Nikki reveals that the boyfriend has been pressuring her to engage in premarital sex. The most therapeutic response by the nurse is:
A. “I can refer you to a spiritual counselor if you like.”
B. “You shouldn’t allow anyone to pressure you into sex.”
C. “It sounds like this problem is related to your paralysis.”
D. “How do you feel about being pressured into sex by your boyfriend?”
Correct Answer: D. “How do you feel about being pressured into sex by your boyfriend?”
Focusing on the expression of feelings is therapeutic. The central force of the client’s condition is anxiety. Focusing, an approach to therapeutic treatment in which the therapist works to help the individual in treatment gain awareness into their bodily felt sense, is meant to help people seeking treatment learn to direct their attention toward things they experience that are difficult to describe in a concrete way.
Option A: This is not therapeutic because the nurse passes the responsibility to the counselor. Focusing can help people become reacquainted with internal awareness of their emotions, helping them become better able to more readily address them. Many of those who pursue focusing therapy or incorporate it into other treatment approaches find they can better describe what they feel and/or desire, cultivate independence from belief systems they no longer subscribe to, and experience greater success in therapy. People also report greater attentiveness in their lives, decreased tension and chronic pain, and increased decision-making and problem-solving abilities. Relationships and life experiences or situations may also be positively impacted.
Option B: Giving advice is not therapeutic. Also influencing the approach is the concept that change is more than a verbal process. Often, the concepts and ideas addressed in therapy are emotions and feelings, things that often cannot be easily put into words. Though a person might be easily aware of these emotions, thoughts, and behaviors on a surface level of awareness, and may even experience some level of insight into them, focusing therapy aims to help them target the deeper “felt” sense. Practitioners of the approach believe that those who are able to access and target this felt sense may be better able to achieve results in therapy, work through the issues concerning them, and produce a physical change in the body through the release of chronic tension.
Option C: This is not therapeutic because it confronts the underlying cause. Grounded in the person-centered approach to treatment, focusing therapy holds that individuals possess within themselves the answers they are seeking and is founded on the concept that individuals know themselves better than a therapist could ever hope to. This “knowing” refers to the knowledge of the body (the body’s awareness), however, not the knowledge of the thinking brain. In focusing therapy, therapist and person in treatment work to reaffirm the bodily knowledge a person has and allow the body to steer a person within future situations.