The tools that psychologists work with are called psychological techniques, these techniques are only used by mental health specialists, an example of them is the paradoxical intent technique.
Typically, these techniques are used as part of a psychological intervention/treatment. In addition, psychological treatments may belong to different psychological schools (cognitive behavioral, systemic, geststaltic, psychoanalysis, etc. ).
- In this sense.
- Psychological treatment is a professional intervention.
- This intervention is based on psychological techniques used in a clinical context (mental health center.
- Hospital.
- Private practice.
- Associations of affected people.
- Etc.
- ).
- In this work.
- A specialist usually clinical psychologist.
- Seeks to eliminate the suffering of the person with the active collaboration of the patient.
Examples may include helping a person overcome depression, working with a family that has conflicts between their members, so they can communicate better, or teaching a teen to interact with their co-workers less aggressively.
When applying the paradoxical intent technique, patients are asked to stop having a tendency to try to escape or control their symptoms, and are also asked to voluntarily appear and exaggerate.
The psychological treatment includes listening carefully to what the patient has to say and looking for personal, social, family aspects, etc. to generate or sustain the problem that motivated the consultation, it is also a matter of informing the patient about how to solve the problems raised using psychological techniques Specific examples of these techniques are breathing or relaxation training, paradoxical intention, interpersonal problem solving, questioning wrong beliefs, social skills training, etc.
In short, psychological treatments are applied by psychologists who are experts in behavioral problems, who use specialized evaluation techniques (maintenance, medical history, tests and questionnaires, etc. ) and treatments that have proven their effectiveness in various scientific surveys.
The use of paradoxical intent is linked to humanist psychotherapy, in particular to the logotherapy of Victor Frankl (1999). On the other hand, the strength with which the cognitive approach emerged generated an ideal field for its use.
Thus, in the context of cognitive behavioral therapy, paradoxical intent has become a particularly useful cognitive intervention to overcome the resistance to change of some patients.
To understand this, let’s think that a paradox can be defined as something contrary to what is considered right. A paradox, from Latin paradoxus (which, in turn, originates from the Greek language), is a figure of rhetoric that consists of using expressions that involve a contradiction.
This means that in addition to conflicting conditions, the factors presented are valid, real or reliable. The paradoxical attempt technique attempts to confront the common sense of the person to whom it applies.
Thus, by using paradoxical intent in therapy, the patient would be encouraged to do or desire what he fears (Frankl, 1984). Do you think it’s risky or do you consider it a useful technique?
The general goal of paradoxical intent is to cause changes in people’s attitudes and reactions to stress or discomfort situations, it is about breaking the vicious cycle that usually occurs, precisely directing the points most feared by the patient. , we’ll look at an example:
A patient with insomnia puts all his efforts into falling asleep every night. With paradoxical intent, the professional asks the patient to do exactly the opposite of what he or she is trying to do. Now he has to lie down, but trying to stay awake as long as possible. This way of acting allows you to put aside the sleeping effort, as the indication is to stay awake and thus sleep faster.
Despite their recognized effectiveness in the clinical field, their mechanisms of action are not clearly established (unlike other psychological techniques), so there are several models that try to explain their effects.
For some variants of the technique, they promote control mechanisms that would affect the behavioral chain; in other cases, a call is made for changes in expectations, self-efficacy or the allocation of control as mechanisms responsible for change, among the proposed theoretical models. to explain the intervention of the above mechanisms are:
The procedure will require two changes in the way the patient currently faces the problem: on the one hand, the patient stops trying to control the problem, on the other hand, he must be ready to show and increase symptoms.
Both requirements go against the therapeutic logic to which the patient is accustomed, it will be necessary to explain in detail and convincingly how the dynamics of the problem can benefit from these changes.
Despite its benefits, paradoxical intent is perhaps one of the most difficult procedures to use in cognitive behavioral therapy. In addition to knowing the logic and procedure, the therapist should have enough experience to detect when it’s time to apply it.
In this case, the therapist’s communication skills and clinical experience will be critical to the success of the application. The firmness, safety, conviction and simulation ability of the therapist can be fundamental to the patient’s ability to do what contradicts what his intuition suggests.
It should be noted that paradoxical intent, as a technique, has worked well in different fields of application. However, it may have been more effective at curing insomnia. Finally, the importance of application under the supervision of a therapist should be emphasized, because if applied incorrectly, it can aggravate the problem and even make it more resistant to future interventions.