4 - Intro - Module 4 - Tahnee - Teleclass - Transcript

Teleclass Transcript
07/07/10
Cloe Madanes & Mark Peysha
MP: All right. Welcome to the teleclass, everyone. Today we'll be talking about the
Tahnee film and we are very excited about to be talking about some of the fundamental
core principles of Strategic Intervention and this is exciting because in my opinion, this is
the stuff that makes the biggest difference in the way that you approach a problem and
communication as well as what you actually do to solve a problem or to overcome a
challenge. In the next few minutes, we will be talking about the key principles laid out in
the intervention, which are the concept of life stages, safe problems versus quality
problems, the crazy eight, and the triad, and how these elements are interrelated, and then
we will go into a mega-strategy that is not mentioned in the film but which is a huge part
of the film and an enormous part of our work which is the pretend strategy. And at the
end of the call, well obviously have time for questions.
So let's start off with one of the crucial concepts to grasp, but this is the concept of life
stages. In Strategic Intervention, we are always looking for solutions, which are the
quickest, but also the most lasting, the most holistic solutions that you can create. And
there is a reason why Strategic Interventions that you get to see in the films arent the
kind of changes where you know so on get to pump up and then they lose their fizzle and
then things backslides again and you know theyre back where they started and that is
because Strategic Intervention is based on not only the making changes that last but
continue to develop and grow to the point that they affect other people who werent even
in the intervention and the reason is that our solutions guide people in the direction of
growth and contribution. Growth and contribution are the laws of the universe. You
either are growing or youre starting to die and you either are contributing to others and
you have to contribute to others in order to be part of a healthy relationship and
ecosystem. And thats on the level of nature as well as on the level of society. So, most
solutions are in essence solutions that get people to grow to another level of awareness,
development, or skill. The people who experience a Strategic Intervention dont
backslide for that reason, because they have grown to another level of being a person and
to another level of mastery over a skill and another level of problem solving or another
level of relationship. And the change always becomes part of a growth pattern which
continues and therefore is reinforced.
Now, the concept of life stages is that our lives are made up of a sequence of stages. You
can also think of them as kind of juncture points or transition points to different levels of
development and one of the easiest examples to understand is the transition that young
people have from living with their parents at home and going to school and then suddenly
they move out, live or start living on their own and they take a direction in their careers.
So thats a huge, obviously huge rite of passage. It is one of the biggest leaps that people
ever take in our culture and it is a huge change and it is a scary change. It involves
letting go of things that are certain and tested that have your entire life and then suddenly
trying things that you never tried before. It is also one of the times of greatest
opportunity and risk in life. The years between ages sixteen and twenty-four really tend
to influence your life for the next twenty years. Life stages involve major transitions and
in our calculation there are usually three to four major priorities involved in any life
stage. So basically, for instance, with young people, if theyre leaving home, the
priorities are: 1: to leave home in a good way and disentangle from their parents while
Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

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creating new relationships with peers. The second priority would be to venture into work
and get some basic independence skills living on your own, and 3: to set on a forward
thinking path such as finding a career or finding a mentor or a form of education or a
relationship or all of those.
If a young person is tackling these three big-ticket items then they are really doing pretty
well in their life stage. The other problems kind of come and go, we always have
challenges but those are details in terms of the life stage. Often when someone is having
some major problems, what you will find is that they are having trouble making the
transition from one life stage to another. The reason that life stages are so useful and
important to an interventionist is that if you understand the stage that someone is going
through, you quickly understand the most important issues and obstacles they are facing,
the biggest questions they are stumped with, the biggest uncertainties and dilemmas that
they have and it becomes very clear to you what the person needs in order to move
forward.
So in the film, when Tahnee stood up, and said that she was depressed, then Tony took
her through a process of understanding her triad, her needs, her crazy eight, and he came
to focus on her relationship problems, which were her fears of commitment and the other
worries that she had about the dilemmas in relation to her relationship. The reason that
Tony came to work on those problems instead of other problems and to guide her on
relationship issues and trusting men was that he saw that whatever emotional problems
Tahnee was going through, it was she needed to make the transition and growth to the
next phase of life, which for her was to have a committed relationship. If she didnt make
that transition, shed be stuck in this kind of fearful depressed state. And so, by the way,
it doesnt mean that everyone has got ten life stages. We dont mean that everyone has to
get married at twenty-five or have kids and then they live, you know, that kind of thing.
Youd have to determine whatever path you need for your life, but whatever that path is,
you do need to grow and contribute. That is part of your path. So, when people are
moving forward in their life stages, you know these stages actually do require a lot of
effort and focus because its truly self-development. Youre stretching yourself. It is
getting your brain and your body and your emotional skills to another level. For instance,
from being an eighteen-year-old living at home in high school, senior high school, to
being a twenty-two and a committed couple, living in your own apartment and working,
that is a huge change.
So, in the difficulty of making this transition, people often develop fears or obstacles or
they get stuck in a dilemma of how to move forward. In Tahnees case, she had been
betrayed by a boyfriend in the past who was untrustworthy and she was unwilling to take
a risk of giving her current boyfriend her full commitment. And when people get stuck,
they develop what we call safe problems.
Lets talk about the differences between a safe problem and a quality problem. A quality
problem is related to your advancement or your development. So for instance, how to
move out of your parents house is a quality problem. What career direction to take is a
quality problem. How do I move to the next level of my relationship and get married or

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whatever it should be thats a quality problem. The problem is that quality problems
are scary and they feel unfamiliar. Youre moving into unfamiliar territory. They require
a great deal of self-confidence and momentum to tackle them. And a safe problem, on
the other hand, is a problem, behavior, or pattern that may be holding someone back, but
which is strictly speaking is under the persons control. So safe problems involve
emotional management issues like anxiety, fear, unfamiliarity, depression,
disappointment, and basically they involve not having the confidence to take the risks or
not having a vision to move forward, or not wanting to move forward because you dont
know how youre going to do it or even having a vision but not being able to take action.
CM: Yes, and the crazy eight can actually be seen as a safe problem because for example
was Tahnee when she alternates between anger and sadness or anger and depression,
those are very familiar emotions to her. Shes been doing them for years so she knows
that she will go from one to another and it is familiar, it is comfortable, it feels like it is
just like her, but actually, for those of you who are listening and are therapists, this is the
kind of patient in therapy that is a nightmare and that is one of the reasons that I like to
show Tahnee because she is the kind of patient that therapists are very familiar with. As a
therapist, they are able to move the person, usually most therapists from sadness to anger,
and then the therapist is surprised when they move back from anger to sadness and it
seems like that the therapist is fluctuating between the two emotions together with the
patient and neither of them seem to be able to get unstuck. So in a sense, even though
this patient is a nightmare because they just alternate from one emotion to another and
dont get better, it is very good financially for therapists because they can support the
therapist for a long time. Here you have the difficult person like this very often it is a
woman who is going through the crazy eight, she is working, she is intelligent, she is
attractive, she is verbal, and she doesnt solve her problem, so she will stay in therapy
forever. But of course Tony is just masterful at dealing with a person like this very
quickly unstuck from this pattern of alternating between the emotions.
So one other thing that I want to say in relation to the life stages is in terms of a megastrategy. Often the goal of the Strategic Intervention or the goal of coaching is to move
the person, to help the person move from one life stage to another. And so often you
know that when a person consults with you, you can see immediately that they are stuck
in one stage and they need to move to the next so you know exactly what you have to do.
You have to help them to move to the next stage in their life development. So even when
people present something else as a problem, often the real problem is that they are stuck
in one stage of their life.
Another thing that I wanted to add here about the life stages and the importance of this
age group from about age of sixteen to twenty-four, more or less, is that it is usually the
time when the young person begins to realize that ultimately as they grow stronger and
older, the parents will grow weaker and ultimately they will have to take care of the
parents and this is a huge transition. Human beings are practically the only creature that
actually takes care of their parents. The only exceptions in the animal kingdom that Im
familiar with are the penguins and the storks. Penguins and storks actually feed older
animals as they get old and cannot hunt for themselves. They would actually put food in

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their mouths. The penguins will actually dive in the water and grab a fish and give it to
the older penguins and they are interesting to watch. But these are the only two
exceptions. So for human beings, this is what we normally do and it is a huge transition
from being taken care of by ones parents to taking care of ones parents. It is at this age
the older adolescent or the young adult when there is the first inkling that ultimately this
is what is going to happen because this is a stage when young people become taller than
the parent, more competent than the parent in many ways, they are learning things in
school that the parents never learned and they know how to do things that the parents will
never know. As their intelligence and their competence grows the most acute during this
stage, this is often when the parents begin to decline and when they can envision that they
will go into old age. So this is huge in terms of the parents being able to help the young
person instead of getting them stuck at this stage. That is why it is so important for the
parent to encourage the greater competence of the young person, even to the point of
asking the young person for help. And by help I dont mean doing the dishes or taking
out the garbage. I mean real advice, real help in learning something new, in advising the
parent of something about their life that is why I often think that the children of the most
competent parents, the most successful parents, are often the most messed up, the most
conflicted, the ones that have the most problems, because it is so hard to have a parent
that is totally competent and never needs anything. So it is important for parents to need
something from the young person and of course, this is represented in art in a better way
than anybody could describe.
Theres a film that is one of my favorite films and I used to teach from and I used to show
the last scene in the film to my audience. The film is East of Eden and its based on a
novel by John Steinbeck. The main actors are James Dean and Julie Harris. I used to
teach from this to show, to illustrate the difficulties of the adolescent dilemma. So, the
story, and Ill tell it to you briefly is that there is a man who has farm and he has two sons
and apparently, he was married to a bad woman that left. It was not clear in the film
whether she is a drug addict or a prostitute or what but she abandons the family so the
man raises the two sons by himself and one son is the good son, the favorite of the
father and hes the one that helps the father with the farm and does everything right. The
other son is James Dean, who seems to never be able to do anything right. Somehow
everything he does turns out badly and no matter how he tries to help the father, he
doesnt seem to be able to get across to him and hes never appreciated or recognized.
And so, at one point in time, the father gets very upset because James Dean has done
something to contact the mother, and so the older son gets upset and runs away which
affects the father and the father has a stroke.
And so, in the scene its the crucial scene I think in the movie and is the one that I like
to show the father is lying in bed with a stroke and he appears to be dying. He doesnt
seem to be conscious. A nurse comes into the room and she behaves in a very annoying
way, she makes a lot of noise, she talks about how she needs coffee and where can she
find coffee, shes chattering away, and then she leaves. And then Julie Harris, who plays
James Deans girlfriend, comes into the room and she stands next to the bed of the father,
who doesnt show any signs of seeing her or hearing her but she says, Please, please,
you have to help your son. Have him help you. Show him that you need him. Please,

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have him do something for you otherwise he will never grow to become an adult. Please
let him help you. And the father doesnt move, doesnt show any sign that he heard, and
she leaves the room. Then James Dean comes in and stands awkwardly by the door and
the father moves a finger signaling him to come closer to the bed. So James Dean bends
down very close to the fathers face and the father says, That woman, the nurse, I cant
stand her. Get rid of her. You, help me. And so the film ends with James Dean pulling
up the chair, and sitting next to the father as the camera moves out and it is the end of the
film while hes sitting there ready to help the father. So this is an extraordinary
dramatization of the young persons need to make that transition where they are the
competent one.
So, I remember one time that Mark and I were visiting at Tonys house and Tony said to
us, You wont believe what I did the whole day yesterday! I spent hours with Jairek
teaching me how to do a photo slide show on the computer, and he showed us the show.
It was great. But Tony said, I never find to have time to do this, but I just wanted Jairek
to teach me. So it is the same concept. It was very moving to me that Tony was
sensitive to the idea of having his son teach him something.
MP: Yes, definitely. You know that is so powerful also it is the way for the young person
to move into growth and contribution in terms of their needs in relation to the parents. It
helps reconcile when teenagers are so critical of their parents in adolescence that theyre
finding all of their faults and all the things they do differently went wrong. So this is the
way that they move to being able to understand their parents weaknesses or
vulnerabilities. In this case it is understanding that have to pitch in, that they help. They
are becoming stronger. They are becoming sharper and they can take that position of
being a helper.
CM: Exactly.
MP: So, Id like to add something about the crazy eight. It is very important in terms of
understanding it. In my view, when someone is stuck in their development and they
develop a dilemma or an obstacle or a fear that is stopping them from moving on, that
blockage attracts a lot of psychic emotional energy where they are basically stuck on it.
They are fulminating, they are thinking about wanting to get through it, they are reacting
to it, and in my opinion that is where the crazy eight develops. You have someone like
Tahnee, for instance, who was betrayed by her boyfriend, and she didnt know if she
could trust men. The crazy orders developed around that issue of commitment. So its, I
cant do it, I cant trust him, and then goes into self-pity and doubt. And then it is the
anger, aggression and so that uncertainty, the vacillation around usually I think its
something that hasnt been resolved. That is the crazy eight.
So Tony teaches them with the crazy eight there are two ways that people resolve it. One
way you can picture yourself as an arrow going downward, which is when people try to
self-medicate just to manage the emotions of the crazy eight. So, that is for instance your
food or alcohol or anything that basically changes your state to get out of it. And then, so
the crazy eight has two loops on it, you picture it that way, one of them has got to with

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more anger and frustration and being active, and wanting to get things done, wanting to
do something, be vigilant, check things out, be forceful, be a warrior. And then this flips
over to the other loop, which is self-pity, more relaxed, looser, more disappointed, letting
go, you know grieving. So people often take the low road to dealing with the crazy eight,
which could be eating, drinking, taking a risk type activity which completely changes
your state and thats like the low road. The upper road is actually to resolve that problem
and to move to the next stage, to resolve that dilemma.
So when you observe the crazy eight in yourself or in someone else where you are
starting to go back and forth about something, you have to just think that there is an
unanswered question, there is a doubt here, there is a hesitation in you or in the other
person that is preventing them from actually moving on to the next stage, and that is
where you want to focus.
CM: Exactly. Mark, lets describe the triad a little bit.
MP: Yeah, great. So, if you remember, the triad is made up of three things: your
physiology, your focus, and your language patterns and the combination of these three
account for your emotional experience. The triad is really an intervention tool. It is a
way of breaking down big problems in a way that makes it very clear what is in your
control and what is not. So, Tahnee has a safe problem of not being able to stop crying
lately in her word, beating herself up about her life, getting tense and then going through
the crazy eight about the prospect of being in a committed relationship, and then getting
depressed and using her depression to get things to be done her way in her relationships.
And when everyone is possessed by a pattern of stopping them, the triad is a good way to
break up that quality problem into component pieces. So in Tahnees case, Tony pointed
out that in order for her to feel depressed, Tahnee actually needs to put herself in a certain
physiology, assume a certain focus, and certain language patterns.
CM: And it is not just language but the meaning that is given to the language.
MP: Yes, and how she communicates it. So the key is that Tahnee does not dispute the
three parts of the triad are within her conscious control. There are people who will
actually dispute that. Through the demonstration that Tony takes her through, she gets
that it is impossible to be depressed without consciously and deliberately assuming the
triad of depression. So when Tahnee recognizes the conscious, deliberate parts of her
depression, the question then is why does she put herself into depression? And the
answer is because the depression is meeting her needs.
Tony then guided Tahnee to be deliberate about how she managed her triad and how he
found another example for her and you know, in this case he picked up that he used a
transformational metaphor here. Tahnee had said that she had been putting herself in
depression and saying that she cant put her past behind her and Tony basically had her
take a very pleasurable experience from her past, which was a sexual feeling of pleasure,
and he put that sensation of pleasure right in front of her. He basically instructed her on
how to manage her triad so that she could deliberately give herself pleasure rather than

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pain and thus meet her needs. So that is the power of the triad.
CM: Yes, and the crucial part of the intervention is when Tony helps her to realize that if
she can change her state in a few seconds from a state of total depression, she said she
was like an eight on depression, to a state of happiness and euphoria, if she can do that
for a few seconds it means that she can do that always, so it is always under her control.
This is so important to point out to the people you are working with, to point out to them
that when they can change their state, even if it is just for a few seconds or couple of
minutes, it means that they can always change their state. Their state is under their
control. This is a fundamental principle of Strategic Intervention. Other approaches
believe that people are sort of driven by their state, by their emotions, by their
physiology. We dont believe that. We believe that it is all under your control and you
can change it and we demonstrate that you can change it. That is why Tony loves to
make this kind of intervention. It is such a dramatic demonstration of change in a few
seconds.
MP: Exactly. You know if you think of the three illness of the triad physiology, focus
and language each of those are individually conscious and deliberate and under your
control and that makes clear to the person, okay, so what else is there that isnt under your
control? Those three are under your control. What is not under your control and you
break down the safe problem, which is usually you know the truth is that behind these
safe problem is usually a crisis of confidence and a problem of managing your state, and
then the person once he realized the parts of himself that they have deliberate conscious
control and how that conscious control is related to the state that is supposedly
unconscious then it takes them in a position of empowerment where they realize, you
know, Yeah, Im doing this thing.
So in Tahnees case, Tony seemed pretty confident that Tahnee knew how to proceed
next. So in the actual intervention, he didnt take her through the quality problem and the
life stage that was ahead of her. He attacked straight and so forth but you know,
whenever anyone is guided into a new development or stage, there is a lot of fears and
timidity, and so by breaking through, she was able to address the real problems and the
real quality challenge that she had ahead of her that is why she broke through it makes so
many changes.
Now, Cloe has a very powerful strategy called the Pretend Strategy and Tony actually
uses the pretend strategy in this film as well. This Pretend Strategy gets people to that
point where they are able to rehearse and put themselves in a position of solving
problems.
CM: Yes. But I want to say to add one more thing about the Tahnee film that really
struck me. It is at the end, in the follow up, when Tahnee says to Tony about her
marriage being so happy, she says, I make everyday a party. It shows, that statement
shows, that she totally was able to take control of herself and of the relationship, so she
had a very happy marriage. Now Tahnee has a baby and she continues to be very happy
with her marriage and with the baby. So what happens is if you help someone to navigate

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a difficult stage like the leaving home stage and to be able to create a couple and a career
and so on, then you increase enormously the chances that they will be able to navigate the
next stage happily, and thats what Tahnee did. She not only was able to have a great
relationship with her boyfriend who became her husband, but they were both very
successful in business, they had their baby and were parenting successfully.
MP: Yes, so they sort of not, they got it sink and they sort of navigating the life stages in
a great conscious and deliberate way and therefore they were able to jump into
parenthood without any further marital crisis.
CM: Yes. So a different technique that I use that sounds a bit complicated but is really
quite simple is the Pretend Strategy. The idea is that if you are pretending a behavior,
then you are not really experiencing that behavior. So, if you are pretending to be
depressed, you cant really be depressed because you are pretending. If you are
pretending to have a headache, you cant really have a headache. You are pretending the
headache. It is very interesting because some people really need to have an experience in
order to use that experience in a relationship and other people can just lie about it. For
example, some wives who dont want to have sex actually bring on a headache so that
they can say, Not tonight dear, I have a headache. Other wives just say, I have a
headache, when they dont actually. They dont really need to have the real headache,
its just an excuse. So it is very interesting how you can play with metaphors that
attribute focus and also meaning to a physiological state.
So let me explain what the pretend strategy is. Lets say for example that you have a
child who has bad stomachaches that dont seem to have a medical cause and where the
parents are worried and all over the child because of the stomach aches, so the child gets
a lot of benefits from having stomachaches, a lot of positive attention from the family,
from the parents. This positive attention is what Freud called the secondary gain of the
symptom, the stomach ache being the symptom and the primary gain being, according to
Freud, to express something that was repressed. The secondary gain, according to Freud,
is the gain of the attention that the child gets because of the symptom.
In Strategic Intervention, what Freud called the secondary gain, well consider to be the
primary gain. When the child has a stomachache and gets a lot of attention, that is what
the child gains. That is the primary benefit of the symptoms. One thing that I like to do
is to ask a child in front of the parents to pretend to have a stomachache. So he is to hold
his stomach and say, My tummy hurts, or something like that. The beauty of this is that
even when you have a shy child that doesnt really want to pretend, you can behave as if
they did. So you say, Oh, by the expression on your face I can tell that you are
pretending to have a stomachache. That is really good. Youre a good actor. So then
the next step is that you ask the parents to hold the child, to comfort him, to do all the
things that they do for the real stomachaches, but to do them for the pretend stomachache.
Then you direct them to do this at home. For example, you might say, everyday, first
thing in the morning and last thing in the evening, or perhaps even also when the child
comes home from school, they are all to do this little scene. The family gathers together.
The child pretends to have a stomachache. The parents comfort the child. And so what

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happens is that the pretend stomachaches replace the real stomachaches. The real
stomachaches are no longer necessary because they have been replaced by the pretend
stomachaches. So the child gets the same gain from pretending that he did from the real
stomachaches.
So in many ways, this is similar to what Tony did with Tahnee in the sense of changing
the state and it is a variation that is difficult to resist because you define any behavior on
the part of the child as the pretending. But I have done this with a whole age range. For
example, in one case I had a sixty-year-old man who was depressed and the beginning of
his depression coincided with his children leaving home when the wife went back to
school and she had become actually a marriage and family therapist. And then the
husband became depressed and he became like her patient. So, at a time when they were
finding that they didnt have that much in common, their interaction was not that great.
She had a new career, all of a sudden they were united as therapist and patient, so she was
very concerned about her husbands depression and constantly asking him how he was
feeling and trying to help him. The husband was an accountant who, because of the
depression, had totally neglected his work to the point of not taking care of his clients and
not even doing his own taxes, so this worried the wife very much. So we asked the
husband to pretend to be depressed and to do it in such a way that the wife would not
know whether he was really depressed or just pretending to be depressed. So this of
course, changed the whole interaction. She became annoyed and irritated because she
didnt like the idea of not knowing whether he was really depressed or just pretending.
So this lead her to take a much stronger stance and actually demand that the husband do
his work, otherwise she said she would do their taxes herself, which would mean a huge
financial loss for the family. So, he came out of his depression and got to do his work.
So there are many variations, many different ways that you can do this. Another way that
you can use this is that you can have people in the family change roles. So, for example
is if you have an adult child who is depressed, you can ask him to exchange roles for the
father and for the father to be depressed instead of the child so the child has some time to
do something else in his life.
MP: Wow! So that is a way to shift the roles between them. So, just to back up there is
a couple of concrete ways that you can use this then. One is the way that Tony used,
which is to have someone deliberately act out something that they have seen as being out
of their control and then together you study how it is done and you model it and then it
implicitly puts it under the persons control. This is kind of the triad. If you do a triad
analysis of any behavior, youll find there are three components which are deliberate and
therefore it is a behavior that can be modified, the meaning of it can be changed and you
can point out that the ingredients of the uncontrollable behavior are actually totally
controllable. Now, what you are talking about it is using it in a relationship where you
have got two different people and you are asking someone to make the so-called
symptom or uncontrolled behavior a pretend behavior. And does that take away some of
the danger like in the example you talked about, the wife was buying into the depression
and treating him very gently and letting him have the upper hand and so if he was next to
a pretend then she perceived it that way.

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C: Yes, thats exactly. They had a whole marriage based on that and that he was weak
and had to be treated very gently and she was a therapist who was strong. So this also
introduced humor and playfulness in the situation.
MP: And so it took the edge off the symptom for her knowing that part of it could be
pretend that she had to get conscious with.
CM: Exactly. Yes.
MP: She could deal with him more as a whole person than as a wounded person.
CM: Right.
MP: It allows her to behave yeah, I mean it makes him less serious. I guess people are
terrified of not taking someones complaint seriously or not respecting someone elses
suffering.
CM: Exactly and all these trying to get us used as always in a pleasant way with humor.
This is very important and of course, Tony is masterful at using these strategies with
humor. If you remember with Tahnee, he is constantly cracking her up.
MP: Yes, and in the Lindsey film, he figured out how to make her laugh and he always
brings her back to where she is laughing. It is a huge part of that intervention.
CM: Yes, exactly. Humor is hugely therapeutic.
MP: Yep. Great.
CM: Okay. So, I want to tell another story and this is probably the case that I am most
proud of in my entire career.
MP: Great.
CM: This story may sound a bit clinical to some of you but it is really not. It is just
about a human being in distress. So this is what happened. I had been teaching at the
University of Maryland hospital in Baltimore when I was living in Washington D.C. and I
had commuted there to teach a psychiatric residence for several years. It was about an
hour or little more than an hour of a commute and eventually I got too busy with other
things and I decided it was too much of a commute so I stopped teaching there. So one
day the director of training at the hospital called me and said that they had a V.I.P. case,
the daughter of a wealthy family, that was being transferred to the hospital and she had
been in various hospitals for ten years, from the age of sixteen to now when she was
twenty-six. She had all kinds of diagnosis and problems and symptoms and at the
moment she was being transferred in an ambulance because among her symptoms were
epileptic seizures that were so out of control because she didnt respond to medications
that she was given the anti-seizure medication intravenously because her seizures

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happened so frequently and were so dangerous. So, the director of training asked me if I
could take the case. I said that really I couldnt, it was going to be too intense and I was
too busy, but if he gave me a psychiatric resident or a psychology intern, I said I could
supervise it over the phone. So that is what happened and that same day a psychology
intern called me and said that he had been assigned this case and we discussed the
information that we had about this young woman that Ill call Amy.
So Amy had had her first psychotic break at the age sixteen when the parents were
divorcing. She was the youngest of five children. The older four were brothers who at
that time had already left home and were at college or working and at this point, now at
this point in time they were all very successful. Now when I heard that the first break
happened at age sixteen when the parents were divorcing at this time and this was a
wealthy family, I immediately had a hypothesis that probably this was an attempt to hold
her parents together or was a result of the despair of the parents separating, that probably
there was an injustice in the family. The more serious the problem you are looking at, the
more you have to think about an injustice in the family. So I thought well, if the father is
a businessman and the mother was a housewife, and there was some suspicion that she
was alcoholic, very possibly the father took advantage of her in the divorce. This may
have been Amys way of punishing the father because of the humiliation of having a
psychotic daughter, his only daughter, the only girl. So she started a career of life in
mental hospitals and had all kinds of diagnosis and my suspicion was that originally, she
was acting crazy to punish the father. Now, she was also severely suicidal. She was the
kind of patient that would break some glass object, an ashtray or something in the
hospital in front of everyone and cut her wrist and go around bleeding all over the place
and she had been given all the medications that you can imagine. So I said to my student
and the psychology intern, I think that the most important thing that we have to do first
is to get the seizures under control because the seizures are very dangerous. Not
responding to the anti-seizure medication is very dangerous. She could have permanent
brain damage or she could really hurt herself, and also it is impossible to talk to her with
how frequently she had seizures. So, this is what I want you to do. I want you to call the
parents. The parents lived in different cities that were both about an hour flight away
from Baltimore where she was hospitalized. So I said, Tell them that they have to come
once a week to the hospital to meet with her because you need their help in helping her
and their presence is essential. So the parents agreed to come. I prepared the student for
the first meeting and I said to him, In the first session, I want you to ask Amy to have a
seizure, and be prepared because she is going to get furious at you. She is going to say,
What kind of stupidity is that? Im sorry I meant to pretend to have a seizure! So Amy
is going to scream at you, Im not going to pretend any seizure. I dont want to have
seizures! And she is going to probably insult you and so I want you to say, Oh, thank
you so much Amy. That was a seizure. So, when youre defining why she screams and
she insults you as a perfect example of a seizure. And so then, the next step is to ask the
parents to hug her and hold her and reassure her and say that they are going to help her
get better and so on.
So these are the steps that I just described to you for the strategy of Pretending. So this is
exactly what actually happened. When the therapist asked Amy to pretend to have a

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seizure, Amy screamed and insulted him in terrible language, told him he was an idiot in
much more florid language than that. And the therapist said, Wonderful. You just did it.
Thank you so much, and asked the parents embrace her. And she started screaming
again and he said, Thats great. Thats another seizure. And however, I did ask him to
give an explanation to her and the parents of why they were doing this. The explanation
is that if you can have an involuntary behavior such as a seizure, if you can produce it
deliberately then you can also stop it deliberately. So the first step is to produce the
involuntary behavior deliberately. That will give you some control that will ultimately
lead you to be able to stop the seizures. And so we did this for several weeks and the
intensity of her real seizures began to decrease. The frequency began to decrease and she
began to respond to medications.
MP: Wow.
CM: It is so interesting when this happens. Ive done this with many epileptics. Of
course, I only get the cases that dont respond to medication and its usually mostly
children or young people but it would be very interesting to do research on this. Its not
very clear how this happens, but somehow the pretend seizures replace the real seizures
and the young person begins to respond to medication.
So I was very happy about this and then went on meeting with the family and one day the
psychologist says to me, You know, they are going to present Amys case at grand
rounds. Have they invited you? Grand rounds is a meeting that hospitals used to have,
departments of psychiatry used to have about once a week, I think that now usually they
have them once a month, where a case is presented and several people speak about the
patient and the situation is discussed. Its about an hour-long meeting, usually at
lunchtime and I had not been invited but I told him that I was coming anyway.
So when I arrived, the meeting had already started and there was a psychiatrist explaining
that Amy was bipolar. Then another one stood up and said no, she was really
schizophrenic. Then a psychologist stood up and said that she was a multiple personality
and she had discovered fourteen personalities. Then there was an invited guest who
apparently had interviewed Amy prior to the meeting and this guest was a psychiatrist
from a very prestigious university, a woman. She said that Amy was the typical patient
that would end up succeeding in killing herself and that she would probably kill herself in
the hospital or else she would end up as a chronic patient for the rest of her life in the
backwards of the hospital. And she said that Amy was untreatable and incurable.
MP: Wow.
CM: I didnt know that Amy was actually in the room. At that moment she stood up. I
had been supervising this on the phone. This was the first time that is saw Amy and I was
enraged to hear this woman say these things but then when Amy stood up, and I realized
that she had been listening to all these, I cannot tell you my fury. I had to say to myself,
Cloe, calm down. Be strategic. You have to be rational. So Amy stood up, very
composed, a very nice young woman, and said that she had been reading up on her

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medications in the library of the hospital and that she thought that she was toxic from all
the different medications that she had been given and if they could take her off of all the
medications and detoxify her, probably they would be able to discover that that was what
was really wrong with her. It was the only intelligent thing that was said in that meeting.
So the meeting ended with that. Of course, nobody responded to Amy at all, and I was
ready to kill somebody, but I thought, No, Cloe. Remember the Lao Tzu saying, If you
kill in anger, dig two graves, so I thought I cant be angry, I had to be nice and strategic.
So I approached the chairman of the department who I knew from the past and I said,
How are you, Doctor? and he said, Oh, great. Cloe, its so nice to see you, and I said,
So nice to see you! Would you like to have lunch? Maybe we could talk for a few
minutes. He said, Yeah, lets go to the cafeteria. So we went to the cafeteria of the
hospital. He was actually an expert in epilepsy, so I said to him, You know that I have
been supervising the family therapy of Amy and we managed to control the seizures so
now she is responding to medication and the seizures are under control. He said, I
know. Im very impressed with that. So I said, I cannot imagine what it must be for
you to have this patient in the hospital, the responsibility. To think that this is a well
known, prominent family and that probably the psychiatrist they invited speaker was
right and shes going to kill herself right here in the hospital. I imagine that you must
wake up in the middle of the night thinking, I wonder if the nurses are doing their job. I
wonder if shes okay. What a responsibility. I feel so bad for you, and he was looking at
me very puzzled, like where was all this compassion coming from? So then I said,
Since she is probably going to die anyway, I would like to take her. I would like to take
full responsibility, get her out of the hospital, put her to live with her mother who lives in
a very nice resort town, Ill have them fly to my institute for family therapy, and at least
shell get some experience of normal life, some happy life, after ten years in the hospital
before she dies, and he said, Okay. I said, All right, great. So Id like her to be
discharged tomorrow morning, and he said, That was fine. I quickly looked at my
watch and said, I had to run. Nice seeing you, talk to you soon, and I left.
I ran to find the psychologist and I said to him, Were getting her out of the hospital
tomorrow morning. Tell the parents that they have to fly here immediately and then
tomorrow morning drive to Washington for a session at my institute. So they did this
and they came to my institute. I was observing the session behind a one-way mirror.
Thats the way that I usually teach therapists. I observe the sessions and videotape them.
It was an interesting conversation because we talked about how important it would be to
help Amy to adjust to a normal life and to her social class within a normal family life.
She didnt have clothes. She looked like a mental patient. She had interrupted her
education in high school. She hadnt even gone to a restaurant in years; she wouldnt
know how to behave in a restaurant. So the parents agreed with this and we put the father
in charge in the next week of buying her clothes and figuring out what classes she could
take so that she could become a little more cultured. It was funny because Amy said that
if the psychiatrist was right and she was going to die young, she didnt want to die a
virgin, so she wanted to meet some young men. In the past she had only been
propositioned for sex in the bathroom of the hospital and she didnt want that to be her
first sexual experience. So we agreed with that and the father said that he would

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introduce her to some young men.

They came the next week and the father had done nothing, but Amy was fine. She had
enjoyed her time with her mother, she had gone on walks, she was looking up seminars
and things that she could do. She had visited her father in town and had enjoyed that
visit, but the father had done nothing to help her, so we said we would give him another
week. He came back the next week and he had done nothing, but we were prepared for
that. The therapist said to him, You know, it is very important for a person to know if
they have parents or if they dont. A person can have a father that is a father, or a person
can be an orphan, and then its all right. The young person knows that they are an
orphan; they know that they dont have a father to count on, and they can get ahead with
their life. So I want to ask you, Sir, he said to the father, for Amy, are you alive or are
you dead? and the father said, Im dead. But we were prepared for that.
The therapist said, All right, if you are dead, then Amy has to inherit you because you
are dead for her, so lets talk about where are your assets because Amy needs her share of
the inheritance now. Of course, the father said, Oh, its impossible. My assets are all
tied up. I also have four sons. The therapist said, I have all the names and phone
numbers of your sons and Im going to call them and ask permission for Amy to get her
inheritance now from you. Of course, the therapist did call all the sons and all the sons
said that they would do anything for Amy and of course she could have her inheritance.
From then on, all the sessions consisted only of talking about how to get money out of the
old man. I dont know that we ever got her whole inheritance, but we got her a nice
apartment that was paid for, a car, all the classes that she needed to take, a nice wardrobe,
a good bank account, and she did just fine. She first met a young man that was okay but
wasnt great, and then she met another one that was really wonderful and she married
him. Pretty soon during this process she was off of all medications except, of course, the
anti-seizure medication that she had to take all her life. So we followed this for five years
and she was just fine.
I love this case because the story shows how you can take the most difficult situation, ten
years in mental hospitals, and totally turn it around if you have faith that the person is just
a human being with the same needs and the same emotions as everybody else. Now there
is a new twist to this story. I was telling this story to the first group of participants that
we have in this, on my training program the other day and one of them said to me, You
know, you feel that you manipulated the chairman of the department to get Amy out of
the hospital, but maybe he manipulated you, because wasnt in the beginning of this story
the fact that he wanted you to take the case and you said no? Well, you ended up taking
the case, he said to me. Hes done what was exactly right.
MP: Right. For he got you on the crazy. He infuriated you by taking over the grand
rounds and giving it to someone else.
CM: Yes. I wish I could find him and ask him. I think that probably he was
manipulating me.

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MP: You know what strikes me as amazing about that story is first of all, I thought it was
remarkable in the beginning that when she was in the hospital, your question wasnt
about her diagnosis, like the grand rounds and all these people competing for what the
diagnosis was going to be?
CM: Yes.
MP: Your thing was it was not whats worth her, you were asking, So, how did she get
into this mess that she ended up in the hospital? you know and you thought yourself, oh,
well, when did it happen? In her teens, parents divorce, shes overreacting to an injustice
in a negative way and it fell out of the family you know when the teenagers misbehave
in certain way and then it becomes, the misbehavior becomes so extreme that it can no
longer be contained by the family and so get taken over by the therapist and then it
escalates that way and so you were thinking how did she get into this position not what
was wrong with her.
CM: Exactly. I was thinking of what was the social context that makes sense for that
behavior to happen. Yeah.
MP: Yes, yes. Exactly. It is a complex intervention, there are so many stages, but if you
think about it, it is made up of the mega-strategies that we have already talked in this first
month of training. And so, first of all the Pretend Strategy. You did a pretend strategy so
she could experience the symptom in different ways. So you worked and then came out
the experience of the seizure more deliberate.
CM: Actually, first of all was finding the resources. We brought the parents in as her
greatest resource.
MP: Yes, expanding the unit. So and then the pretend strategy, then you expanded the
unit again to include the doctor so you had more agency over her.
CM: Yes, and the hospital was the greatest obstacle. All the doctors in the hospital.
MP: Uh-hmm. So you need to change context?
CM: Yes.
MP: And then, so you expanded the unit so that was part of the problem so it wasnt
something outside of what you were working on. Then she herself found a compelling
future, not to die a virgin, which is basically a life stage appropriate wish which is now
which is stage of life she was at and which stage she should be at. She was basically
oriented to the fact that she was an adolescent and she is starting to say, if I am going to
have any bit of life, I should at least have some taste of this phase of life that Im
supposed to be in.
CM: Exactly.

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MP: Then you found the spark by helping her to find the identity that she should really
have had in that family in terms of taking classes and finding the part of herself that made
sense as a daughter of that family. Then you used the elevation strategy in focusing her
on fun and learning and growth and the things that she should really be doing. With the
father, you were prepared with a pretend strategy. In other words, he had his symptom.
His symptom was I cant support this.
CM: Right. Im helpless. I cant help her.
MP: Yeah. I cant do anything and Im just who I am. And you said fine, you can be
dead, can you do that? He said he could and you said, there are consequences to being
dead. And then basically, its a pretend strategy. Lets pretend youre dead. Okay. The
thing is you didnt pretend to take the inheritance. You took the real inheritance.
CM: Yes, and one important thing to emphasize is that my hypothesis was that she had
collapsed at age sixteen in an attempt to get revenge on her father for abandoning the
mother and the family, and probably for cheating the mother of money, so by giving her
her inheritance, I was actually getting her revenge without her having to be crazy.
MP: And you were righting the injustice that created the problem which she was
CM: Thats right.
MP: Yep. And well talk about injustice as more that is when someone perceives
something to be an injustice, they really often get stuck and it makes them incredibly
stubborn and they hold out for things.
CM: The greatest, most serious problems always happen around injustices, for example,
injustice committed by agents of social control because of ethnic persecution, poverty,
crime, abuse.
MP: Uh-hmm, and that is one of the things about Strategic Intervention is that we focus
on injustice as well as being both an important source to understand inside of people in
terms of their changes and their development but also in terms of social context so they
can do cultural interventions.
CM: Yes, thats right.
MP: So these are mega-strategies. In this long intervention, these are mega-strategies
that weve already talked. So it is just a sequence. You did it masterfully and it wasnt
anything that people in this class couldnt learn how to do. So pretty cool.
CM: Okay.
MP: Lets take some questions.

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CM: Are there questions in the podcast?

MP: Yeah. We have some questions that we received through e mail and we have some
questions here. Well be taking emails first and so if you have a question on the phone,
press star-two and that will raise your hand and we will be able to answer. Okay. So I
have a question here. Im just going to read it out even though it is a little bit long I think
its better.
Single mothers often come to coach for coaching when their kids are becoming teens and
starting to pull away from them. Usually the children are the only intimate connection
and they refuse any suggestion that can help them get a life with an adult with their
primary intimate relationship. They also usually see the teen only has the problem so it is
hard to break the pattern of poor me and my life and my child is not being nice and they
argue with their children as if they were themselves were a child and not an adult. So,
they may talk incessantly but they cant hear what is being said and they keep looking
until they can find someone who can agree with them and say that the child has a
problem. In a way, they have a good reason for that because if they push the child and
continue to make the child a problem then the child finally does become a problem and
he runs away or she runs away and gets into trouble and the mother can spend all her time
and emotions wrapped up in the child who in some cases end up living with the mother in
adulthood. So that is an interesting thing. So basically, if the parent perceives the teens
differentiating behavior as being a problem and doesnt want to face the mothers next
life stage the mothers next life stage is so what will I do after my child has left as a
healthy adult and Im either going to have another relationship then does the child
sometimes conform to that to the mind set thinking that they are really the problem.
Does that make sense?
CM: Yes, but I think that the question is what do you do just to be able to move them to
the next stage or to control them if the behavior of the teenager is out of control, to
control that behavior. It is difficult to work with that triad of mother and adolescent
child. So, it is good to bring extended family and the megastrategy is what are the
resource? So I would get their grandparents to participate even if they dont live there,
over the phone or through visit. I would get uncles, aunts; I would get people from the
community to create a larger group. It is much easier to intervene when you have a group
of more than two between you than you have just two that are so tied together.
MP: Yeah.
CM: So then when you bring their greatest resources, you can create a bond for example
between the adolescent and the grandfather. So where the grandfather has taken on some
of the advisory position or even the reward system and so this opens new possibilities in
the life of the teenager, new relationships, new things to look forward to in the future and
so you relieve the mother of some of those responsibilities and at the same time, you treat
the mother as an adult child of the older grandparents. With the older grandparents
helping and advising the mother on how to move ahead in her life.

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MP: Got it. So, in other words, if the mother is looking for people to answer her
questions, which is why is my child being such a problem and she doesnt want to face,
so you dont have any leverage with her because she is the parent but if you have other
people on the relationship involved then you can have more people, more points of view
to work with as a coach.
CM: Thats right and more to look forward to. You know a new person can come in the
relationship and say to the kid, You know I have a little bit of money. If you get the
average at school or even if you get all C but you come home on time and behave
properly, Ill send you on a trip to California for two weeks this summer or to a camp or
something like that, and then a whole new world of possibility is opened. But typically,
a unit of mother and son alone are stuck in a very repetitive pattern of interaction and
then you can look at the mother not just as a mother but as the daughter of her parents or
the sister of her brother depending on who else you bring in.
MP: Great. So thats a great answer. Okay. So, here is another one. Here is a personal
question. Module 4 the Tahnee film helped me identify that a spiral is my crazy eight as
soon as my focus goes off, next is the way that I talk to myself and then I feel it as a
tightness in my throat. My crazy eight is trust/distrust and it drives me crazy. It spirals
and spirals.
CM: Mark, wait.
MP: So the crazy eight, can you hear me?
CM: Yes. The crazy eight is trust and mistrust.
MP: Trust and mistrust. Its a spirals in relationships, family and friendships, work
places, personal projects, even the place that I live in the two years. So it looks like all
those things get subject to the crazy eight. So, I discovered trust equals faith and the
emotion that I believe that I need to focus on to quit my crazy eight but Im still missing
the picture because I dont know what to do. Is that because Im not taking the time to
envision what I want even in an everyday simple state of being or I want to have a good
productive day and not reaching for the stars for what I could just enjoy this very minute
so I want to stay out of this crazy eight so If you can actually do something to help me get
out of this seemingly waiting place of doing nothing.
CM: Okay. Well, Ill be interested in what you think Mark but what I would answer there
is that the person needs to shift from trust and mistrust to a more quality question. It
seems to me is that a man or woman asking the question?
MP: Its a woman.
CM: Okay, it seems to me that her question is can I really trust someone or so is
someone going to betray me? And if she could shift her primary question to how can I
give to others or how can I contribute? Then the crazy eight will disappear. It will not be

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about trust. It will be about other things able to trust her. It will be about giving and
contributing.
MP: Yes. It is a very uncertain place when you imagine yourself and you set yourself up
as being on the receiving end of things though this happens often when people are
expecting to something like for instance the spouses approval or expecting a spouse to
recognize something in you for instance. Or basically checking to see you if people will
tell you that youre okay. That is a very disempowered position because youre really
focusing on things that are outside of your control. There are other peoples reaction are
not always easy to predict or even easy to control and so where on the other hand, if you
think of yourself as a provider of certainty, then you become much more certain and solid
so I would agree basically
CM: Yes, it is something that you can control what you did and what youve contribute
but if your permanent question is about trust and mistrust, youre so dependent on how
other people behave.
MP: Yeah, when you find your crazy eight, it maybe that it is really useful to discover
the crazy eight and what is in that crazy eight but you dont necessarily have to spend
time with that specific crazy eight. You can just recognize it and say, okay, so I need to
go to a more of a quality problem. So in other words, trust and mistrust is essentially an
emotional loop, right? So other question is so what do I need to do? Where do I need to
grow in my life? What is my next phase? What do I need to develop? What projects
would give me more certainty? What relationships can I build to give me more certainty?
Does that make sense?
CM: Yes. I think that in general, it is much better to approach life with a trustful
attribute than with mistrust or suspicions that you cant trust. It just takes too much
emotional energy to be mistrusting.
MP: Okay. We have another question here. I am having a patient who is getting into
depression because of a love relationship. He is still in love with his lover that ended the
relationship but he had another relationship with a girlfriend. The lover was Im going
to paraphrase because it is a little bit, this is from someone whos a second language
speaker here.
Okay. The lover was having a sexual adventure with a much younger girl while he was
having a boring relationship with a person he admires so he has thrown the lover to the
limit so she ended it and now he is depressed and he is trying to overcome the guilt and
the feeling of loss that looks like the crazy eight because he was going nuts when he has
still both of them and the relationship with the lover was so the relationship with the
lover was there are twenty years difference. So how do you help someone to overcome
the crazy eight and basically looks like two unhealthy relationships at the same time
broken up?
CM: This is a difficult question when you are having a duplicitous relationship like this

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to two people at the same time; you obviously make yourself open for this kind of
situation. So I think that you can help the person to figure out what was the lesson that
they learned. What do they need to do differently next time?
MP: Thats nice. Yep. Exactly. So you need to move the person pass the you know, if
they were making mistakes and setting themselves up in a messed up situation then they
need to make a decision regarding that situation. Im sure if he wants to go back into a
more screwed up triads with all sorts of people, he can.
CM: Right.
MP: I mean screwed up relationships are always available if you get into it again or he
has to decide that it wasnt good for him.
CM: Right. So that the point is that instead of just looking at the sadness of it, to look at
what was the lesson that he learned.
MP: Uh-hmm. Great.
CM: So that makes it a positive thing, the lesson.
MP: Great. So we have another question here. Is it possible that you have a tough need
in one area of your life or in a circle of people, lets say family and a different need when
you are at work?
CM: Yes, I think so. What do you think, Mark?
MP: Yeah, I think that you have different contexts in your life, different rules.
CM: Different contexts that you have, youll have different needs that are more
important. You know Tony used to teach that no, that youll always have the needs in the
same order in every situation but now hes changed and I think that now he teaches that
the order of the needs and the vehicles change in different stages of life and so it also
changes in different contexts, in different social contexts.
MP: Also different areas of life. So you could be in a very challenging significant-based
work place and then you come home and you need to connect. And so some people thats
transition thats very difficult for some people. Some people will be tough at work then
they come home and theyre tough with their spouse. And this happens with men who
were in high-pressured business or an attorney or something like that. They come home
and they expect everyone to report to them just as if they were still at the company and if
the wife or the girlfriend is uncertain about something, the guy gets angry and so forth.
And so that would be an example of where you are meeting your needs in different areas
of your life and you need to adjust to meeting those needs in a different way. You meet
connection at home and significance in a different way at work and dont come home and
be an attorney where a prosecutor with your wife. Right?

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CM: Exactly.
MP: And the second thing is that some people do the opposite where they work their
very tough at home and then they come home and they collapse and they dont have any
of the backbone and energy and the fierceness that they have at work and theres a total
disconnect and thats also some place where you need to do a little bit of work so for
instance someone who is the CEO and works all day managing people and comes home
and just collapses and cant think in terms of what the family needs next. So those are
two examples of where people meet their needs in different areas of life, different
amounts.
CM: Yes.
MP: So, we have a question here one moment. Hey, there. You have a question?
Linda: Yeah. Hi.
CM: Hi.
Linda: Hello. This is Linda from Sweden.
CM: Hi, Linda.
Linda: Hey, are you okay? Its me then. So, I was thinking about at work at my
psychiatric department. Well, not mine but the hospitals. I have this client, a patient.
He has no feelings, sort of emotionless, yeah, dilemma. He has been an epileptic and he
hurt himself so he is paralyzed from his waist down and all the years now he felt like no
emotions and I just dont know how can you reach someone that doesnt feel alive. You
know what I mean?
CM: Is there one thing that he likes to do?
Linda: Well, I asked him and before, he had something he liked to do but he doesnt feel
he wants to do anything anymore.
CM: But now he lives in the hospital?
Linda: Well, he came as himself because he was kind of suicidal and so needs help.
CM: Okay. Hes not hospitalized.
Linda: No, hes not. And I know that hes having a bad relationship. Not bad but he is,
when he is home, he is living with his Mom and Dad. He sees them about fifteen minutes
a day. Fifteen minutes so they hardly speak and they dont know anything about him.
CM: Oh. That was an interesting situation to visit him at home and see what that

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relationship is like and probably he is suffering because that relationship is so bad. And
so maybe if you see at home, if you go to the home and speak with the parents, maybe
you will find that they are a good resource for him, maybe youll find that there is
something that you can improve in his everyday life. Its very difficult with a patient like
that if you just speak to him because he will not give you enough information.
Linda: No, hes sort of holding himself.
CM: Besides, because he doesnt feel anything, he doesnt express anything so it is very
difficult to understand the situation. So youll have to meet the people around him. Does
he have brothers and sisters?
Linda: Im not sure of that yet. I dont know him so much.
CM: Okay. But that would be good if you could visit the home or if you could invite the
parents to come to the hospital so you can talk to them and then figure out what are his
greatest resources. If you just take that mega-strategy about what are the greatest
resources, just finding one thing in his life that is good, that would help enormously.
Dont you think, Mark?
MP: Absolutely. And you know what, Cloe, by the way, this is Linda who did the
amazing work before she did even
CM: I know, I know. I will not forget you, Linda. I know who you are.
Linda: Wow. Thank you. Im just nervous
MP: Fantastic. So I was thinking
Linda: Yeah?
MP: In your situation, what troubles you this a little bit? So in your situation, what are
some of the ways you could use some of these mega-strategies with the I know you
have some restrictions and so forth. You have a job description and certain things that
you can do and certain things that are more difficult. So what are some ways to expand
the unit? Could you call the family for instance and tell them that they are concerned for
instance or invite them in. Would that be something that will be available to you as a
resource?
Linda: I think so if he would agree on that because he is over twenty so
CM: Ah, he has to give permission. That is right.
Linda: Yeah.
CM: So one thing that you can do is you can say to him that you need to understand how

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difficult his parents are in order to be able to help him.

Linda: Okay.
CM: And so you want to talk to the parents just to see how difficult people they are.
Linda: Okay. Yeah, thats the way to go.
CM: And because I think that a man like that if you say that you want to enlist the
parents help, he is going to say, no, I dont want them to help me. But if you say, I want
to see how difficult they are, he is going to say, yes, you are going to see how difficult
they are.
Linda: Yeah.
CM: And I think that as a nurse, you can do a home visit, cant you?
Linda: Yeah, we do sometimes. Yeah.
CM: Yes. You can do a home visit because maybe the parents will not come but you can
suggest that you want to visit him at home and youll come at a time when the parents are
there.
Linda: Yeah. Absolutely.
CM: Also, if you visit him at home, you can ask to see his Mom and maybe there are
things that he does in his room.
Linda: Yeah.
CM: So you can see if he has a computer, if he has a television, if he has something to
write on. You know you could have a whole conversation around those things. Another
important thing is does he know other people that are in a wheel chair?
Linda: Yes. Yeah, a few people. Yeah. And he is talking about starting a training
program to be an instructor for gymnastics or something.
CM: Oh, thats great. So that you could help and develop that.
Linda: So he has some kind of future.
CM: Totally. And then if you look in to the medications because part of not feeling
emotions could be the medications that he is taking.
Linda: Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

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07/07/10
CM: You have to look into that because I dont have to tell you. You know that different
people respond differently to medications and some of those medications for epileptics
can kill the emotions.
Linda: Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. Good advice.
CM: Because as they control the seizures, they also control any intense emotions so the
patient cannot get angry but also they cannot feel very happy. They cannot feel very
much of anything.
Linda: Yeah. Exactly because he feels kind of plain. Nothing. So
CM: Right. Its a bad feeling so maybe they could change the medications a little bit or
give him a little bit less.
Linda: Yeah, because as he says and as I understand him, he needs variation.
CM: Yes. He needs variety. Yes. Very much so.
Linda: Hes talking about that he wants adrenaline.
CM: Yeah.
Linda: To get up and yeah.
CM: Yes. You know that there are sports that people in wheelchairs can play. They do
that here. Im sure that they do that in Sweden also.
Linda: Yeah. He was doing some rugby but then he just struck out of it so, because he
dont like, oh, I dont want anymore. So, it is kind of he is losing everything.
CM: Okay. Well, I dont know how it goes.
Linda: Yeah. Thank you.
MP: So it sounds like Yeah. I will be very curious to think about ways of using some
of the three mega-strategies so expanding the unit, one of the guide, I just want to point
out again, I repeat, that one of the rules of thumb is that if youre reaching out to a family
member, you need to whoever you are speaking to, you have to ask them for their
perspective on the other person and you have to ask them to understand you know. So if
you are calling the parents, you say, I really need to understand I think you have
information that will help me understand your son. If they ask the sons permission to
call you have to say, your parents must be really difficult, I cant imagine how you know,
I need to see that. Right? And you basically have to put in the persons interest for you
to make the connection. You never want to make someone feel like they are getting in
trouble or they are going to be evaluated or something like that. Right?

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07/07/10
Linda: Yeah.
MP: Then the second thing is once you have some sense of the person, you can dig. Its
basically like finding the spark. You want to find out from the parents what he enjoys,
what he likes doing. Everyone who is blank and passive, there is some way that they are
either have met their needs or meeting their needs their other needs. You have to
believe that. There are Six Human Needs and everyone is meeting them somehow. So it
is a little bit of digging to find that. And then it is a combination of finding the spark and
elevation strategy where you can take the person to the next, you know you can dig out
and once you know of something about someone like that. You have a reference. So, if
you find out that he was a rugby player, well you can tease him and you know, I mean
you can mess around and say, hey, so hows my rugby player today. That kind of thing
Linda: Yeah.
MP: Even little things like that. They really shift the identity and shift the state and shift
the relationship in a lot of ways then youll start to get the sense of the next thing thats
available for you to elevate the person or find the spark. Does that make sense?
Linda: Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you.
MP: So, you have to get outside of that like an enclosed point is great. Sometimes you
have to get outside of the context in which you introduce the person. Its not as hard as it
seems. Were not used to doing that to making that phone call and finding out someones
home life versus their work life versus their life at a hospital but it gives you tons of
leverage. People arent used to you knowing that. When you know that, you have all
these new ways, all these resources that youve brought into the conversation. Who
knows maybe hell become, maybe also you can orient him to this life stage once he is at
that point. Find out what are things that would really be good for him in the next five
years. What would the future look like for him that he could be excited about?
CM: And if he wants to be an instructor like that, obviously he wants to contribute and
wants to help other people.
Linda: Uh-hmm. Yeah.
MP: Yeah. So, the life stage, one of the key parts of the life stage is finding the
compelling future for the person because people have, you know in a life stage that
people respond to compelling futures when they are in a life stage. So, if you ask
someone who in their life stage, you ask them so what are things going to be like in three
to five years for you? You know, people if they are in a good place, then they have a
sense of yeah, yeah, I got to work on this and in three years I will be able to do this. You
now understand? And so if you can get into that then once you understand that, that
translates into action steps and you can have him starting to work towards the future.
CM: You know something that I like to say to a person like that is that even though his

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body cant move that much because he is in a wheelchair, his mind can travel anywhere.
Linda: Yeah.
CM: And use metaphors like that.
Linda: Yes. Uplifting.
CM: All right. Thank you, Linda. Thank you very much.
Linda: Thank you so much.
MP: All right. Absolutely.
CM: Thank you. Bye-bye.
MP: Okay. We have a quick follow up question for the question about the break up and
the question is: Is it better to work on what to learn than to work on actual relationship?
Try to change the focus after learning from the mistake. Could that be it? That is the
question.
CM: Yes, I would think so because what you want is for him not to get entangled in a
triangle again.
MP: Uh-hmm.
CM: I would think so that it is more important what was the lesson so that the mistakes
are not repeated. What do you think, Mark?
MP: Yeah, that is an essential part of mourning something that is past, you know there is
a difference between people tend to get confused between mourning someone who has
died and you cant do very much about that versus mourning something that you had in
your life that fell apart because of some mistakes you know. And its important to orient
the person towards, first of all, it wasnt all that good. If there were so many problems, it
is not like you are mourning the best thing that ever happened to you. He is mourning
something that was causing him a great pain and confusion at the time.
CM: Oh, yeah. That is so important, Mark. Thank you because for some reason he was
got involved with another person while he was in this relationship so that relationship
was not so great.
MP: Yeah. So there was an overall crazy eight of somehow getting involved in
relationships that are damaging and then going into self pity and feeling sad and
mourning it and then you know and getting the person to basically commit that. This was
a mistake. This didnt work. So that is an important thing. I think we bring people back
to the actual thing that they are mourning and you can usually find all sorts of mistakes

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07/07/10
that were made and defects with it, things that you wouldnt do again and that is kind of
where the person needs to go in order to learn.
CM: Exactly.
MP: All right, guys. So, it is I think it is time to say good-bye. Let us unmute.
CM: Nobody has another question?
MP: And well see you guys next week. Oh, do you have any more questions? Feel free
to ask.
CM: Somebody said yes. We could do a quick one.
MP: Okay. Oh, yes. Okay, Sylvie.
Sylvie: Okay. Sorry, sorry. I just
MP: Youre unmuted. Go for it.
Sylvie: Yeah. I just realized how great my hand just a very quick one regarding this how
you Cloe were dealing with the father with Amys father that you pulled him you know,
we need to know, your daughter needs to know if you are dead or alive and my sons, they
are seven and ten years old and their father disappeared from their life practically four
years ago. And they seem to know that but sometimes they still ask and he once in a
while call and how do you break this news to a seven and a ten-year-old boy that their
father is practically dead for them and that would be the best to handle it.
CM: No, because he calls from time to time, right?
Sylvie: Well, once a year.
CM: Okay, you know I wouldnt say that he is dead or anything like that. I would say
that some fathers are good fathers of babies but very bad fathers of older children. Some
fathers are bad fathers of older children and very good fathers of teenagers. Some fathers
only become good fathers when the children are adults. So you dont know what is going
to happen.
Sylvie: No. I only know
CM: And so leave it open for the fact that he could change and all of a sudden come back
and so he might be a good father of adult children. Dont close the door completely.
Sylvie: What do I Okay, but then I would create a false hope. It is what my heart tells
me.

Page 27
07/07/10
CM: That is right but dont do it with a great hope. But this is a fact of life. This is the
truth. Sometimes a man like that appears again and if the children are just resentful or
totally gave him up for dead, that is not a good thing.
Sylvie: No, no, no. I mean I wouldnt want that. People tell me yeah but when comes
up, when he shows up when they are eighteen and he regrets everything, they are going to
turn their back on him. I dont want that. I seriously dont want that. So
CM: So I would just say, you know maybe he is the kind of father that hell show up
when you are twenty years old.
Sylvie: Okay.
CM: And then youll have a decision to make. They will be your decision.
Sylvie: Oh, yeah. This way, with the end of the sentence, it sounds like something that
could come easily from my mouth but it is just such a dilemma not to create a false hope
so
CM: I know. I know. Do they have another father figure?
Sylvie: No, not really.
CM: Oh. There is not a grandfather or some uncle or somebody like that?
Sylvie: No, not really. You know I live in Sweden with them.
CM: Okay. Well, you know Sylvie. Children need only one good parent.
Sylvie: Thank you.
CM: That is all that is needed really. Really. There is research on this. And that is what
I always say. It is only one good parent that is needed. So they will be fine.
Sylvie: Okay. I work hard on it.
CM: Yes. I know. Well, thank you for the question. There are many people in that
situation. Many, many people.
Sylvie: Unfortunately.
CM: Yes, yes. Well, thank you and take care, Sylvie.
Sylvie: Thank you.
CM: Thank you. All right. Well say good-bye to everybody.

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07/07/10
MP: Okay, guys. Yep. Okay. Good-bye, guys. Talk to you next week.

Page 29

4 - Intro - Module 4 - Tahnee - Teleclass - Transcript

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4 - Intro - Module 4 - Tahnee - Teleclass - Transcript

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Cloe Madanes & Mark Peysha

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

Cloe Madanes & Mark Peysha

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

Cloe Madanes & Mark Peysha

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

Cloe Madanes & Mark Peysha

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

Cloe Madanes & Mark Peysha

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

Cloe Madanes & Mark Peysha

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

Cloe Madanes & Mark Peysha

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

Cloe Madanes & Mark Peysha

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

Cloe Madanes & Mark Peysha

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

Cloe Madanes & Mark Peysha

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

Cloe Madanes & Mark Peysha

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

Cloe Madanes & Mark Peysha

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

Cloe Madanes & Mark Peysha

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

Cloe Madanes & Mark Peysha

introduce her to some young men.

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

Cloe Madanes & Mark Peysha

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

Cloe Madanes & Mark Peysha

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

Cloe Madanes & Mark Peysha

CM: Are there questions in the podcast?

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

Cloe Madanes & Mark Peysha

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

Cloe Madanes & Mark Peysha

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

Cloe Madanes & Mark Peysha

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

Cloe Madanes & Mark Peysha

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

Cloe Madanes & Mark Peysha

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

Cloe Madanes & Mark Peysha

difficult his parents are in order to be able to help him.

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

Cloe Madanes & Mark Peysha

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

Cloe Madanes & Mark Peysha

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

Cloe Madanes & Mark Peysha

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

Cloe Madanes & Mark Peysha

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

Cloe Madanes & Mark Peysha

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

Cloe Madanes & Mark Peysha

Copyright 2010 Madanes-Peysha Publishing

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