Which technique involves helping the client invoke exaggerated debilitating thoughts and behaviors to confront resistance and increase awareness of their behavior?

Which technique involves helping the client invoke exaggerated debilitating thoughts and behaviors to confront resistance and increase awareness of their behavior?

• A. Fictional Finalism
• B. Paradoxical Intention
• C. Life Tasks
• D. Holism

Answer: (B)

Paradoxical intention is a technique that helps reduce anxiety by having the client deliberately engage with or even exaggerate the feared symptoms or thoughts. By choosing to amplify the very beliefs or behaviors that opponent resistance, the client shifts from trying to avoid them to facing them openly. This reversal weakens the power of fear: when the fear is no longer avoided and is approached with intent, the automatic pattern becomes more observable, and the client gains awareness of how and when the behavior is triggered. For example, someone anxious about sleep might be asked to try to stay awake on purpose or to exaggerate how hard it will be to fall asleep. The aim is not to worsen the problem, but to lessen the fear surrounding it and to reveal the self-defeating thoughts behind the behavior. Fictional Finalism focuses on imagined future goals that guide behavior rather than directly confronting symptoms. Life Tasks is an Adlerian concept about managing major life roles. Holism emphasizes treating the person as an integrated whole rather than a single technique.

Paradoxical intention is a technique that helps reduce anxiety by having the client deliberately engage with or even exaggerate the feared symptoms or thoughts. By choosing to amplify the very beliefs or behaviors that opponent resistance, the client shifts from trying to avoid them to facing them openly. This reversal weakens the power of fear: when the fear is no longer avoided and is approached with intent, the automatic pattern becomes more observable, and the client gains awareness of how and when the behavior is triggered.

For example, someone anxious about sleep might be asked to try to stay awake on purpose or to exaggerate how hard it will be to fall asleep. The aim is not to worsen the problem, but to lessen the fear surrounding it and to reveal the self-defeating thoughts behind the behavior.

Fictional Finalism focuses on imagined future goals that guide behavior rather than directly confronting symptoms. Life Tasks is an Adlerian concept about managing major life roles. Holism emphasizes treating the person as an integrated whole rather than a single technique.