Responsibility for the Social Environment
People have responsibility for which social environment they create for themselves, how they view persons with whom they spend time, how they shape the relationships with them and what attitudes towards them they carry. Therefore, the inclusion of the environment is highly relevant. Often is not that comfortable for clients to be confronted with the fact that they help to create the behaviour patterns which they accuse others of. The loss of a ‘victim role’ is sometimes very destabilising, but necessary. For counselling, this means interrupting circular causalities, making paradoxical experiments on the behavioural level, clearly naming one’s own contribution to the happenings in communication with others, and not avoiding this. This really requires perseverance on the side of the counsellor. On top of this. it also needs mindfulness in order to focus and work upon the client’s internal strengths, which become distressed in the client when the old ‘system’ no longer works. Otherwise, after a quick solution, the regression is also a rapid partner in the incomplete change process.