A NEW ADDITION TO THE ABC’S OF THERAPY

In the realm of counseling and psychotherapy, clinicians have an extensive alphabet to work with. The latest forms of therapy are often known by their acronyms. These include Rational Emotive Therapy (RET), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Evidence-Based Therapy (EBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), among others.          Well, now there’s a new kid on the block. Meet MPT, a.k.a., Mentalligent Psychotherapy. MPT takes the essence of mindfulness, positive psychology, and cognitive behavioral interventions and weaves them into an elegant healing journey for your patient. While each strategy has been around for a while, together and collectively they form the art and science of MPT.
          My colleague, Dr. Kristin Lee, at Northeastern University, published her “new psychology of thinking,” which she coined Mentalligence ™. Combining the words “mental” and “intelligence,” Dr. Lee captured the whole brain in the process of behavior change. Our brain’s software, the mental part, identifies our responses to life experiences, while its hardware, the intelligence part, is core functioning abilities.
          Put another way, the intelligence identifies what you’ve got, while the mental identifies what you do with what you’ve got, that is your interpretation of your aggregate life experiences. Together, mentalligence™ “is a new psychology of thinking model that teaches ways to launch upward spirals through a process of unlearning and pivoting away from social conditioning and indoctrination that damage human progress” (Lee, 2017).
          In my book, The Healing Journey: Overcoming Adversity on the Path to the Good Life, I use the metaphor of soaring in a glider to introduce the journey of MPT. People come to see us when they are stuck. Their stuckness generates negative affect, principally a sense of hopelessness. It comes in various forms, but it doesn’t go away without concerted effort.
          When soaring in a glider, the goal is to find spiraling thermal air currents. When you do, you can ride that current, spiraling upward, for a long time, a wonderful, five-sensory experience living in the moment.
          Stuckness is like spiraling downward uncontrollably, desperately trying to not crash. With MPT, we are not doctors, trying to diagnose our patients and fix them from their illness. Rather, we are their guide, helping them to find those upward spiraling thermal air currents where they can revel and flourish. The stress of life and adversities we experience don’t magically go away. Rather, with MPT we help our clients use their stuckness as a launching point on their healing journey, focusing not so much on why they are stuck, but rather more on what they can do to get unstuck and continue their upward spiraling.
          Mentalligent Psychotherapy expands the theory of mentalligence into the clinical practice and treatment strategies of MPT. Interested? The general public will want to buy The Healing Journey: Overcoming Adversity on the Path to the Good Life to get a sneak peek into effective therapy, while graduate students in the behavioral health sciences and practicing clinicians will want to add MPT to their toolbox of practical interventions. Available at amazonbooks.com. Search by my name or the book title.
 
Blessings,
Dr. Jon