What is The Strategic Method(TM)?

 

The Strategic Method is a coaching and therapy strategy for rapid change of belief systems.  Instead of focusing on the problem SM focuses on the strategies that each of us use to create out reality and paradigms.  Using a combination of techniques borrowed from Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), Ericksonian therapy, Carl Jung,  Ancestral work, energy and spiritual techniques among others. The purpose of change in ST is strictly goal and future-oriented rather than “working through” old pains and problems.  This epistemological shift has dramatically advanced the timeline and effectiveness of personal change (from a traditional therapeutic perspective).  

 

The primary belief and approaches in ST are based on the assumption that problems in an individual's life are ineffective strategies to satisfy the universal human needs.  These needs are pan-human in experience, and can be split into the needs of the personality and the needs of the higher spirit. They are:

 

1. Certainty

2. Variety/Uncertainty

3. Significance

4. Love/Connection

5. Growth

6. Contribution

 

Because these needs are emotional and behavioral manifestations of the ego’s attempt to deal with the outside world, the goal of “curing” dysfunctional patterns relies on both the realignment of needs, and improving the depth of satisfaction of each of the need.

 

All humans find ways to meet the first four needs (Personality Needs) at least at some level.  Meeting needs at a low level is the result of outward unhappiness, depression, anger, frustration, and all other negatively associated emotions.  When needs are met at high levels of satisfaction, individuals experience happy fulfilled lives, and in turn can manifest a great deal of peace and joy.  

 

Growth and contribution are considered higher level needs because they are the needs of the “spirit” or “higher self,” the part of each individual that is connected to the universal intellect, God, or whatever personal incarnation of the higher power an individual chooses to perceive.

 

In understanding the problems presented by individuals, Strategic Therapists are seeking to understand how the individual constructs meaning, how they construct and use emotions to fulfill their needs, and how they use physiology, language, and focus to perpetuate a behavior.  Change in ST is not primarily about solving internal conflict, as with traditional approaches; it is about reframing, and reassociating individual experiences to satisfy needs at the highest level, thus freeing the individual from their limiting beliefs, and ineffectual patterns of behavior.  

 

The tools used by ST vary greatly but are based on a seven step framework.

 

1. Understand and appreciate the client's worldview.  

2. Create a base and get leverage, pain if they don’t change. Pleasure if they do.

3. Destroy any negative patterns, change focus, change story.

4. Define the problem in solvable terms.  What they need, what they want, what prevents them from getting it.

5. Create an empowering alternative, a triad of emotion, focus, and meaning, that makes them feel great.

6. Condition the new alternative, practice, do it over and over.  Provide pain to the old and pleasure to the new option.

7. Connect to a higher purpose, their 6 human needs, and their social environment.

 

What does Strategic Therapy look like?

 

Strategic Therapists don’t particularly care about a client’s problems first, they care about how the client thinks.  They want to understand how clients create reality and meaning in life through learned pattern representations.  

 

Think of it like this: each person has a map in their mind, like a board game, with specific “rules” for feeling emotions, for motivation, for pain and joy, or experiencing abundance.  The rules seem obvious to the individual, but no one on the outside world has a clue what internal rules someone else is playing by. A traditional therapist may try to discover and work within a client’s rule system, but a Strategic Therapist tries to recreate the rules to effectively change internal perception, thus affecting outward behavior.  STs want to know how clients represent information, how they create the world around them, and how their beliefs, rules, and actions are causing their suffering.  

 

Fix the system and you fix the person

 

So what does a Certified Strategic Coach do?

 

First, they study how clients represent reality through the use of language, metaphors, themes, images, and emotions.  How and where do clients store information about their world map. They uncover the “hidden” rules for happiness, love, significance, sadness, etc. so they can understand how those rules were written in the first place.  Then instead of dwelling on whatever event created the rule, (just talking through it), they use specific strategies to destroy the rule and replace it with an empowering one that will necessarily create the change on the outside.

 

The only way to make permanent changes on the outside is to work on the inside

 

Think about it like this.  Our behavior is governed by our emotional reactions to the outside world, to our projections of others intent, and the need to satisfy our own personal needs.  Now imagine all of this is installed on a CD in your head. Imagine that each CD is a potentially different rule system, or trigger, or behavior program that your brain is trying to access when it needs to respond to a situation.  And it wants to find it fast because it’s incredibly efficient. Now imagine that you hate a particular CD. You press the eject button, but you don’t have one. So now what do you do? You have this CD playing over and over and over again in your head driving you crazy.  So what I do, is go into your head, help you recalibrate the emotions, memories, and modalities of the program so that it no longer plays. In essence, I scratch the hell out of it so it CANNOT play anymore. Then, as the brain deems useless, it's discarded. The neuronets and associated emotions for that CD are disentangled and we install a new program that creates the results you want in life.