ABSTRACT
Clients often come to therapy because they have emotional problems. These tend to be anxiety, depression, guilt, shame, anger, hurt, jealousy and envy. People experience these emotional problems when they face a range of adversities, and the emotion gives a clue concerning the nature of the adversity. It is important for Single-Session Therapy (SST) therapists to know the adversity themes that accompany the major emotional problems for which people seek help. Adopting an adversity focus is a feature of approach to SST known as 'Single Session Integrated Cognitive Behaviour Therapy. Extrapolating this focus to SST in general, adopting an adversity focus is particularly important. In Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy, this is known as meta-disturbance. The emotion of 'shame' is a common 'secondary' meta-disturbance that, if effectively addressed, leads to the person being able to live better with their primary disturbance.
