Dealing With Extreme Emotional Distress when really bad stuff happens to really good people

Filmed in its entirety, this is one of the sessions that Andrew T. Austin regards as one of the best demonstrations of his work from 2009. The client in this session has struggled for a long time with serious feelings of depression. Advanced practitioners would do well to study the language patterns used in this unusual client session. This is very much “secret work”, as the content and story of the client’s problems remain undisclosed throughout the session.

Disregarding the negative effects of these problems upon his life, Austin quickly engages the client at the level of his personal strategies using his Metaphors of Movement approach to reframing. Working with both the psychological representations and the manner by which the client moves and positions his muscles, Austin’s unorthodox approach moves the client’s awareness away from the effect of how bad he feels and chunks up towards addressing the strategies by which the client addresses life’s challenges. Areas addressed or demonstrated in this DVD include metaphors of movement, advanced reframing, strategies, timeline organisation, future planning/future pacing and translating strategic thinking into physical actions. Having arrived distressed and very late owing to a long car journey and heavy traffic, the client’s level of stress is very noticeable at the beginning of the session. Towards the end of the session the level of change is very noticeable.

Following the session, the client wrote, “Many thanks for seeing me, despite my lateness! I really do believe that the long journey I made was worth every mile. The session with you seems to have changed my attitude and disposition already. Positive things are already happening to me. Shit, this is weird! A big thank you again.”