We just completed the first module from the Provocative Therapy online training course. This is truly an international training with live attendees from USA, India, Australia, Japan, Wales, Germany, Holland, Ireland, UK Dubai and Lebanon. The focus on module one was to explore the provocative process and how radically different it is from any other approach. I’m mindful that after 18 years of studying Frank’s work which later became the inspiration for Provocative Change Works, this way of working is obvious to me, but very different to others. This means starting from basic principals and making sure those attending from across the globe had a good understanding of the core elements.
One of the handouts – “Starting a Provocative Therapy session”
Starting a Provocative session
Frank Farrelly’s Provocative Therapy approach is fundamentally different to traditional talk therapy and personal change work. In most therapeutic and coaching exchanges, the opening question is almost always
“What do you want?”
This opening question can on the surface seem to be entirely reasonable, but it also sets a session frame that is not always entirely helpful.
- Firstly, many clients don’t know what they want as they are too immersed in the problematic way of thinking and feeling to feedback any useful information that forms the starting point for a session.
- The traditional strategy of setting up goals for a client can unwittingly become a limiting factor for the client. Often the client is stuck in a “digital, logical, sequential mode of thinking” and this approach does little to change that.
- The coach or therapist conducts the session “as if talking to an old friend” “Provocative” does therefor not mean “aggressive” although the coach or therapist will challenge the client’s current thinking.
- Rather than asking “What do you want” the coach or therapist asks
“What’s the problem”
The coach or therapist will then continue to encourage the client to maintain the problematic behaviour. This means that the old patterns of thinking that have maintained the “stuck state” are now challenged in a new way, often for the first time.
The coach or therapist is only working in “the here and now” and responding to the client rather than engaging in pre-determined techniques and/or engaging in unhelpful analysis which often does nothing useful or at worst actually reinforces the problem state.
Video deconstructions and live demos
During these modules we will be looking at unreleased Frank Farrelly sessions and deconstructing how Frank is working with each client. This requires a lot of paying attention as Frank worked in a multi levelled manner, which is far more complex than conventional coaching and talk therapy. I also did two live demos with members of the group and these will be transcribed for homework before the next module.
I noticed the comments section missing on the page “Caveat Emptor re Provocative Therapy training – Krish Srikanth” particularly after I pasted a link yesterday with my side of the story. Could you kindly restore that back with my comments, or do you plan to only have your views there?
Thanks for this idea on Provocative Therapy training online, I am working on a similar module from scratch. Could you kindly check if there is any plagiarism on my current webpage or if it looks like my original work? I would appreciate you putting another post about it, the publicity really helps.
This site is for those professionals who have basic good manners and respect towards Frank Farrelly’s work. Unfortunately you fail on both counts and of course your own admission of personal laziness is also not a great indication of professional standards
” I lifted most of the above material from a site on provocative therapy since I was too lazy to write the copy”
Seeing as you have already admitted that your primary reason for posting here is for your own publicity, I think we’ve collectively had enough of this attention seeking behaviour
As for “publicity” I think there’s already substantial publicity online about yourself, but probably not the publicity that you would wish for and a number of colleagues have already pointed out that there’s no sign of any original work, but rather lazy attempts to copy other’s efforts with such laziness that you don’t even bother to write your own copy.
For those interested in the UK Farrelly sessions, all those seminars were recorded and will all be released in their entirety for PT students in forthcoming trainings 2022 and 2023.