Re: Avoiding compliments
Sounds like a good candidate for working with "hot cognitions". Offer the client a genuine compliment in-session. Make it something simple and hard to deny. (Example: That's a really nice shirt you're wearing today). If they reject the compliment - and they probably will - you can try to elicit the automatic thoughts that came up and use some socratic questioning or direct disputation to challenge them. (If, for example, the client says, "You're just saying that to be nice" you could respond with, "Why would I do that?", "Why don't you believe that my compliment is genuine?", "I really think it is nice. Are you saying I have bad taste?")
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