“No Way – You Gotta Be Kidding!”

My usual therapy approach, rooted in narrative constructivism, is to assist people in making desired changes by helping them alter what they are telling themselves about themselves, other people, and their situations (Hoyt, 2017). Sometimes, however, there is a particular behavior that needs to be stopped, and “re-storying” is just too slow or not effective. At such times, a useful strategic intervention ² can be enlisting the client’s full cooperation and then prescribing an ordeal. As Jay Haley (1984, p. 5) wrote in Ordeal Therapy: Unusual Ways to Change Behavior: “If one makes it more difficult for a person to have a symptom than give it up, the person will give up the symptom.”