Explore Client Turning Points
People come to therapy when they experience trauma or significant life changes. Turning points, also referred to as pivotal events, represent essential changes in your client's life. These are important life events that require you to turn, pivot, and think in new and innovative ways. You will explore how your clients feel about change, stuckness, and thinking patterns related to the Turning Point. During the initial stage, therapists gather information about the client's pivot points to understand the current situation. This assessment helps therapists understand the client's needs and develop an appropriate treatment plan.
1) Examine the Nature of the Client's Turning Point
The therapist's first assessment goal is to normalize the client’s experience non-judgmentally, allowing them to express their experiences in the best way they know how. Therapists can help clients identify, explore, and understand how Pivot Point’s personal or global changes impact their lives.
Pivot points represent essential life changes due to stress, depression, anxiety, and trauma. Significant events require you to turn, pivot, and think in new and innovative ways. Each of the pivots represents ways we develop new meaning in life. Our changes can represent times when we can increase our hope and positivity. Examples of turning points include graduating from school, getting your first job, getting married or divorced, losing a loved one, having a child, being a victim of a crime, sudden homelessness, incarceration, getting promoted, global crises, and environmental emergencies. The good news is that you can successfully adjust to turning points by thinking flexibly. The Hierarchy of Hope helps you draw on your change experiences to identify goals constructively, create new meanings, and explore your transcendent purpose.
Therapists can start asking such questions to understand the client’s perspective about the changes happening in their life:
- How do clients describe the changes and their presenting issues?)
- What developmentally appropriate language do clients use, and how do they best express themselves?
- How do clients describe the nature of their Pivot Point?
- How do clients believe the Pivot Point is affecting their lives?
- How do clients want to transcend the Pivot Point?
- How did it prompt the inclusion of negative habits into the person’s lifestyle? Can the negative habits be transcended?
- How are clients experiencing change (job, personal, relationship, control, meaning, etc.)?
- How can clients create new meaning from their experience (e.g., a shift in priorities, etc.) to maintain hope?
- What keeps clients stuck and unable to move forward?
- How do clients conceptualize change?
- Why are clients reluctant to change?
- How can clients be more proactive in meeting their needs?
- What negative emotions (stress, anxiety, trauma, depression) does the client experience?
2) Explore Feelings of Stuckness
Stuckness, in a general sense, refers to a state of being unable to move, progress, or change, either physically, mentally, emotionally, or psychologically. It can describe a feeling of being trapped, stagnant, or unable to advance from a current situation or condition. This feeling can manifest in various aspects of life, including career, relationships, or personal growth. Stuckness is the state of being unable to move forward or change a situation, often accompanied by a feeling of frustration or inertia.
3) Identify "Stuck" Thinking Patterns.
Clients who persevere are empowered and committed to their goals despite barriers, roadblocks, challenges, difficulties, and failures. They do not stay stuck. Some reasons for getting stuck include fear of failure, frustration, all-or-nothing thinking, catastrophizing, and self-doubt. People need help in managing their irrational thinking patterns.
Life has many twists and turns. People find that some of these twists and turns occur through their own choices, while others occur because of unforeseen obstacles and barriers that impede their progress. Some additional reasons clients feel "stuck" are based on irrational thinking.
- Self-Esteem issues
- Lack of alternatives
- Fear of change
- Procrastination
- Lack of achievable goals
- Perfectionism
- Irrational thinking
- Lack of hope
- Feelings of helplessness