ABSTRACT
The Impact Message Inventory (IMI) makes destructive patient impacts explicit so that clinicians can discipline their reactions to counter-condition the nefarious pulls they experience and avoid the dangers of reflexively reacting in hostile and dominant ways. The clinician must try to maintain a task-focused stance with SAM throughout, avoiding a strong Dominant (D) impact style; secondly, enacting a task-focused stance while remaining on the Friendly (F) side of the circle will counter-condition the expected hostility behaviors of his significant others. Interpersonal task-focused ratings on the IMI denote that practitioners are maintaining an impact style that is mildly Dominant (D) and flexibly mildly Submissive (S) coupled with a presentation that remains Friendly (F). Using the IDE, treatment must teach the patient to discriminate the therapist's salubrious/positive reactions to personal disclosures of not knowing what to do from those of significant others who evinced little tolerance for weakness.
