This is a question mainly for practicing clinical psychologists, counselors (LPCs), or other mental health professionals:
To what extent would you say correcting incoherence, inconsistencies, or contradictions between your patient's beliefs, values, thoughts, emotions, feelings, and behaviors is a part of your practice?
Some examples of what I mean:
- Someone states a desire to lose weight, but then regularly cheats on their diet. They feel guilty for doing so, but continue on anyway.
- Someone believes in the right to life but also supports capital punishment without being able to explain away the apparent contradiction.
- Someone values the commitments they made to their work, but is disloyal to the commitments they made to their spouse.
I recognize that these are overly simplistic examples, but they illustrate the point of the question.
Specifically, is helping to illuminate inconsistencies a large part of your therapeutic practice, a fair to moderate part of your practice, or no large part of your practice at all?