ABSTRACT
Erickson often said that the reason people continue in the same dysfunctional ways of interacting with the world was due to their lack of flexibility. He felt that the more flexible clients could become, the easier it would be for them to change. Erickson would often direct clients to perform small changes that would snowball into greater shifts in their lives. Sometimes changing the location of where a problem occurs can create a break in the pattern. Instead of fighting the pattern clients give the therapist, it may be easier to ask them to perform their usual pattern but in a backwards fashion. The therapist will direct the clients to continue the performance of the problem but will give them another action to do along with the problem in order to create a change in the problem’s performance. The therapist can often shift the performance of the pattern by working on one very small part of it.
