Summary ↑

metanymous 04 января 2018, 10:18 в посте Metapractice (оригинал в ЖЖ)

Since the word “trauma” can mean almost any kind of unpleasantness, from life-threatening terror to being ignored at a party, it’s not very useful in understanding an experience, or in deciding what kind of intervention to make. Likewise “meta” or “going meta” are vague terms that can indicate one or more of several different ways to change experience. Because of this ambiguity, it’s impossible to know in advance how a “meta” intervention will change a client’s experience, and whether the change will be useful or not.

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Although each of the different kinds of meta can be useful in changing a client’s experience of a problem or outcome, there are also clients whose problem is a result of already going meta in one or more of the ways described; for them a meta intervention will either make no difference, or make their problem worse. What they need is some kind of experience of “un-meta,” but the word “meta” is so vague that’s not clear what kind of “un-meta” will be a useful intervention.

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Accordingly I advocate eliminating the use of the word “meta” altogether, and replace it with a specific VAK description of a client’s experience. “So you are looking back at that event and wishing it hadn’t happened,” “When you think about that event, it makes you angry,” “It’s as if you are seeing that event from her point of view,” etc.

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Likewise any intervention can be an equally specific description of a change in that experience such as, “Look at that event from a point on the ceiling,” “How else could you describe that event?” “Can you see the larger context around that event,” etc.

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This kind of specificity tells you exactly what a client is experiencing, and how an intervention will change it in a useful way. Nothing is lost by replacing the vague word “meta” with a more specific description.

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At the very least, realize that when you use the word “meta” (as with the words “trauma,” “problem,” or “state,”) that is really only a sort of “placeholder” for a package of ignorance unless it is specified in much greater detail.