Verbalizing the Inner Dialogue

College of Mental Health Counseling presents:

Verbalizing the Inner Dialogue A Cognitive Therapy Approach

From Daniel Keeran, MSW, President, College of Mental Health Counselling www.collegemhc.com

Verbalizing the Inner Dialogue: A Cognitive Therapy Approach

By Daniel Keeran, MSW, President, College of Mental Health Counselling, www.ctihalifax.com Victoria, Canada

This new generation psychological technology can improve conditions in persons with normal or average cognitive functioning. The cognitive mental functions give humans a particular advantage in terms of creative solution development.

Humans are constantly engaging in a process of internal dialogue across a variety of subject areas. Mental distress may be at least partly remedied by verbalizing, understanding, and perhaps modifying the internal dialogue.

For persons suffering from chronic dependency as well as anxiety, depression, and relationship issues, the following technique may be useful: 1. Invite the client to talk about what they know will improve their situation and what could worsen their situation.

2. Identify the parts of the self as the knowing confident self and the unknowing helpless self.

3. Ask the client to verbalize each part of the self in response to the other (like Golum in Lord of the Rings).

4. Discuss ways to strengthen the knowing confident part of the self. This is also the observer will part of the self that is able to evaluate and modify the dialogue and draw a conclusion that works best.

The above technique can be easily learned, recorded through journaling, and repeated as a core process in therapy in order to make the inner dialogue most conscious and useful to the client. This psychological technology can improve conditions in persons with normal or average cognitive functioning.

For more therapeutic techniques visit www.ctihalifax.com