The PCW Practitioner launches in Japan 2013. Here is some of what will be covered

I am about to start a series of Provocative Change Works events across the globe, starting in Japan next week. During trainings I always explain the meaning of the term “provocative” in the context of therapy and how it is also used to best effect in all kinds of other communication situations. Unfortunately the term “provocative” can be seen by some folks as either “an aggressive approach” or “a comedic approach”. Yes there can be humour in provocative exchanges, but the purpose of a provocative session is not to “try and be funny!” and certainly not to be aggressive with the client.

Provocative Change Works is inspired by Frank Farrelly’s Provocative Therapy and learning these PCW skills takes a great deal of skill and application. The challenge for me when running workshops is to find the right balance between demonstrations, explanation and group exercises and to ensure workshop attendees maintain the right manner when using these skills. Since I first met Frank Farrelly I have promoted both his work and my own PCW approach at every opportunity and departed from teaching classic NLP courses. This has led to setting up some great provocative online resources, but regardless of how much information I put out it seems that some folks just don’t get that provocative does not mean “aggressive” or “sarcastic!” Interestingly it’s usually those who have a CBT or NLP background who struggle most with this approach. I do have some sympathy for such folks though; I too was totally confused when I first attended a Frank workshop. Fortunately I had the good sense to appreciate that it would take more than a few days to grasp his work and many years later the investment in time and energy has truly paid off.  I have found that the PCW approach is far more dynamic and creative than what I was taught on my certificated NLP trainings from years ago! However these trainings really helped me figure out what Frank does and formulate my own PCW approach.

The Provocative Icon System I use in PCW and PT trainings is excellent in teaching the many different stances a practitioner can adopt to create client change. These icons represent 36 different potential stances and combinations of these stances are highly effective in provoking useful change. However it’s not enough to merely teach how to adopt these stances. The PCW practitioner needs to also have the manner of working with a client that Frank Farrelly describes “as if talking to an old friend” Despite all the talk of flexibility in workshops, this seems for many to be one of the biggest challenges. I have only seen a few people able to work effectively as provocative therapists and most of these have studied with Frank for many years. In 2006 I set up The Association for Provocative Therapy (AFPT) with Frank’s blessing and I am pleased that Dr Noni Höefner a Provocative therapist of 26 years standing is also a key promoter of AFPT standards in trainings. Noni is one of the smartest trainers I have met with superb flexibility and creative skills.

One of the main challenges for therapists and practitioners watching a provocative session for the first time is accepting that it is very different to NLP, Hypnosis or other types of therapy. The client in the session has an experience that is very different to those who are observing the session. Sometimes well-meaning observers want to “rescue the client” rather than allowing the process to unfold so the client can process the interaction in their own time. This can produce some quite interesting scenarios in trainings where groups find that they have also had their preexisting ideas about communication seriously challenged. A PCW practitioner seeks to provoke new insights for the client and this is always done in a conversational manner. In order to achieve this, the practitioner needs to pay close attention to the client’s responses and while maintaining his or her own excellent state control.  Many new to this kind of approach find this very difficult and if the client shows any kind of emotion the therapist often immediately backs off or tries to placate the client, not realizing that this is often not the most useful strategy. In my experience many clients have had decades of tea and sympathy, psychoanalysis and counseling none of which has been especially useful. This is not to say that these approaches have no merit but rather, not provoking any real change in the client leaves the client in the problem state. Some talk therapy approaches even insist that a practitioner should refrain from influencing the client at all! Many such enthusiasts treat therapeutic situations like an academic discussion, which is fine, but often not especially useful for the client. Provocative Change Works is a conversational jargon free way of working. This absence of jargon in my opinion makes for a more honest and natural communication and my experience is that clients find they need far less session time to resolve their issues.

I have noticed that the obsession with “quick fixes” “fast phobia cures” in the personal change market has increasingly created a level of expectation for both therapists and clients that is in my view both unhelpful and unrealistic. I have blogged about this previously and of course I am accused of “attacking X approach” which of course is not the case at all. I am simply pointing out that it you over hype expectations then ultimately no claims are seen as credible. Developing the skills needed to provoke useful change for a client requires the practitioner to be able to improvise on the fly and to have an extensive range of verbal and non-verbal responses. I rarely see practitioners, trainers and therapists who can demonstrate this ability and this is a far cry from the academic, logical, digital and analytical approaches that are often found in some approaches. I have also noticed that some people have started to add the term “provocative” to their therapeutic descriptions with little awareness or regard to Farrelly’s work. I receive all kinds of communications about how to become a provocative therapist and many enquirers are disappointed that they can’t get a weekend certificate to add to their existing certifications! This week I had an enquiry by e-mail asking if you could become a provocative therapist by reading Frank’s original book!

The new revised PCW site – www.provocativechangeworks.com has a wealth of information on PCW in articles and videos. In many ways PCW and PT are the polar opposite in approach to many traditional talk therapy approaches. In many instances talk therapy approaches are conducted in such a disassociated manner that the sessions become little more than role playing scenarios in which either therapist or client believe that anything useful will occur. That is not to say that these approaches have no value. However I suspect that the success with these approaches is more due to the therapist’s manner than the actual techniques used.

I have personally used the Provocative Change Works approach with over 3000 clients and have found this approach to be the most effective method to help with client change. Most who study with me can learn the provocative stances, but those who really become proficient in this approach have a great sense of humour, don’t take themselves too seriously and have a genuine care for helping others. I always make it clear that PCW is not the only way to produce excellent client results but my interest in any model of communication is in what you can do with it, rather than any academic style study. There seems to be many who agree with this sentiment and I have never been busier either with trainings or with seeing private clients in my UK clinics.
 The full schedule for 2012 international PCW training events can be found at http://www.nickkemptraining.com/calendar.php and this May I will be running a skills development day for previous workshop attendees who want to explore PCW in greater

Nick Kemp Training Schedule 2012 (more dates due to be added)

January
January 13/14 PCW module for Auspicium NLP Master Prac UK

February
Feb 4/5th PCW Presentations Tokyo Japan hosted by NLP Medics
Feb 10 – 12 PCW Presentations Hiroshima Japan hosted by NLP Medics

March
March 10/11th Stories from the Outside Inn with Doug O Brien in New York USA
March 15/16th PCW module for Kath Temple NLP Master Prac UK
March 30th – PCW for Hungarian NLP Institute Budapest Hungary

April
April – April 1st PCW in Budapest for Hungarian NLP Institute Hungary
April 14/15th PCW Training Prof Business Group Training and Coaching School in Szczecin – Poland
April 29th PCW training AEPNL Valencia Spain

May
May 1st PCW training AEPNL Valencia Spain
May 19/20th PCW Training Prof Business Group Training and Coaching School in Szczecin – Poland
May 27th PCW Skills Day Leeds UK

June
June 1st PCW Introduction Ericksonian Institute Paris France

September
Events TBC

October
4th - 8th October PCW - Cochin, Kerala India

November
November 9 – 12th Advanced PCW Warsaw Poland - hosted by METAmorfoza

Confirmation awaiting for Austria event and other dates

 At the recent Provocative Change Works training in Boulder Colorado I talked about the influences that inspired me to create the PCW approach. As well as the obvious ones of Frank Farrelly and Milton Erickson there are a number of others. The PCW approach relies on an ability to work in the here and now and to improvise in client situations. It also requires the ability to find and explore humour and not to take oneself too seriously!

 The following people have been a big influence – Aaron Sorkin for brilliant use of dialogue, Steven Wright for surreal humour (also one of Frank’s favorites), Lao Tzu for simple elegant metaphysical explorations, Nick Cave, Ani Difranco and Steve Earle for storytelling, Tom Waits as an example of stepping outside what is expected and Andy Kaufman and Bill Hicks for examples of state awareness and control. Also Andrew T Austin for invaluable metaphor explorations

All of these individuals bring a creative energy to what they do and are never predictable or dull, regardless of whether you like them or not!  The purpose of Provocative Change Works is to stimulate new ways of thinking and feeling with warmth and humour. It’s the antithesis of dry academic style explorations where therapists treat clients like “fragile flowers” not realizing that the therapist’s inability to be flexible often creates the very problems the client seeks to usefully distance themselves from!

I realised a number of years ago that there is a world of difference seeing clients in private practice and what occurs in training courses. Training courses can be invaluable but teach the theory of what “can happen” in real life situations and of course workshop attendees behave very differently to members of the public who often have no interest in the academic or theoretical discussions that occur in such events and in online debates.

Last year I ran an event in London on my own Provocative Change Works approach where one member of the audience asked a series of “What if?” questions regarding client sessions. “What if questions” are usually speculative questions where the questioner seeks to endlessly find counter examples to what’s being stated and doesn’t realise that many such questions are not based in any real life situations and are rarely useful. I am generally happy to respond to questions, some are not framed in the best way and many are quite simply impossible to answer as they are either so generalized or so totally vague. Here are some examples –

“What if the session isn’t working?”

“How do you know the client is going to be better?”

In provocative style communications the role of the therapist is to provoke responses from the client who is in the session often because despite all their thinking, analysis, academic ponderings, they are unable to feel differently about the issue. Intellectuals and some academics sometimes really struggle with Provocative Therapy and Provocative Change Works because they want everything in the session to be a series of digital steps, often communicated in a very dry manner. This style of working in my experience rarely produces useful results for the client. Many clients I see have already been in various forms of therapy and although these can be useful my experience is that simply discussing and analyzing “the problem” in a disassociated manner is rarely useful for the client. Some therapists are so certain of the client’s vulnerably that they are unable to provoke anything useful for the client. Sessions can become like theatrical role playing where each party is wonderfully polite, but real change doesn’t occur. Of course no therapist is able to know for certain the outcome of any session but I would hope that most act in what they consider to be the best interests of the client. Too much hyperactive analysis in therapeutic approaches can be counterproductive and so generalized that it’s a bit like asking the question

“What do you do if the client responds in a negative way to the metaphor you used?” without giving any further information about the content and context of the communication!

Frank Farrelly the creator of Provocative Therapy worked extensively in mental health environments and dealt with chronic patients that other therapists could not help. One of the things I like most about Frank Farrelly’s work is that the communications are in normal conversational honest everyday language and the therapist resists the temptation to adopt a superior “professional position” where the client is often not engaged to respond in an honest and open manner and in some instances feels intimidated by the therapist. Many classic talk therapy approaches require the client to respond in a particular manner and in some cases the language used is so alien that it may be best if client’s first undertook the equivalent of a ‘Rosetta Stone therapeutic language course” to have any idea of what the therapist is actually communicating! Some may say that such confusion is useful in extending the number of chargeable sessions required for useful client change.

I’m always wary when therapists insist what the client needs and how other therapists should “behave” as this becomes a bit like a self appointed sheriff laying down the law, because they feel it’s what should be appropriate. The “law” that others should adhere to is of course constructed from the therapist’s view of the world and this kind of certainty is rarely in my experience in the best interests of the client. Frank Farrelly originally trained with Carl Rogers who was very positive about Frank’s approach and along with Carl Whittaker appreciated the sophistication of working in this way.  When I first met Frank he made the following comment when talking about his therapeutic approach to working with clients

“Take your professional dignity and throw it out the window in the service of the client”

Of course client care is important and I have often blogged on duty of care, but let’s remember that this also means working for the benefit of the client even if this means the therapist has to modify their own certainty about how a session should be conducted and what they imagine the client may be experiencing during the session, which is of course often based upon the imagination of the therapist…