How to assemble a model?

After understanding the base of the theory, an essential aspect of CreaTherapy is to help you assemble a model.

Let's come back to the image that represents how a model is organised:

So, how do we assemble our model?

First, the idea is not to invite you not to use what you know or like. Quite the contrary, the idea is to start with what makes sense to you. So, let's start with you, who you are, and what you feel.

If you go to the tests in CreaTherapy, you will find some questions that will guide you here and some prompts for a creative cycle process in Journaling.

Profiles

Profiles Introduction

You can start by reading the introduction to the personal profiles. They are aimed at helping you better understand yourself and how you change on your path of discovery.

Figuring out more about who you are and wondering what matters to you will guide your exploration and help you identify the type of authors you may like to read. There are authors who have already thought similarly, and you can explore like-minded people.

By realising that you can find approaches and authors similar to you, you can base your intuitions theoretically and start assembling practical theories and practices that will be coherent with you.

I do not think we are static beings; we change over time, and as you do, you may seek to understand new authors and practices.

Components

Components is a proposition to organise knowledge, not based on positions, but on work areas. In this way, we can separate those two ways of looking for inspiration and learning.

I made a collection of areas of work before for a project I thought would help the client and therapist find a better match. From that idea (which is still possible to develop from here), I kept going on and arrived at a group of five with another five inside.

The selection was challenging and a bit forced because I wanted rounded numbers and a nice image. This is because that makes things easier to remember and limits the number of options. So please do not feel restricted by them.

Explore the components intro

With the CreaTherapy app, section Techniques, I aim to generate a space where people can share their ideas and theories and group them by Component. In that way, we can think together without dividing ourselves by our tendencies and traditions.

Use the Components to determine what areas you are more drawn to for work. With enough practice and knowledge, each of them can allow a therapeutic process. But knowing a bit more makes things more fluid and will enable you to grow in confidence and understanding.

Each author, approach, and research has many layers, including the authors' personalities and the philosophical traditions that underpin their explorations.

Big Traditions

Some ways of thinking carry ways of discovering/creating knowledge. Our culture of the academy has produced some clear and distinct ones, each opening avenues of learning that keep being fruitful after many years.

I do not think they are true in the old way of dividing true into camps that fight each other. I believe they are true in that your actions, modes of thinking and research create/discover slices, planes, of reality. Sometimes, we need to embody a mode of thinking to start seeing the concepts in-the-world.

This means that we may have one favourite way of seeing reality, but we can also belong to a few more that are not incompatible.

Here, we start working with one of the most profound areas of knowledge organisation. We need to understand where a piece of theory, a model, is assembled. What is the ground of knowledge, and what kind of ground do you need to feel coherent?

The participatory approach profoundly influences my thinking, but I also use the others inside that paradigm. Maybe you will have another favourite ground and organise the others around it.

A coherent narrative

We are animals of stories; we need to feel coherent in what we do and think. Coherence is necessary for us to feel well inside. Therapeutic traditions have organised knowledge around consistent values and ways of perceiving reality, with large amounts of expertise constantly produced inside.

These traditions are practical because they teach us how to practice. Still, they also do important work in allowing us to belong to a group, organise dispersed knowledge, create a coherent worldview, and organise a set of values around it.

All that work is made for us when we belong to a tradition. Therefore, the best way to start practising is to learn from a reliable training institution and, from there, start finding your path. Of course, your chosen tradition works better if it already matches your intuitive dispositions.

Finding coherence is personal and collective, and that tension is essential. As explained in Personal Profiles, we move between the tension of belonging and individuation and sometimes need more than the other.

My vision is processed, which means that part of this model may make more sense for a while, and then other parts may come to the forefront. That is how I see your process and mine: constantly changing, where we need to be present to feel and experience what is coming. I cannot fully embody this model because it is more like paths in a city that I want to know not to get lost when I walk.

Assembling a model

How to put all of this together?

Maybe write a little about how you see reality. Then, write the theories that make sense to you and the actions you have learned to help others.

Try to map these intuitions and make a little drawing about them. Connect the reality base, the philosophy, to the theories. How can they plug together?

Then, do the same with the practices; how could they relate? Are there missing dots in the drawing you may like to explore?

Now, you are exercising the creation of models. Your models.

That is how you start. As you feel comfortable with your model, you can learn from what others have done. You can try the models of others and see if they help you improve your model.

Why to do that?

This creates a little space in your theory-making, which is yours. A little centre so when you learn theory, you do not take it blindly, but you keep a centre of self-creation of theory. This allows your theory-making to be coherent with you, and as you explore others, you keep a space of wondering and a space of creation/discovery.

So, the first step would be to draw your response to this. And maybe write a countermodel to my model. Decide if there are bits that help you and bits that do not help.

I have tried hard to make CreaTherapy compatible, but that does not mean you need to agree to everything or even a little. I imagine it as an open-source project where others can fork or send corrections. Breaking theories into their pieces may make it easier to agree by pieces, and allow more space for creativity.