Reality Therapy & Choice Theory
Reality Therapy has been around since the book of the same name was published in the United States in 1965 by Psychiatrist Dr. William Glasser. It derives from the cognitive-behavioural and here-and-now types of psychotherapies.
The approach is actually far more genteel and person-centred. It is also based on a few relatively simple, yet powerful tenets and I often recommend it as an approach to developing counsellors. Therapy does not (and probably should not) have to be complicated.
Five Basic Needs
Approaches to psychology generally assume that people have certain basic needs. In Reality Therapy these are classified under five headings:
- Power (including achievement, feeling worthwhile and winning)
- Love & Belonging (including groups as well as families or loved ones)
- Freedom (including independence, autonomy, ones own 'space')
- Fun (includes pleasure and enjoyment)
- Survival (includes nourishment, shelter, sex)
One of the core principles of Reality Therapy is that, whether we are aware of it or not, we are all the time acting to meet these needs, although we may not necessarily act effectively.
Socialising with others is an effective way to meet our need for belonging. Sitting in a corner and crying in the hope that people will come to us is generally an ineffective way of meeting that need. It may work, but it is painful and carries a high price for ourselves and others.
So if life is unsatisfactory or we are distressed or in trouble, one basic thing to check is whether we are succeeding in meeting our basic psychological needs for power, belonging, freedom and fun.
In our society the survival need is usually being met. It is in how we meet the other four psychological needs that we can run into trouble.
Glasser argues that the key is in what we want out of life. Few people would get out of bed in the morning and say, "I must meet my love and belonging needs today.."
We are more likely to say something along the lines of, "I wonder if Angela is free for lunch today.." or "Perhaps we can get the gang together on Friday night."
We want to have lunch with Angela or to marry John or to go out with our chums on a Friday night or we want our football team or our political party to win.
So what really drives us as social beings is our wants. We don't think of our needs as such. We think of what we want, we act to get what we want, fantasise about what we want and so on..
So while a counsellor in Reality Therapy would check out whether a client is meeting his or her needs, the three basic questions that are asked of a client are..
- What do you want?
- What are you doing to get what you want?
- Is it working?
A workable plan
The counsellor helps the client to make a workable plan in order to get what he or she wants.
According to Reality Therapy, the essence of a workable plan is that it can be implemented; in other words, it concentrates on the things that are within ones control. For instance..
- Maybe you can't make your spouse talk to you but you can talk to your spouse;
- Maybe you can't make your teenage son treat you with respect but you can decide that you will no longer provide a laundry and catering service to a son who treats you with contempt;
- Maybe you can't make the company give you a promotion but you can look for a promotion, lobby for it and apply for the job when it comes up.
In this way, Reality Therapy empowers the client by emphasising the power of doing what is in ones control to do.
Doing: The heart of Reality Therapy
Emotions are an immediate and sometimes confronting source of information about how we are coping and whether we are happy with what is happening in our lives. However it can be difficult to change our emotions directly; generally it is easier to change our thinking.
For example, one might decide to no longer think of oneself as a victim or to decide that I will concentrate on what I can do, rather than what I think everybody else ought to do.
To practitioners of Reality Therapy, changing what we do is the key to changing how we feel and to getting what we want.
Sometimes we can be so caught up in anger, depression or resentment that changing how we think seems an impossible task. In such situations, a positive change in what we do may be the best we can manage for the time being.
Control
The issue of control is also of great importance in Reality Therapy. Indeed the theory underpinning Reality Therapy was, until recently, called Control Theory. It is currently referred to as Choice Theory.
To meet their needs, human beings need control. One person might seek control through position and money. Another may want to control his or her physical space, like the teenager who bans her parents from her room. Yet another may want to chair the committee; another wants an office with a corner and two windows; another wants two lamb chops, Heinz beans and three boiled potatoes on the table at precisely 6.30pm.
Misusing control can get us into trouble in two primary ways: when we try to control other people, and when we use inappropriate means (such as drugs and alcohol) to give us a false sense of control.
At the very heart of Glasser's Choice Theory is the idea that the only person I can really control is myself. If I think I can control others, I am moving in the direction of frustration. If I think others can control me (and thus blame others for all things that happen in my life) I tend to do nothing and again head for frustration.
Trying to control other people is pointless, from the perspective of Reality Therapy. It is a never-ending battle which alienates us from others and leads to pain and frustration. This is why it is vital to stick to what is in our own control and to respect the right of other people to meet their own needs.
There are of course things that "happen" to us for which we may not be personally (or wholly) responsible, but we can choose what we do about these things.
Some may get a sense of control from alcohol and other drugs. Unfortunately, our lives are never more out of control than when we are intoxicated. There are very few people in this world who wake up with a hangover to find that they have fewer problems than they had when they started getting wasted the night before.
Excessive drinking and the dependence on other substances has to be replaced by doing something else - and that something else has to have a fair chance of getting us what we want in life. Many people working in the addiction field have found this approach useful.
The Present and Future
Certain forms of psychotherapy focus on what happened in the past. Practitioners of Reality Therapy also visit the past, but probably to a lesser extent than some other approaches.
In Reality Therapy the past is seen as the source of our wants and of our established ways of behaving. However not only are the unhelpful things that happened to us there, but our successes are there too. The focus of Reality Therapy is to learn what needs to be learned from the past, but to move to empowering the client to satisfy his or her needs and wants in the present and in the future.
The reason for this is the belief that that our present perceptions influence our present behaviour and so it is these perceptions that the Reality Therapy practitioner helps the client to work through.
Reality Therapy is very much a therapy of hope, based on the conviction that we are products of the past but we do not have to go on being its victims. After all, we are in control of our futures.
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