Reflecting on Counselling Conversational Reminders

1. Reflecting on Counselling Conversational Reminders Joaquín Gaete Silva, MSc. Inés Sametband, MSc. Emily Doyle, MC., PhD Candidate

2. Overview • What are “conversational reminders”? • Supervision Conversational Reminders (SCR) • Conversational reminders in your practice • How conversational reminders can be important • Research Conversational Reminders (RCR): “Misunderstanding” as RCR • Implications summary • Questions/discussion

3. ‘Reflection on Practice’ versus Manuals/Experience

4. Understanding = Apply Principle ‘x’ (Problem Solving) But only a fool would ask for a rule in order to apply a rule! Episteme Techné Phronesis

5. What are “Supervisory Conversational Reminders”? SCR?

6. Understanding = I get it!... Wittgenstein’s methods (Shotter, 2011) SCR “A philosophical problem has the form: ‘I don’t know my way about’” “Try not to think of understanding as a ‘mental process’ … But ask yourself: in what sort of case, in what kind of circumstances, do we say, “Now I know how to go on,” when, that is, the formula has occurred to me?” .

7. Some Examples • “That’s an opening!” • “Ask people to answer their own rhetorical questions”

8. Some examples from others • “An internalized other interview [it’s coming]” (A supervisor behind the mirror) • “Do the miracle question!” (My supervisor in the voice of S. De Shazer) • “Find the grove” Big-league baseball pitcher (In Shön, 1983)

9. What are some of YOUR conversational reminders?

10. How do conversational reminders “fit” within our formal training as counsellors? Across our training in counselling theories? • Have you found them to be helpful?

11. How SCR can be important? • “we can, by an inner voicing of the relevant word at the relevant moment, issue ourselves with a ‘reminder’ to act in a certain way, to ‘direct’ our attention toward a certain feature” (Shotter, 2011, p. 65) • Counsellor training and supervision… • ‘ways of seeing’ (Perceptual skills) • ‘ways of doing’ (Executive skills)

12. Cross-cultural misunderstandings as conversational reminders • We understand each other not only through our words, but by reference to assumptions we attribute and expect from one another (Garfinkel, 1967). • Culture is performed by people in social interactions (Moerman, 1988). • Cross-cultural misunderstandings can be seen as conversational reminders of opportunities to make space for different interpretations (making visible the invisible) • Cross-cultural misunderstandings reminders of openings to co-create new meanings in ways that fit for conversational partners together.

13. Study Design • Research Question: How do client(s) who immigrated to Canada and counsellor(s) successfully negotiate misunderstandings in therapeutic conversations? • 8 volunteer clients and 8 volunteer therapists engaged in aone hour-single consultation, videotaped. • 15 Follow up individual interviews with volunteer clients and therapists (audio taped), within 2 weeks of first session. • 27 Segments of the videotaped sessions were identified as possible misunderstandings.

14. 10 Th: and so your… concern is which one of those is better task based or time based? 11 Cl: mmh {nods} 12 Th: yah. >and what have you found so far< you said mostly you've done time based. 13 Cl: yes 14 Th: you set a-time aside. 15 Cl: yeah 16 Th: but when you haaavefollowed through with it.. what's been different about those times *what whathas 17 gone on.* 18 Cl: aahs-sorry what you *mean?* {moves head slightly to the right, smiles} 19 Th: >you said some of the time< y-you do follow through with it 10 Cl: yeah 21 Th: >less than half of the time but… 22 Cl: >yeah yeah< 23 Th: some of the time you do follow through 24 Cl: okay? 25 Th: so I am wondering how you've been able to do that like= 26 Cl: oooh! 27 Th: w-what's different about the times that you're following through 28 Cl: t-to be honest that's .. uhm that's the plan >that was< t-that's the easy part of the plan… 29 Th: oookay{nods} 30 Cl: for example this time I will (.) umhtake it easy {laughs} 31 Th: oookay{big nod} 32 Cl: >just an example< but where it is come out do >something easy. something easy.< 33 Th: yah. so might be= 34 Cl: =the:n might be able to make it= 35 Th: =right so if you have a number of tasks for yourseeef(.) 36Cl: yeah

15. Client’s comments on Segment 4 “Yeah, I did maybe he asked how you did follow through? and I wasn't quite sure about what he meant, yeah. I think that when I bring this issue up, uhm of course I want to like uhm...direct should of this problem. But my feeling was uhm, T wanted to ask me more questions? so instead of giving me a direct answer he wanted to give it in a round way? maybe? cause he asked me that comment if what achieve, what my feelings (...) Yeah. Uhm that's my feeling during the conversation I think maybe that's a trick for most psychologists (laughs). Yeah, so that they can take more from their...clients I guess”.

16. Counsellor’s comments on Segment 4 “Like...for a little bit we were like on different pages uhm so then I felt like we were on the same page. I think he kinda' of understood my intent as well, that I was asking about that? I was asking about his experiences uhm cause I think he was either hoping for or expecting a quick answer to that question, right, which is better, a task based or time based, is it better to schedule my time or is it better to schedule my tasks. And I don't give him a quick answer I start asking about his experiences, so I think that might have been part of it as well, he was wanting like okay why're you asking me a question when I asked you a question. So there is a little bit of negotiating the counselling process uhm... Yeah”.

17. Why is this important?Clinical implications • Cross-cultural misunderstandings as reminders: • May point to a need for recognizing which versions of reality are at play in counselling conversations. • May help counsellors to step away from rigid assumptions about cultures as pre-given. • May help counsellors better manage therapeutic relationships to ensure a collaborative process.

18. Some Implications • epistemology of practice: • what is the kind of knowing in which competent practitioners engage? • Technical Rationality or Reflection-in-action? • “When I do something intelligently…I am doing one thing and not two. My performance has a special procedure or manner, not special antecedents” (G. Ryle) • How do we use what we already know in situations we take to be unique? • Seeing this as that & withness-thinking

19. (Just in case…More on: What’s a CR?) • CR ‘direct’ us • CR ‘call out’ appropriate responses on us (TU/AGA) • Reminds us about possibilities • Thinking with other’s words • Vygotsky’s law of development • Voices can ‘bewitch’ us • Living tradition • Expresive movement: “my word” • Aboutness thinking: We can reflect on what is ‘in’ our responses.