Table
Of Contents (TOC)
Introduction
Mini-education
Sessions
Denial
Check
DMC Exercise #1:
Understanding Denial As
A Part Of The Human Condition
DMC Exercise #2:
Understanding The Principles Of Denial Management
DMC Exercise #3:
Recognizing Your Denial Patterns
DMC Exercise #4:
Managing
Denial
DMC Exercise #5:
Stopping Denial As You Think About Your
Life History
DMC Exercise #6:
Stopping Denial As You Think About Your
Life History
DMC Exercise #7:
Stopping Denial As You Think About Your Addiction Symptoms
DMC Exercise #8:
Stopping
Denial As You Decide What To Do Next
DMC Exercise #9:
Evaluating Your Denial Management Skills
The Denial Management Counseling (DMC) has been organized into
nine clinical exercises that can be used in individual therapy, problem solving
group therapy, or psychoeducation programs.
Each exercise explains some basic information about denial or denial
management and then asks a series of questions to help clients to apply that
information to their current situation.
These nine clinical exercises form the basis of The
Denial Management Counseling (DMC) Workbook.
This workbook is an excellent tool for giving client homework assignments
that accelerate the therapy process.
You don’t need to use the workbook to do Denial management
Counseling. Once you understand the
principles underlying you can integrate the steps of each exercise into your
clinical style and adapt the exercises creatively as needed in your clinical
practice.
This section briefly describes each of the Denial Management
Clinical Exercises in words that I would use if describing them to a client
going through the process. This
will help you to see how I would phrase and explain points of information and
how I would ask questions. For
these exercises to work for you, you will need to personalize them so that they
reflect you clinical style.
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In the following exercise I have used the concept of Mini-Education
Sessions to explain the basic information that clients need to understand.
These Mini-Education Sessions are
followed by a series of questions to help the client apply the information to
themselves. Each question needs to
be processed using active listening.
Each
exercise ends with the following questions, called a denial check, to see if the
client’s denial was activated while answering the questions.
I'll list the questions here. In
describing the other exercises I will simply note that you need to complete a
Denial Check at this point. The
questions in the denial are:
(1)
Did your stress go up as you talked with me about these questions?
(Denial is normally activated by sensitive questions that activate a
“hot response” in the client.);
(2)
Did an inner conflict or argument start in your head as you talked with
me about these questions?
(3)
Did you feel an urge to avoid answering the questions or to tell lies or
half truths? Tell me about that.