Balance Therapie
Balance Therapy
Kolya Schweppe, HPP, Sprachen/Languages: Deutsch, English, 中文
Heilpraktiker für Psychotherapie und
Hypnose Therapie
Naturopath for Psychotherapy and Hypnotherapy
Positive and Transcultural Psychotherapy
(according to N. Peseschkian)
“The pessimist always sees the problem in the opportunity; the optimist the opportunity in the problem.” – Nossrat Peseschkian
“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power...”
“...Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the entire world belongs to you.”
-- Laozi/Lao Tzu/老子
“In Positive Psychotherapy, treatment is not limited to the immediate professional-patient relationship, but includes self-help strategies and preventative educational approaches. The ‘positive approach’, in a way the mantra of the entire method, sees the patients not only as bearers of disorders but also as bearers of the ability to overcome them. The therapist’s task is to strengthen these abilities in them, in which stories can serve a great role” (1).
Positive Psychotherapy -
a Short Summary
Positive Psychotherapy belongs to the humanistic psychodynamic psychotherapies. Originally, it was called “Differentiation Analysis” until Nossrat Peseschkian further developed and established it under its current name in 1977. He defined his method as “a psychotherapy method based on depth psychology from a transcultural point of view with new techniques, in the sense of a conflict-centered and resource-oriented short-term psychotherapy.”
In practice, it is an easily understandable, clearly structured short-term psychotherapy that considers both conflicts and resources, conveys psychosomatic concepts in a comprehensible and humane way, and at the same time provides helpful tools for self-help.
An essential aim of this method is its applicability across cultures and social backgrounds. It is based on transcultural observations made in over twenty cultures, which led to a model that recognizes universal abilities, values, and conflict themes.
Central to the method are the three main principles of Positive Psychotherapy:
* The Positive — the Principle of Hope
* The Content — the Principle of Balance, with its four life areas:
Body & Health | Work & Achievement | Relationships & Contact | Meaning & Future
* The Strategic — the Principle of Counseling, a structured therapeutic procedure that activates solutions and strengthens self-efficacy
Therapy in this approach means not only looking at symptoms, but especially at a person’s abilities, potentials, and inner resources. Stories, metaphors, and intercultural perspectives play an important role in helping clients develop new viewpoints and activate inner resources and solutions.
“Various therapy methods incorporate stories, metaphors and proverbs into their approaches to improve the treatment of patients. Of particular importance here is the Positive and Transcultural Psychotherapy (founded by Nossrat Peseschkian, 1977) which uses storytelling as a novel way of enriching therapy” (1).
1 - (Farid Peseschkian and Diego Torres, Therapeutic Narration - Anecdotes & Aphorisms for Psychotherapy and Self-Help, 2024).
picture source: https://www.positum.org/history/
The Principle of Hope
(The Positive Image of Man).
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new sights, but in looking with new eyes.” - Marcel Proust (in Living a Fulfilled Life von Dr. Richard-Christian Werringloer)
The principle of hope means trying to see a disorder in its broader context, to understand its meaning, and to address its positive aspects.
Accordingly, illness is reinterpreted. Examples:
*Depression is the ability to respond to conflict with the deepest emotionality.
*Panic attacks are the signals of your inner alarm system wanting to warn you that something is going wrong in your life.
*Anorexia is the ability to get by with little food and to identify with the hunger of the world.
By doing this, a change of location occurs. Illnesses thus have a symbolic function that therapist and client must first recognize together. The client learns that his symptoms and complaints are signals to bring his four areas of life into a new balance.
The Principle of Balance:
conflict dynamics and conflict content
Despite cultural and social differences and the uniqueness of each person, it can be observed that all people resort to typical forms of conflict management that focus on four areas of life when coping with their problems. The 4 areas of life (Body/Health; Work/ Achievement; Social Life; Future/ Spirituality) complement each other. A one-sided, chronic overemphasis on one area of life inevitably leads to problems in other, equally important areas. Temporarily there can be an overemphasis, but not permanently. If areas of life are unilaterally emphasized over a longer period of time, your life gets out of balance.
Despite cultural and social differences and the uniqueness of each person, it can be observed that all people resort to typical forms of conflict processing when coping with their problems.
When we are distressed by stressors or microtraumatization, we can express our conflict situation in four typical forms of conflict processing.
"If you're serious about changing your life, you'll find a way. If you're not, you'll find an excuse." - Jen Sincero (quoted in Living a Fulfilled Life by Dr. Richard-Christian Werringloer)
Actual skills (activating resources)
The conflict content (e.g. punctuality, cleanliness, orderliness, politeness, trust, time, patience) is described by primary and secondary skills based on the basic skills of love ability and knowledge ability. This can also be understood as a differentiation of the content of Freud's classical instance model.
The principle of counseling:
The five stages of therapy and self-help
The five stages represent a concept of Positive Psychotherapy within which therapy and self-help are closely related. The patient and his relatives are informed together about his illness and individual ways out:
in Figure 5 Stages:
Stage 1: Observation, distancing (perceptiveness: the ability to express wishes and problems)
Stage 2: Inventory (cognitive ability: events in the last 5-10 years)
Stage 3: Situational encouragement (self-help and resource activation of the patient: the ability to make use of healthy parts and successes in previous conflict processing)
Stage 4: Verbalization (communicative skills: the ability to express outstanding conflicts and problems in the four qualities of life)
Stage 5: goal expansion (ethical and moral abilities of the patient for the future: the question: "What to do when you have no more complaints and problems, - what are your goals for the next 3-5 years?")
"A healthy person is not the one who has no problems, but the one who can flexibly deal with the unexpected problems of life." - (N. Peseschkian)
Main areas of application:
Couple counseling, family counseling
Conflict counseling,
Fears, panic attacks,
Burn-out counseling,
Stress management,
Depression.
REFERENCES
Remmers, A., Peseschkian, H. (2013). Positive Psychotherapie. (German edition). Ernst Reinhardt Verlag, München.
