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PART IIMaking the Shift From Reflexive to

Retroflexive Journalizing

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Shifting From Reflexive to Retroflexive Journalizing• When using reflexive journalizing, the focus is on problems in the

present.• The shift to retroflexive journalizing involves tracing back from the

current problem to factors in your past that shaped your current dysfunctional and self defeating patterns.

• This shift requires that you recover memories of your past, let your imagination sink deep into events and persons from your past and recall your perceptions, feelings, thoughts, and behavior in response to those events. Then, let your mind and imagination roam around in stages of your past to see if you detect patterns of people and in events over time that reinforced the patterns of perceiving, feeling, thinking, and behavior your were developing in response.

• Finally, see if you can connect the patterns from the past to your current dysfunctional and self defeating patterns.

• Do you begin to get a perspective on your current patterns and how these patterns actual call out reactions from others that end in making your life miserable and unsuccessful.

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Reviewing the Steps Involved in Retroflexive Journalizing• Steps for retroflexive processing of one’s past ways of being and

reacting using journalizing.– 1 Surrender your Present/Future Coping and Begin Journalizing and speaking

aloud again.– 2 Permit a Resurgence /Recapturing of Past Incomplete Themes or Unresolved

Conflicts to become the focus of awareness. – 3 Relive, as you write and verbalize aloud, scenes and experiences that

generated Past Incomplete Themes and Unresolved conflicts.– 4 Question, as you write and speak, aspects of the scene of origin, all of your

personal reactions, the personal-social implications or consequences, others' interpretations, and other relevant aspects.

– 5 Re enact, in your mind, the scene of origin. Restructure the earlier scenes from a more rational, adult perspective and Reconstruct your coping reactions in the light of your current, mature repertoire so as to reduce negative emotional by-products and self destructive consequences.

– 6 As you continue writing and speaking aloud, begin Restructuring a new Gestalt resulting from Reconstructing and Reinterpreting the scene of origin, reconstructing your coping repertoire of intentional processes and behaviors and Envision enacting the reconstructions. Resolve the issue by forming new situation-relevant Criteria For Fulfillment for this type of situation.

– 7 Incorporate and/or dis-incorporate the reconstructed aspects of your resolve, writing and speaking aloud a description of how it feels to take this new approach into yourself.

– 8 Write and speak aloud how you can Integrate these changes into your ongoing intentional processes.

– 9 Return to reflexivity or the immediate situation.

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Self Retroflexive Journalizing: Focusing on Time and Temporal Relationships OPENING UP THE RETROFLEXIVE PROCESS TO TRAVERSING FUTURE AS WELL AS PAST.

• 1. How has the past influenced your present and your future? The first major premise one must accept and deal with is that the human being is an historical being. Ironically, at each moment of our lives, we feel our thoughts, decisions, intentions, and actions are operating a-historically, in a vacuum. We seem to feel that we are influenced only by factors in the immediate present. While we are a sample of one, we nevertheless assume that our experience in a situation would, or should, be repeated by everyone in that same situation. We never get to test that assumption so it goes unquestioned. When a group is in what seems to be one situation, apparently similar for all present, every member of the group, nevertheless, sees things differently and makes different decisions. Our typical explanation is not an historical one but rather we tend to think that those who differ are either less smart than we are or have some evil agenda or flaw in their character. If history were the explanation, then we would have to question both ourselves and other group members in the same manner. People typically seem to prefer a power struggle to self examination. Personal growth, on the other hand, depends on self examination.

Phase II. Journalizing and the Think-aloud Method

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Phase II. Journalizing and the Think-aloud MethodSelf Retroflexive Journalizing: Focusing on Time and Temporal Relationships OPENING UP THE RETROFLEXIVE PROCESS TO TRAVERSING FUTURE AS WELL AS PAST.

2. How has your vision of the future influenced the way you understand and configure your present situation and interpretation of your past? Taking a step further, yet not discarding the retrospective orientation, we know that we also live our lives oriented to the future. We envision a future where everything in the present, will, at some future time, become what we wish it to be. We work toward realizing that vision. Having such a large stake in the future makes us want to justify its viability by interpreting the past and present so that they support of our vision. This often results in gross distortions of the present state of things and past trends. If we look too objectively at the facts, this could destroy our hopes for the future. Personal growth depends on being able to traverse back and forth from future to past to find the mistaken turns in our history and, guided by fidelity to reality, humbly revise our past, our interpretations of it, our behavior patterns, and our prior visions of the future.

copyright edyoung, PhD, LPC6

Phase II. Journalizing and the Think-aloud MethodSelf Retroflexive Journalizing: Focusing on Time and Temporal Relationships OPENING UP THE RETROFLEXIVE PROCESS TO TRAVERSING FUTURE AS WELL AS PAST.

• 3. How can you understand and revise your reactions to past situations, break out of their constrictions, and reconstruct your self and restructure your future? Use the Retroflexive technique for: a. letting your imagination take you back to earliest memories of situations in which the troublesome reactions and behaviors began; b. isolating cause and effect relations; c. recalling or observing people exhibiting more effective patterns; d. detecting barriers in your self and eliminating them; e. finally, experimenting with new alternative ways of seeing and acting. Using this technique faithfully can help to eventually free you from the prison of your past. That is what the following sections on the Retroflexive technique are about.

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CYCLING THROUGH PROXIMAL TIME IN THERAPY AND THE RETROFLEXIVE PROCESSStudy the flow chart below to see how we relate to time when we are faced with a problem behavior or situation.

4. Immediate Future

3. Present2. Recent Past

• After Beginning with the Reflexive Process. In therapy and the retroflexive think aloud process, people typically begin with a current problem and begin to reflect on it using a sequence of steps that approximate the reflexive process with the aim being to use problem solving. Eventually, there is a switch from the current problem situation to recent past circumstances that may have contributed to the problem. After gaining a rudimentary understanding and proposing plausible solutions and strategies, we switch to envisioning use of these new strategies in the immediate future.

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Along with the Retroflexive Technique, Using Time Graphs as a Guide,Trace Through the Following Steps to Reconstruct Your Past and Sketch Your Future

• Taking an issue in the present, trace its history and origins through the past.

• With each issue, try and relive the Gestalt of its representative occurrences as though the issue were happening now. Relive and imagine what was happening in the external situation and, as fully as possible, recall what intentional [perceptions, feelings, thoughts] processes transpired within you.

• Address, in succession, how your initial pattern became more elaborate over the years. See how the past was constricting your alternatives on each succeeding occasion.

• Retrace your steps, in succession, and now invoke, in your imagination, alternative modes of responding.

• In your mind, begin to rewrite your history as you now feel it should have been. Imagine replacing old behavior with new until you feel you could, naturally and easily, invoke the replacement pattern.

• While you were developing, you sketched, to some degree, a vision of your future. Now. in your mind, reconstruct that vision. Design for yourself the near future and distant future and imagine what you could expect from life with your reconstructed behavior and vision.

• Finally, in your mind, imagine facing those troublesome situations and issues from your past with your replacement pattern. Live, in your imagination, exactly what will be happening and what new intentional processes and behaviors will replace the old.

• Feel your new way of being and imagine difficulties and barriers arising and imagine yourself coping with them until you feel you have a very comfortable configuration.

• Stop and fixate on where and how you are in that imaginary moment and key yourself to respond automatically when this type of situation or issue arises in the future.

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