SOWK 486 Week 11: Effecting Change

SOWK 486 Fall 2020 Planning: Class 11

Location: Online - Zoom
Time: Monday’s from 5:30-8:15
Week 11: 11/02/20
Topic and Content Area: Effecting Change
Reading Assignment: Hepworth et al. (2017) chapter 17 and 18
Assignments Due:

• A–02: Asynchronous Class Engagement Addressing barriers to change discussion forum with an initial post due Friday 11/06/20 at 11:55 PM and two replies due Sunday 11/08/20 at 11:55 PM via My Heritage Class Forums
• A–03: Reading Quiz for chapters 17 and 18 is due at 5:30 PM before class via My Heritage

Other Important Information: N/A

Agenda

• Additive Empathy & Interpretation
• Confrontation
• Barriers to change

We each see the world differently (1 of 2)

Taken from Rudish, E. (2013) Increasing empathy: Empathy training manual. Retrieved from http://cultureofempathy.com/References/Experts/Others/Files/Marieke-Kingma-Empathy-Training-Manual.pdf

Learning objective: The participant is aware of the fact that every individual has his own point of view and knows the own perspective is not universal. The participant can enter the perspective of the other by focusing the attention on the differences between himself and others and by temporarily putting aside the own references.

[Whole Class Activity] Write the word OCEAN on the flap-over and ask the participants to close their eyes for a moment and let their senses take over as they imaging OCEAN. See it, smell it, hear it, feel it. Then ask the participants to share their thoughts and feeling when they think about the word OCEAN. Write down what you hear. How are the images different?

Discuss with the participants how earlier personal experiences filter what we imagine. All of us have slightly different filters that helps us to make meaning of the world. This is why our perceptions are never exactly like anyone else’s (Lieber, 1994).

We each see the world differently (2 of 2)

Exercise from Lieber (1994)

[Small Group Activity] Divide the participants in three groups of four. Explain that the groups may select words from the list below and participants will write down what the word on the card means to them. Then each participant in the group will read their definitions in a go-round. Remind the participants that they don’t interrupt or ask questions during this phase and remind them that the purpose of this exercise is to see how perceptions vary, not to determine a correct definition.This is also an opportunity to monitor for accurate listening skills and temporarily putting aside the own references. Each group may choose three words to use in this exercise.

Word Selection:

• Success
• Freedom
• Morality
• Racism
• Injustice
• Community
• Democracy
• Family
• Police
• Human rights
• Love
• Sexism
• Tolerance
• Prejudice
• Friend

The process may be as follows

1. The group picks the first word they want to define. For example, Freedom.
2. Each participant in the group takes a few minutes to write down a few words or phrases which give the word meaning.
3. When every participant is finished writing, the group goes a go-around, each participant taking turns sharing what they wrote.
4. If there is time left, participants reflect back to further explore the meaning each person shared.
5. After 15 minutes, tell the participants to choose a next word.

In closing this exercise you can check out whether participants understanding of the words on the cards changed after they were discussed in their groups.

Types of Empathy

“Empathy has been defined as perceiving, understanding, experiencing, and responding to the emotional state of another person (Barker, 2003, p. 141).” (Hepworth, p. 513). Decety and Jackson (2004) describe two basic types of empathy.

• Emotional Empathy - as the ability to be affected by a client’s emotions
• Cognitive Empathy - is the translation of such feelings into words

Components of Empathy

There are three basic components of empathy laid out by the Hepworth text.

• Affective Sharing: Person sharing something to respond to
• Self-Awareness: so that the social worker recognizes himself or herself as different from the person with whom he or she has empathy
• Mental Flexibility: requiring skills in both turning on receptivity and turning it off. Such skills are essential in regulating compassion fatigue by enabling the social worker to separate from the client’s experience (Adams, Boscarinao, & Figley, 2006; Harr & Moore, 2011).

Additive Empathic Responses & Interpretation

“Additive empathic responses go somewhat beyond what clients have expressed and, therefore, require some degree of inference by social workers. Thus, these responses are moderately interpretive— that is, they interpret forces operating to produce feelings, cognitions, reactions, and behavioral patterns” (Hepworth, p. 513). Cormier, Nurius, and Osborn (2009) describe that

• Lead to Interpretation: Such additive empathic responses lead us to interpretation
• The identification of patterns, goals, and wishes that clients imply but do not directly state . Insight through interpretation is the foremost therapeutic principle basic to psychoanalysis and closely related therapies.”

Types of Interpretation

“Levy (1963) classifies interpretations into two categories: semantic and propositional” (Hepworth, p. 514).

Semantic interpretations: describe clients’ experiences according to the social worker’s conceptual vocabulary

“By ‘frustrated,’ I gather you mean you’re feeling hurt and disillusioned.”

-> Semantic interpretations are closely related to additive empathic responses.

Propositional interpretations involve the social worker’s notions or explanations that assert causal relationships among factors involved in clients’ problem situations

“You have a tendency to worry about problems down the road and lose focus on dealing with your anxiety about taking the exam.”

Pitfalls of Additive Empathy

If you never played Pitfall on the Atari (or have no idea what that is, there might be a problem… )

“moderate interpretations (those that reflect feelings that lie at the margin of the client’s experiences) facilitate self-exploration and self-awareness, whereas deep interpretations engender opposition” (Hepworth, p. 514)

We need to remember that we want to make interpretive statements that are closer to the clients own understanding a self image.

• Use additive empathy sparingly until a sound working relationship has evolved
• Employ these responses only when clients are engaged in self-exploration or have shown that they are ready to do so
• Pitch these responses to the edge of clients’ self-awareness and avoid attempting to foster awareness that is remote from clients’ current awareness or experiences
• Avoid making several additive empathic responses in succession
• Phrase interpretive responses in tentative terms
• To determine the accuracy of an interpretive response, carefully note clients’ reactions after offering the interpretation
• If the client responds negatively to an interpretative response, acknowledge your probable error, respond empathically to the client’s reaction, and continue your discussion of the topic under consideration
• When providing an interpretation to a client who is culturally different from the social worker, recognize that the client may not readily understand the message the way it was intended

Ways of Using Additive Empathy (1 of 2)

The following are some ways that we should consider using additive empathy.

• Deeper feelings
  • To identify feelings that are only implied or hinted at in clients’ verbal messages
  • To identify feelings that underlie surface emotions
  • To add intensity to feelings clients have minimized
  • To clarify the nature of feelings clients express only vaguely
  • To identify feelings manifested only nonverbally
  • Challenging beliefs stated as facts

Ways of Using Additive Empathy (2 of 2)

• Underlying meanings of feelings, thoughts, and behavior
• Wants and goals
• Hidden purposes of behavior
• Unrealized strengths and potentialities

Practice Using Additive Empathy

[Small Group Activity] With a partner, have a discussion about a time when they felt frustrated, upset, uneasy, etc. Practice asking good open ended questions and implementing additive empathetic statements.

Confrontation

“Social workers would more appropriately consider confrontation to exist along a continuum that ranges from fostering self-confrontation at one extreme to assertive confrontation at the other extreme” (Hepworth, p. 524) describing information based on Rooney (2009).

Effective Assertive Confrontation (1 of 2)

Effective assertive confrontations embody four elements

• Expression of concern
• A description of the client’s purported goal, belief, or commitment
• The behavior (or absence of behavior) that is inconsistent or discrepant with the goal, belief, or commitment
• The probable negative outcomes of the discrepant behavior

Effective Assertive Confrontation (2 of 2)

Confrontation is probably one of the most important skills that you can can develop in trying to help changes others..

[Small Group Activity] In small pairs or small groups, students will practice confrontation. Students are encouraged to consider a real life situation that could benefit from confrontation. This situation does not need to be overly personal or large. Provide a short description of the situation to your partner. Use the sentence frame provided by Hepworth et al. (2017) provided on page 525 to use your partner to practice how you might confront the situation you chose.

The sentence frame follows this pattern:

I am concerned because you (want, believe, are striving to) (describe desired outcome) but you (describe discrepant action, behavior, or inaction) is likely to produce (describe probable negative consequences).

Death Therapy -- Transference

Oz, F. (1991). What About Bob?. What About Bob? (1991). Retrieved from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103241/

[Discussion] How many of you have seen the movie “What About Bob?”

[Watch] Death Therapy off of What About Bob.

[Discussion] How could this be an example of transference or counter transference? [Not exactly an correct example… but for discussion]

• Transference
  • Psychoanalysis - the redirection to a substitute, usually a therapist, of emotions that were originally felt in childhood.
  • Client has transference to the clinician
• Counter-transference
  • You have transference to the client

[Discussion] What are some examples of transference and counter transference

Barriers to Change

• Relational dynamics that occur in the interactions between clients and practitioners Behaviors on the part of practitioners
• Dynamics that are challenging in cross-racial and cross-cultural relationships
• Sexual attraction toward clients and the ethical and legal implication of this behavior