More About Scaling ↑
metanymous в посте Metapractice (оригинал в ЖЖ)
This post is a follow-on to the previous post on scaling, responding to the many comments that were made to that post. (The following will only make sense if you have read the previous post and comments.) Thanks to all of you who posted comments, and also those who emailed me privately. They have given me quite a lot to think about. I wish there was more of this kind of fertile discussion in the field, aligned with the Japanese proverb, “None of us is as smart as all of us.” Before I explore some additional interesting details about scaling, I want to reiterate the main points, so they don’t get lost in the minutiae.
The Upside
Primarily, scaling is useful because it changes what is often an overwhelming digital, either/or experience into an analog range or continuum, making it easier to make smaller incremental changes from one point to another on the scale. It also tends to represent the feeling as an external visual comparison in which the image of the problem state is not only distant, but usually smaller. All these factors reduce the intensity of the feeling, making the problem feel less overwhelming.
Of course there is also the overt reason for scaling, using it as ongoing feedback on the effectiveness of interventions. The client’s nonverbal behavior is the best feedback about the impact of an intervention, but since these cues are not always robust enough to be noticeable or convincing, it can also be useful to pause periodically to ask a scaling question.
This makes scaling a useful intervention any time an analog change is appropriate, such as reduction of pain, tension, stress, etc. Scaling is also useful in adjusting the relative importance of different experiences. For instance, a workaholic who neglects important family or social activities, might want to make work less important, or family more important. Many problems require adjusting the relative importance of images of present pleasure in relation to future enjoyment. In these examples we don’t want to eliminate anything, only restore balance between different urges, needs, or values.
The Downside
The drawback of scaling is that it tends to ignore the possibility of making a digital shift to a response for which the original scale is inappropriate and irrelevant. When someone experiences a congruent, full-body forgiveness, resentment doesn’t just diminish to zero; it simply isn’t an issue any more. Whenever you have an intervention that makes a digital change in response, scaling is inappropriate, and may interfere with the process. For instance, the phobia cure elicits a digital change in feelings—from the terror of being in a life-threatening experience to being a distant observer, who may feel nothing, or empathy, or sympathy, but not terror. If you were to ask a client to scale their terror, that would direct their attention toward pulling them back into the troubling memory.
Since scaling directs attention to whatever variable is scaled (most often a feeling) this tends to withdraw attention from other aspects of the experience that is scaled. Some of these may be major factors in eliciting the feeling, providing important feedback about how to intervene next.