Posted by gardenergirl on September 20, 2006, at 16:01:49
In reply to how would you phrase this for a client? » gardenergirl, posted by zenhussy on September 20, 2006, at 9:42:00
> gg replied:>>I wonder how well the lesson sticks when the action gets "disappeared". Disappeared though not forgotten. We don't always have a safety net or get mulligans.
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> gg,
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> is there any other way you might have phrased this for a client? ...Goodness gracious, what flattery! Please give yourself more credit, zen. I have faith in your understanding of this topic. Experience interacting on the internet would surely be more relevant and useful versus any potential benefit from formal education or experience with professional psychology.
To answer your subject line question, how I might discuss this with a client would be too dependent on the specific situation with that client, so any wording I would choose would be message and recipient specific.
My message in the post to you was that it might be harder to sustain the learning of the type of "hard lesson" you refer to if the representation of the behavior, for example a post on an internet forum, "disappears" (for example is removed from viewing access). To the person who could learn the "hard lesson", having the evidence of the action "disappear" could feel similar to the defense mechanism of "undoing", or as if the action was never taken. (See http://www.planetpsych.com/zPsychology_101/defense_mechanisms.htm for descriptions of different defense mechanisms.) That "disappearing" of the action might make it easier to forget any lessons learned and could lead to repeating the behavior in the future.
Now, if the representation of the behavior is documented in some way, for example in a computer file or in the case of your question here, a client's file, the action related to the "lesson" is not forgotten. It's not invisible. Anyone external to the act/lesson learning could have access to the stimulus for the lesson and might learn from the other's behavior and any consequences. But the one who has the most to learn from the act, as you describe the person acting from "feelings/emotions in the moment", may no longer benefit from the lesson if the evidence of it seems to no longer exist.
That's pretty much the message.
gg
poster:gardenergirl
thread:685830
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20060911/msgs/687707.html