Stress Management
September 4, 2020
In the world of counselling and therapy, functional analysis is what happens when the client and counsellor are comfortable with each other and it is time to come to grips with the main issues. It’s a way to help the client name and then describe their problem in terms of the “three systems” of thought, feeling and behaviour. It also explores context (with whom, and when, and where, is the problem better or worse?), history (when did it start?), and triggers (what kinds of thing make this happen or make it a lot worse?). It can involve asking a lot of questions, but at the end of it, the client feels really heard and understood, with his or her words, thoughts, and dilemmas sensitively captured, checked, and then presented back. How do we know this? Because clients in the UK, where this style of assessment is most widely used, have been asked in surveys to rate their experience, and their response is overwhelmingly positive.
Getting an understanding of how all the parts of the problem are operating leads into understanding how the problem is being maintained and seeing what changes can most easily be made to alter the whole picture and radically improve functioning. This can really get therapy off to a flying start.
