psychotherapeutic style typically is biased in the direction of cognitive-behavioral strategies (or cognitive-behavioral after an initial period of person-centered counseling to build a relationship with the client), I decided to stick with the possibility that her repressed memory was indeed significant and that, like the proverbial iceberg that sunk the Titanic, only the tip of the tragedy was evident.

I asked Sarah if the apartment she lived in growing up and the adjacent tavern were located in our general geographical location. Sarah stated that it was less than a 40-mile drive and that she had not been back to the “scene of the crime” since she moved out of the area. She was approximately 8 years of age at the time.

“Sarah,” I said, “I want you to return to the ‘scene of the crime’ as you put it. I want you to carry a notebook with you and write down any thoughts, feelings, and memories you experience. I don’t care how silly or outlandish the memories seem at the time. I also want you to ride around the neighborhood, scope out the school you attended as a child, and visit any other points of interest where you spent time growing up. Furthermore, I want you to keep the notebook with you after the visit at all times until you return to this group. It is especially imperative that you keep it next to your bedside in case you have a significant dream. Just make sure you stay out of physical danger and promise me that no matter what happens you won’t go into the bar for the purpose of starting a fight with one of the male patrons!”

“Frankly, Dr. Rosenthal, your ‘returning to the scene of the crime’ homework assignment strikes me as incredibly stupid; nevertheless, since I’ve tried almost everything else in the world— including a few other homework assignments from my previous therapists that were almost as dumb as yours—I imagine it won’t kill me to try one more thing.”

I had to admit that Sarah certainly had a way of keeping her therapists humble.

Sarah returned to her next group therapy session with her notebook in hand. Somehow she even looked different. Something had changed. What she told the group next held us spellbound. She had returned to the scene of the crime and jotted down a few seemingly insignificant notes. That night, however, when she woke up for her nightly panic attack, she relived the final chapter of her repressed memory. My clinical hunch was correct. Sarah had observed merely the tip of the iceberg. What lurked beneath the surface held the morbid secret to the final piece of this enigmatic psychic puzzle.

Sarah’s new memory began where the initial saga left off. Yes, the man from the bar had raped her. Afterward, the poor child curled up in a fetal position, clutching her doll for comfort, as tears streamed down her face. Simply put, she was in a state of psychological shock. Finally, after what seemed like eternity, she saw her father walking up the stairs. Her father represented security—s...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• About the Editor
• Chapter 1 Crime Scenes and Crazy Cola Cures
• Chapter 2 Fright Night
• Chapter 3 Homework Assignments
• Chapter 4 Homework in Counseling*
• Chapter 5 Fifteen Recommendations for Implementing Counseling and Therapy Homework Assignments