{"id":3994,"date":"2020-10-08T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-08T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/darylchow.com\/frontiers\/?p=3994"},"modified":"2020-10-02T15:14:10","modified_gmt":"2020-10-02T07:14:10","slug":"outrospection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/darylchow.com\/frontiers\/outrospection\/","title":{"rendered":"Outrospection"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This originally appeared in the book, The First Kiss: Undoing the Intake Model and Igniting First Sessions in Psychotherapy,<\/a> Chapter 19. “What is Your View of the Problem?”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cCuriosity never killed the cat.\u201d <\/em><\/strong> ~ Journalist and writer, Studs Terkel<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perspective taking is never as powerful as perspective getting<\/strong>. Too often we ask questions that fuel our perspective taking, and then we formulate some abstract conceptualisation of the person and the problem. Our perspective taking is often limited. Here\u2019s what Nicholas Epley, author of Mindwise has to say:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The weakness of perspective taking is obvious: it relies on your ability to imagine, or take, the other person\u2019s perspective accurately. If you don\u2019t really know what it\u2019s like to be poor, in pain, suicidally depressed, at the bottom of your corporate ladder, on the receiving end of waterboarding, in the throes of solitary confinement, or to have your source of income soaked in oil, then the mental gymnastics of putting yourself in someone else\u2019s shoes isn\u2019t going to make you any more accurate. In fact, it might even decrease your accuracy.[1]<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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Ask your clients, \u201cWhat is your view of the problem?\u201d \u201cFrom your perspective, how do you think the problem developed? What do you think caused it?\u201d \u201cWhat is that like for you?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(For a related topic, see the previous blog, It’s Not about You<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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For this to work, put down your therapist hat. Think like a journalist. <\/strong>Our clinical training might be to blame. We tend to equate training our empathy skills with learning to \u201cput yourself in the person\u2019s shoes.\u201d Instead, as Roman Krzanaric wrote in his book Empathy, <\/em>the most potent form of empathic introspection is outrospection. And to have outrospection, we need to learn perspective getting<\/em><\/strong>.[2] Never fail to ask clients perspective getting questions at the first session.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Footnotes<\/strong>:
[1] \u201cThe weakness of perspective taking is obvious\u2026\u201d  from the Mindwise book, p. 168. Epley, N. (2014). Mindwise: How we understand what others think, believe, feel, and want.<\/em> Great Britain: Penguin Group.

[2] Krznaric, R. (2014). Empathy: Why it matters, and how to get i<\/em>t. Great Britain: Random House Group.<\/em>

Thanks to Bud Helisson<\/a> for the image.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This originally appeared in the book, The First Kiss: Undoing the Intake Model and Igniting First Sessions in Psychotherapy, Chapter 19. “What is Your View of the Problem?” \u201cCuriosity never killed the cat.\u201d  ~...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3998,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[115,128,113],"tags":[62,186,185],"class_list":["post-3994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fit","category-first-sessions","category-learning","tag-empathy","tag-introspection","tag-outrospection"],"yoast_head":"\nOutrospection - Frontiers of Psychotherapist Development<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/darylchow.com\/frontiers\/outrospection\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Outrospection - 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