How does Feedback Informed Treatment (FIT) blend the art and science of helping?
Dr. Nathan Castle speaks with couples therapist Vivian Baruch about how Feedback Informed Treatment (FIT) helps clinicians blend art with the science of effective helping.
NC - I think one of the things that really strikes me as I talk to you Vivian is this notion of, there is still a lot of curiosity, and maybe inspiration is the word, about clients and about our work. Because Feedback informed Treatment (FIT) helps you to think about what's going to help this client in front of me. And sometimes it's not therapy. So you might think more creatively. “Hey, do we need medication, do we need a yoga group, do we need you know, to add things on?”
Yes, and what actually jumps out at me, I'm not sure if it's going to be that articulate of a question, is that every person that I seem to meet that is doing FIT has a similar thing, where the pressure is taken off them and they go… I'm going to be articulate now “I'm here to get you a result, and actually I'm going to take my ego out of that for a second, because sometimes it's not even me”. Right? But how do you think that might have helped your motivation, passion for the work over all these years? Because there's a lot of people out there that do feel actually the opposite, quite burnt out or that they can't keep doing this work. So I'm not sure if you can comment on that?
VB – Yeah, I mean if that would have been presented to me in that way, that we're not “It”. But who was it that said that we're not “It”? Now that I've said those words, I can't remember which therapist in one of my trainings said that we’re not “It” (NB. David Treadway). And that kind of struck home to me. I don't know how long ago it was, but if that would have been more consistently a theme through the trainings and through my work over the years, it would have would have helped a lot I think, for me to really do what Scott (Miller) says – “Look, I'm happy to do whatever it takes to get you where you want to go”. Whatever it takes. If it's swimming lessons or, like you said yoga, whatever.
If you know that their prime passion is swimming, and they haven't been swimming for a while, I go “How come? What's got in the way? What would it be like if you started swimming (again)?” And they've come for anxiety or depression or a relationship breakup or something. It's like, for them swimming is the thing. I mean, there's no recipe, there's no cookie-cutter approach for that (therapy). So that, I think, really helps with that whole impostor syndrome (thing). Because they know, on some level (what they need).
I think that's the art and the science of us. It's like asking the questions that help draw out of them what they may be implicitly aware of but not explicitly knowing. So I think that's it, you know, helping them to go “Yeah, swimming would really help, I think.”
From International Center for Clinical Excellence ICCE