Susanna Mittermaier
The Pragmatic Psychology Center, Austria
Title: Pragmatic psychology what abilities are hiding behind so called disabilities
Biography
Biography: Susanna Mittermaier
Abstract
Background: Pragmatic psychology started with the question, what else is possible for people with the diagnosis. Are they truly disabled or are those disabilities hiding not yet discovered abilities? As a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist, I had started to investigate on this topic. I worked at the university clinic in Lund, Sweden with diagnosing, therapy, coaching, neuropsychological testing and method development. The patient group was very diverse. People with ADHD, ADD, autism, OCD, depression, anxiety, PTSD, substance addiction, psychosis, personality disorders came to me for evaluation and therapy.
Objectives: The target with pragmatic psychology is to empower clients to know that they know. Most clients are used to receiving answers from experts rather than being their own experts. Pragmatic psychology is about having no point of view what is right and wrong, sane and insane. Pragmatic psychology uses questions to facilitate the client to find out what strongness is hiding behind the wrongness to open the doors to truly creating their lives. Psychology used to be the study of knowledge and became the study of behavior, fitting in and adapting to normality. Pragmatic psychology takes psychology back to being the study of knowledge for people to create greater lives than what can be achieved by controlling behavior. Diversity is being used as a strength and resource.
Methods: The methods used with pragmatic psychology are questions and tools to empower the client to know what they know. Questions empower, answers disempower. Every true question unlocks what has not been available as a possibility the moment before.
Results: Those are countless. ADHD patients being able to use their hyperactivity as a resource to create their lives and businesses. Depression and anxiety being discovered as extreme awareness that no longer, being overwhelming and having to be defended against, can be used as sources of creation. Patients coming for anger management discovering their potency that was covered by their labels. Everything is the opposite of what it appears to be. PTSD and abuse ceasing to haunt clients and the potency slumbering all those years behind the victimizing story being discovered. Clients saying that therapists having given up on them and who now see that they have what it takes to the greatness they truly are. Autism being discovered as a highly interactive and communicating group regardless of what is being said about that diagnosis. Client after client saying if I just had this perspective and those tools years ago my life would look totally different now.
Conclusions: What if having to have problems was no longer the paradigm to live and be on our planet? What if our past no longer determines our future but can be created and chosen as desired at every moment? What if we all knew what works for us no matter what is being put out there as conclusions and answers? Time to create a different world?