Week Three: Developing the Four Windows Model of CENT

Looking at Window No.1

Introduction

Two weeks ago, and not for the first time, I outlined the four elements of the Four Windows model.  These are ways of re-framing an existing problem or ‘source of suffering' in your life, so that you can feel a whole lot better about being stuck with that problem.  Once you've calmed down, you can then look at whether there might be some way to reduce or eliminate the actual problem, as distinct from your emotional reaction towards that problem.

Last week I outlined an agenda for working on the development of this model.  The first step in that agenda, which I will tackle today, is this:

1. I want to look at how to apply the Four Windows, one at a time, to a psychological problem, to see how it works in practice.  I will, naturally, begin with Window 1, and continue through to the end.  This could take four weeks, or eight weeks, or more.  At the moment I have no way to estimate this process any more accurately than that.

Applying Window No.1

In 1992-93, I went through a major career crisis, when the cash flow in my company began to dry up, and I had to contemplate resigning in order to save the jobs of my business partner and our employees.  I frequently felt anxious about my future financial prospects, and depressed by the loss of my office, salary and work status (which was the ‘Deputy Chief Executive' role).  At the time, I used REBT to reduce my emotions to concern and sadness.  That took a whole lot of effort, and went on for months and months.

Today, thinking about the same problem, this is how I would apply Window 1 of the Four Windows model:

(a) I am suffering with anxiety and depression because my business is in decline, and I am going to have to leave my job in order to save the company.  I do not know what the future will hold.  But I am already paying out more money than I have coming is, as I try to launch a new company for myself.

(b) Let's look at that problem through Window 1.  Window 1 has a frame that says: "Life is suffering".  So I am now looking at my own problem (suffering) through a frame that says "Life is suffering".  This does not seem so bad.  If life is suffering, and I am suffering, then that makes sense; that is how it should be.  My previous upset must have been driven by the idea that "Life should be rosy, and since mine is not at the moment, then it's awful; I can't stand this crappy situation; which should not be happening".  Simply by looking through Window 1, I invalidate and undermine all of those irrational beliefs, and immediately come to terms with my unfortunate circumstances.

Now let's think about your life.  Are you suffering at the moment?  If so, let us look at your suffering through Window No.1.  You might say: "My life contains suffering, in a context in which life itself IS suffering".  Does that feel any better?  Isn't it like being poor in a poor country; sick in a disease-ridden country; old in an aged society; black in a black community; white in a white community; or finding you are a green Martian, living on Mars.  And there were you (a moment ago) thinking you were a Green Martian living on a non-Green Earth.  You suddenly realize, "My situation is NORMAL!"

So Window 1 is quite a simple little shift in perspective, from rejecting your suffering, because it seemed "unnatural", to accepting your suffering because it seems quite natural to be suffering, given that you are a human living in a world of suffering.

Looking Ahead

Over the next few weeks we will look at my old business problem, and your current generic problem, through Windows 2, 3 and 4, and then sum up our experience of that journey.

At the end of that journey we should have produced significant changes in our understandings of ourselves and our world.  As we review those understandings many times, we will change our minds and our lives.  We will do that by changing the deep-seated schemas (or blueprints) stored in long term memory, below the level of conscious awareness - by repetition after repetition after repetition.  And as we change our schemas, that will change our automatic responses to our life's difficulties now and in the future.  We will learn to think clearer, and to skate over the surface of life's sufferings.  Problems will still arise, but we will handle them very much more effectively, because we will not be thrown by them into a depowered emotional state.

One of the most profound changes that will occur is that we will rewire ourselves to get rid of our current automatic reactions.  Those reactions take this form:

Stimulus>Response (No choice)

At the moment, when we see some suffering in our lives, we come up with a single pre-scripted response to that suffering.  "Oh my god, this is awful.  I'm stuck with ‘X' again!"  What we will get from the Four Windows model is a new habit: The habit of looking for the other three ways of looking at our suffering.

Instead of saying, "Oh look, I'm suffering again!", we will say: "Let me remind myself of the four ways that I can look at this situation".

There is enormous FREEDOM in having four ways to interpret any suffering that comes into your life.  In the first place, it gets rid of absolutistic ways of looking at the world!  Then you escape the Stimulus>Response (No choice) formula; and you open up flexible thinking about the various ways that this problem can be framed.  Out of that will come a new ability to resolve those problems that can be resolved, and to learn to live with those problems that cannot be solved.

I look forward to taking this journey with you.  The journey into CENT-land.  The journey into mental freedom.

Best wishes,

Jim

Dr Jim Byrne

Doctor of Counselling

ABC Coaching and Counselling Services 

Email: Jim Byrne at ABC Coaching

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DEVELOPING THE 'FOUR WINDOWS' MODEL

For quite some time I have been unclear where this blog was going.  I jumped around from topic to topic as the mood took me.  However, I have now found a direction for the next few weeks, and that is to develop the 'Four Windows Model' of Cognitive Emotive Narrative Therapy (CENT).

Last week I presented the description of the Four Windows in considerable detail.  (See below).

What did you think of the 'Four Windows' model?

Today I want to outline the journey for the next few weeks.  Over that period:

1. I want to look at how to apply the Four Windows, one at a time, to a psychological problem, to see how it works in practice.  I will, naturally, begin with Window 1, and continue through to the end.  This could take four weeks, or eight weeks, or more.  At the moment I have no way to estimate this process any more accurately than that.

2. I will compare the use of each window with the use of the REBT disputation model.  Are you interested in seeing the results of this comparison?

3. I will explain why 'disputing musts/shoulds/oughts' is now problematical; including showing that the Tom Miller approach to disputing 'shoulds' is an expression of Logical Positivism in psychology - and how this excludes and downgrades the value of moral principles and rules.  That is to say, Logical Positivism excludes the possibility of moral philosophy as a set of meaningful statements.

4. I will argue that moral philosophy has to take precedence over science, because, although it is possible to sustain a viable society without science, it is NOT possible to sustain a society without moral rules.  what do you think of this idea?

5. I will explore this issue: Which of these Windows is true?  Is any of them true?  What does 'true' mean in this context?  Are any of your views of yourself, others and your world true?

6. I will explore John Chaffee's 'Three Stages of Thinking', which concludes with the view that some ideas are better than others because they are better supported by evidence.  (This is the essence of 'critical thinking').  How do you decide whether one idea is better than another?

7.  However, critical thinking can fall into the trap of assuming humans are wholly reasonable/rational, and exclude consideration of the degree to which we are unreasonable/emotional.  According to Bart Kosko, humans have but one rule of logic: "I'll do it if it FEELS right".  If that is so, how then do we proceed?  Or how do we integrate the thinking and feeling sides of the individual in Cognitive Emotive Narrative Therapy (CENT)?

I will set out to follow this agenda.  I may have to deviate from time to time, because of unexpected problems that come up in my analysis and presentation.  However, I will try as much as possible to follow this agenda.  This could take (speculatively) 14 to 21 weeks, or even more.  Whether you are a counsellor/psychotherapist, or an interested individual, there should be some value in this inquiry for you.  What do you think of the agenda?  Is there something I have missed, from your point of view?

Please feel free to comment on my ideas as they emerge, so that I can correct any false starts and/or questionable turns.

Thanking you for your interest in the development of Cognitive Emotive Narrative Therapy (CENT).

PS: I am now writing my first paper on CENT, which I hope to publish in the next few weeks.  I will make sure it appears on this website as soon as possible thereafter.

Best wishes,

Jim

Dr Jim Byrne
ABC Coaching and Counselling Services
jim.byrne@abc-counselling.com

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MODELS TO GUIDE OUR THINKING

A few weeks ago, I wrote a couple of blogs about a little model that I was developing.  My aim was to help people to think their way out of emotional disturbances.  In REBT we already had a way to do that.  We assumed that all emotional disturbance is caused by irrational thinking, and to become undisturbed we need to change our beliefs from irrational to rational.  This is a binary model.  It implies that there is a true way to look at your problems and an untrue way.

The little model I was developing is quite different.  It comes from some ideas that the Buddha developed, and a couple from later 'sutras', or wise Buddhist texts.  I called it the 'Mind Hut' model, or the 'Four Windows' model.  This is how it goes:

Imagine you live in a small square hut, which has four square windows, one in each wall.  So when you look out of those windows in sequence, you first look to the north, then the east, then the south, and finally to the west.  Window 1 has this inscription around the frame: 'Life is difficult'.

Window 2 has this inscription on the frame: 'Life is without difficulty provided you avoid picking and choosing'.

Window 3 says: 'Life is both difficult and non-difficult; that is to say it is mixed or varied'.

Window 4 has this engraved in its frame: 'Life is neither difficult nor non-difficult, as these are just word labels, and word labels are not things'.

Imagine you are emotionally disturbed by a practical problem in your life.  Instead of asking yourself whether you are looking at this in a rational or irrational way, imagine you are in your 'Mind Hut' and looking out through Window 1.  Through this window you see your problem in the frame of 'Life is difficult'.  How does that change things?  Isn't it the case that, since life is difficult, your problem seems a bit less disturbing, since you were probably holding it in the frame of 'this should not be so difficult'.  But if life is difficult, then why should you be exempt.  Why should you not have your fair share of difficulties and problems?  In that moment, your problem becomes lighter.

If you then rotate the hut so you are looking at the same problem through Window 2, you are now viewing it from the frame of 'Life is without difficulty provided you avoid picking and choosing'.  Isn't it the case that a good deal of your former misery was caused by the fact that you were choosing not to have what you have - the problem; and choosing to have what you do not have - the solution!  Now you can decide to stop choosing what you do not have, and choose to have what you do have.  "As things stand at this moment in time, I must have the problem that I have.  I choose to accept that is how it is, and it should be the way it is, because that is an outcome of all the little steps that were taken by me, you, other people and the world".  That does not mean you have to resign yourself to always have this problem.  You can now set a goal to produce a better outcome for yourself, and then function intelligently towards that goal.

Next you can rotate the hut so you are looking out through Window 3.  This is the framing that 'Life is both difficult and non-difficult'.  This should draw your attention to what is working for you, as well as what is not working for you.  You can remind yourself to be grateful for what is working; what is desirable in your life.  And, again, you can accept that you still have a particular problem in your life; and then set a goal to change that part of your life, while celebrating the parts that work.

Finally, you can rotate the hut again, until you are looking out at your problem through Window 4, which says: 'Life is neither difficult nor non-difficult, because difficult and non-difficult are just sounds in the air; just definitions; just ways of speaking about perceptions'.  This window can remind you that you are an interpreting machine, and that you need to examine your interpretations.  If you stop calling it 'a problem', and just look at it directly, does it change in any way?  If you are calling it difficult, and trying to push it away, that may just cause it to persist.  So letting go of the verbal interpretation, and allowing it to be just as it is, may just change it enough to make it tolerable.  Although, as before, you can still set a goal to change it.  But you don't have to bellyache about how big a problem it is while you are working at change. Allow you mind to become silent.  Break your attachment to your mind.  Break your attachment to your bellyaching!  Learn to meditate on your problems.  To allow them to be.  And watch them change.

I will write some more on this subject next week.

Best wishes,
Jim

Dr Jim Byrne
ABC Coaching and Counselling Services 

jim.byrne@abc-counselling.com

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Hello,

My commitment is to be in communication with you.  The nature of that communication is not so certain.  It should be honest; it should be meaningful; and it should be of some (potential) value to you.  Beyond that, it could be anything.  So let's go back to basics.

Humans are born and they die; and in the intervening time span, they live the best life they can, given their circumstances.  That necessarily involves a considerable amount of suffering.

Does that seem like a reasonable conclusion to you?

This week I saw clients every day.  When I look back over the week I am reminded of how 'lost' and 'confused' most clients are at their first session.  However, by session three they are already so full of hope, and a sense of self-efficacy, and much clearer about who and what they are, and what they are up to, that I can already see them beginning to 'pack their bags' in preparation for their departure from my life.  A poignant moment, like having an adult child pack for university.  A sense of pride, and gratitude for their progress, and a sense of loss.

Do you have such experiences in your work?

The suffering that people experience is of different types.  Some people have a good deal of physical suffering.  Some have a good deal of suffering deriving from social and economic deprivation.  And some have a good deal of suffering arising out of egotistical grasping after things that will tarnish and decay, and have to be left behind at the point of departure.  Yet others have a good deal of suffering in their relationships, as they try to 'suck some value' out of their partner, instead of 'investing in their partner's joy'.

Do you recognize some elements of yourself here?  If so, you can always change.  You can change your life at any moment you choose, by intending to change it, and visualizing the changes you want, and then taking whatever actions you need to take to realize that visualization.

I watch my clients come and I watch them go, and I enjoy the transformation that I see in them.  I feel privileged to have such a significant role in the lives of so many people, as they negotiate this crossroads option between more suffering or some kind of personal liberation.

I have finished reading Eckhart Tolle ('the Power of Now') at last, and I am busy working on my first post-doctoral paper on 'The Birth of Cognitive Emotive Narrative Therapy (CENT)'.  Because of reading Tolle, I now have made a note to write a second paper entitled: 'Is CENT a Spiritual Therapy?'  I have no idea what the answer will turn out to be.

I said above that this blog should contain some value for you, and I am not sure I have delivered on that goal today.  Therefore, here are a couple of attempts to deliver on that promise:

"I expect to pass through this world but once.  Any good therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now.  Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again".  William Penn.  And:

"Life is short, so wear your Party Pants!".  Source unknown.

Does this add some value to your life?  I certainly hope so.

I wish you joy in your life, and the virtue to know when you need to change your life's direction.

Love,
Jim

Dr Jim Byrne
Doctor of Counselling
ABC Coaching and Counselling Services

jim.byrne@abc-counselling.com

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