Systemic practice · Individual therapy
I really like the Crossed Beliefs Game proposed by Stessie Fougeroux. I find her creative inspiration wonderfully fruitful for therapists who share a systemic understanding of interactions and relational dynamics. Her adaptation for individual therapy particularly interests me because it allows us to work with the relationships a person tells us about, even when the other people are not present in the session.
What appeals to me about this approach connects with a question I encounter in my practice: when someone begins to understand something of the relational dynamics they are caught up in, how can we help them do something with that understanding? We have found words for what keeps happening, and a way of making sense of it is emerging, but we still need to see how this might translate into the relationship. For me, Stessie’s game gives us a way to work on that next step.
I find it fascinating to see how explaining the reciprocal double bind can make sense to the people we see and shed light on their understanding of their relationships. This concept, developed by Mony Elkaïm, can seem difficult to approach at first. Yet when we take the time to make it concrete, it can come very close to what people have been experiencing, sometimes for years, without understanding why they keep ending up in the same place.
To explain it, I use the image of the revolving door, as Mony did. I also often build a fictional example based on a different situation encountered in therapy. Going through another story makes the interactions easier to follow and helps people see how each person’s reactions can reinforce the other’s beliefs. They can look at what happens in that situation and then make connections with their own experience.
This is often a powerful and revealing moment. An argument people almost know by heart can become easier to understand. They begin to see how what each person does to protect themselves, gain recognition or find reassurance may contribute to the other’s distress, and how the other’s response then reinforces their own conviction. This understanding can give a different meaning to reactions previously experienced only as incomprehensible or directed against oneself.
I place a great deal of value on these moments of understanding. They can already change the way someone sees a relationship. But when the situation arises again, with the emotions, the words that hit home and the familiar reactions, it can still be difficult to find a different way to respond.
This is where I find the Crossed Beliefs Game particularly interesting. It offers a space to try things out. Working with cards, situations and changes of role, the person can look for a response, hear how it might be received, revise it and notice how that feels. They can experience something of the difficulty of not reinforcing a belief, even when they think they have found the words that ought to reassure.
I like this possibility of following an explanation with an experience. We may have understood that the other person feels obliged to manage everything, only to discover, when acting out a situation, how some of our responses might still leave them with that impression. What seemed fairly clear in conversation becomes more complicated when we have to find our own words. The game makes room for this difficulty and allows the person to work on it with the therapist.
In her demonstration, Stessie imagines a consultation with Obelix, who complains about his arguments with Asterix. She puts forward the hypothesis that Obelix always feels ignored, while Asterix might feel that he has to manage everything. The more Asterix gives orders, the less Obelix feels heard. And the more Obelix sulks or gets angry, the more Asterix may feel confirmed in his belief that everything depends on him.
Empty chairs make room for these absent people. The patient can work with the belief they attribute to the other person, then explore their own belief by changing roles. I find this adaptation fruitful for individual therapy: it offers a way to work with interactions through what the person who is present can feel, imagine and try.
Throughout the demonstration, Stessie reminds us that this work rests on hypotheses. What we imagine about the absent person’s experience must remain a possibility. To me, this care goes hand in hand with the creativity of the approach: we can invent a scene, explore a response and open up another interpretation while remaining attentive to how the patient receives what we offer.
There is a detail in the video that I really like. Before representing the patient’s belief, Stessie asks whether they agree to “entrust” it to her. In doing so, she acknowledges that this belief may have protected them and that bringing it into the game can make them vulnerable. She also explains why she prefers to stand behind the chair, in a doubling position, and to allow the patient to correct her as often as necessary.
These choices tell us something about how she uses her tool. We can sense her attention to the person’s pace, to what the exercise may ask of them and to the space they retain to say what fits their experience. Stessie also points out that the order of the work needs to be flexible: for someone who suffers from never feeling taken into account, beginning by focusing on the other person’s belief could be painful.
This is why I want to share this video. I like the creativity of the game, the way Stessie presents it and the opportunity it offers to continue the work after a moment of understanding. Once we have begun to grasp something of the relationship we are caught up in, we can take time to try things out, to feel and to explore how we might take part in it differently.
Watch Stessie Fougeroux’s demonstration
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