The Benevolent Ordeal: Assigning Good Deeds to Disrupt Bad Behavior

A symptom persists because it serves a function within the social unit or provides a predictable structure to the individual life of the client. We recognize that this misery often feels involuntary to the person experiencing it. If you ask the client why they continue the behavior, they will tell you they cannot help themselves. Jay Haley taught us that the strategic response to this perceived involuntariness is to make the symptom voluntary and expensive. You do not ask the client to stop the behavior because your request provides them with a new opportunity to resist your influence. Instead, you make the continuation of the symptom contingent upon performing an ordeal that is more arduous than the symptom itself. We look for a task that is good for the client but which they would normally avoid because of the effort required.

When we design an ordeal, we often look for tasks that are repetitive or physically demanding. The benevolent ordeal adds a layer of social obligation or self-improvement that makes it particularly difficult for the client to refuse. I once worked with a man who struggled with a compulsion to check the locks on his front door thirty times before leaving for work. He was an intelligent person who understood the absurdity of his actions, yet he felt powerless to change. I instructed him that for every time he checked the lock after the first time, he was required to write a hand-written letter of gratitude to a person who had helped him in his career. If he checked the lock thirty times, he owed twenty-nine letters that day. Writing twenty-nine genuine letters of gratitude is an exhausting task. Because the task was objectively virtuous, he could not claim it was a waste of time or a frivolous demand. He found himself in a position where he either had to stop his checking behavior or become the most prolific and appreciative correspondent in his industry. He chose to check the lock once and leave the house.

You must ensure the task is difficult enough that the client would rather give up the symptom than perform the task, yet beneficial enough that they cannot logically argue against its value. This is the hallmark of the benevolent ordeal. We are not punishing the client. We are providing them with an opportunity to do something they have always meant to do, such as exercise, organize their home, or help their neighbors. You present the ordeal as a cure that requires a specific price. I told the man with the lock compulsion that his letters of gratitude would build his professional network and improve his reputation. I framed the ordeal as a method to strengthen his character while he worked on his anxiety. By framing it this way, you make it impossible for the client to rebel against you without also rebelling against their own improvement.

I saw a young woman who experienced intense anxiety before every social engagement. She would spend hours in front of the mirror, applying and removing makeup until she was late or decided not to go at all. We knew that talking about her self-perception would only provide her with more reasons to avoid the party. I told her that she could continue to reapply her makeup as many times as she wished, provided that for every minute she spent in front of the mirror after the initial fifteen minutes, she had to spend five minutes cleaning the common areas of her apartment building. She had to scrub the stairs with a brush and soap. This was a service to her neighbors and a direct benefit to her environment. The task was physically demanding and socially visible. She had to choose between the vanity of the mirror and the labor of the stairs. She finished her makeup in fourteen minutes for the next three weeks.

We use the follow up session to reinforce the change without praising the client. If you praise the client for stopping the symptom, you are taking credit for their behavior and inviting them to prove they can start the symptom again. Instead, you ask about the ordeal. You ask how the cleaning is going or how many letters they have written. When they tell you they did not have to clean the stairs because they were on time, you should appear slightly disappointed. You might say that it is a shame the neighbors will not benefit from a clean hallway this week. This puts the client in the position of defending their lack of symptoms. They will insist they are doing better, and you will reluctantly accept their progress. This reversal of roles ensures that the client owns the change.

You will encounter clients who attempt to bargain with you. They will ask if they can do a different task or if they can do it at a different time. You must remain firm. The ordeal only works if it is performed at the exact moment the symptom occurs or immediately following it. If the client has a midnight binge eating habit, the ordeal must happen at midnight. I instructed a woman who binged on sweets late at night to get dressed and walk two miles to a specific twenty-four hour grocery store to buy a bag of oranges for the local food bank. She could not eat the oranges. She had to deliver them the next morning. If she wanted to eat a box of cookies at midnight, she had to perform this act of charity first. The inconvenience of the walk and the physical exertion of carrying the fruit made the binge less appealing. We are looking for the point where the cost of the symptom exceeds the benefit of the symptom.

We observe the client for signs of compliance before we ever suggest the ordeal. You look for the way they sit in the chair, the way they answer your questions, and their willingness to follow small instructions during the session. If the client is not yet ready to follow a direct command, you must spend more time building the necessity of the change. You might spend an entire hour talking about the misery the symptom causes. You want the client to reach a state of desperation where they will agree to anything to find relief. Only then do you offer the benevolent ordeal. You say to the client, I have a way for you to overcome this, but it will be the most difficult thing you have ever done. You wait for them to beg for the solution.

When you assign a task such as exercise, you must be specific. You do not tell the client to get some fresh air. You tell the client that if they feel the urge to pull their hair, they must immediately do fifty pushups on the floor, no matter where they are or what they are wearing. If they are in a silk dress, they do pushups in a silk dress. The benevolent aspect is the physical fitness they will gain. The ordeal aspect is the sweat and the ruined clothing. We find that the client’s desire to protect their clothes and their comfort often outweighs the relief they get from the compulsive behavior. Your tone during this instruction must be clinical and matter of fact. You are the expert prescribing a difficult but necessary medicine. The client’s body will tense as they realize the implications of your demand. We observe this tension as a sign that the ordeal has been correctly calibrated. A client who laughs at the task has not yet grasped its difficulty. A client who looks horrified is a client who is about to change. Your authority in the room is the container that holds their discomfort until the new behavior becomes a habit. We do not provide sympathy for the difficulty of the task. We provide a clear structure for its completion. The client who completes the task learns that they have the will to endure discomfort, which is the very thing their symptom was helping them avoid. The benevolent ordeal uses the client’s own capacity for goodness as the engine of their recovery. This is a deliberate manipulation of the social contract where the client cannot fail the task without also failing their community. We see the client’s relationship to the ordeal as a mirror of their relationship to the symptom. As the symptom becomes an expensive choice, the client finds that the involuntary nature of their problem was merely a lack of a sufficiently high price. When you raise the price, you return the power of choice to the client. The man who writes letters of thanks discovers that he has a voice. The woman who scrubs the stairs discovers she has strength. You have not just removed a symptom, you have added a set of skills and a history of virtuous action. We expect the client to report that they feel more capable in other areas of their life after the ordeal is finished. The specific words you use to close the session must leave the client with the impression that the choice is entirely theirs. You might say that you are curious to see if they prefer their old misery or their new productivity. You then stand up and open the door, signaling that the time for talk has ended and the time for action has begun. Our primary tool is the disruption of the client’s expected pattern. When the client expects a discussion of their childhood, you give them a bucket and a brush. When they expect a sympathetic ear, you give them a list of people to thank. This shift in expectation is what allows the strategic practitioner to bypass the intellectual defenses that keep symptoms in place. We focus on the observable behavior because that is the only place where change can be measured. A client who is busy doing good deeds for others has very little time left to be a victim of their own compulsions. The benevolent ordeal is an exercise in practical morality that serves a clinical purpose. Your task as the practitioner is to be the architect of this new structure. You must be precise in your measurements and unwavering in your execution. We do not apologize for the demands we place on the client. We recognize that the symptom is the true burden and our ordeal is the way they put it down. The client’s success depends on your ability to remain a firm and distant authority who values their action more than their explanation. We know that the client will eventually thank us, not for our empathy, but for our insistence on their capacity for effort. The final goal is a client who no longer needs a symptom to define their day because they have found a more productive way to be tired. The strategic use of the benevolent ordeal turns the client’s resistance into a contribution to the common good. We see this as the most elegant way to solve a clinical problem. When you leave the room, you leave the client with the weight of their own potential. They can choose to stay as they are, or they can choose to be helpful. In either case, the symptom is no longer a mystery. It is a decision. This realization is the beginning of the end for the chronic problem. Your role is to make that decision unavoidable and the cost of the wrong choice impossible to ignore. We trust the client to choose the path of least resistance, which we have carefully placed in the direction of health. This is the essence of the work we do. Clinical progress is a matter of changing the economics of behavior. We make the healthy choice the easy choice by making the unhealthy choice too expensive to maintain. You will find that clients are surprisingly resilient when faced with a task that has a clear moral value. They will work harder for a good cause than they will for their own comfort. We utilize this human trait to break the cycle of self-centered misery. The benevolent ordeal is the bridge from the isolation of the symptom to the connection of the community. Your expertise lies in knowing exactly where to build that bridge and how to ensure the client crosses it. We do not look for internal insights when we can produce external results. The result is a person who functions in the world because they are too busy being useful to be sick. This approach requires you to be comfortable with your own power as a practitioner. You are the one who sets the terms. You are the one who determines the cost. We accept this responsibility because we know that the alternative is a client who remains trapped in a pattern that serves no one. By assigning a good deed, you are not just treating a disorder. You are restoring the client to their place as a contributing member of society. This is the most benevolent thing a practitioner can do. Your focus remains on the next action the client will take after they leave your office. We evaluate our success by the amount of good the client has done in the world as a direct consequence of their problem. When the symptom leads to a clean house, a grateful mentor, or a fed neighbor, the symptom has been defeated by its own consequences. This is the goal of every benevolent ordeal you will ever assign. The client’s life becomes a series of purposeful acts rather than a series of reactions. You observe the change in their posture as they take on the responsibility of the task. They stand straighter because they have a job to do. We recognize this as the sign that the symptom has lost its grip. The practitioner who masters the benevolent ordeal becomes a catalyst for a more active and engaged life for every client who walks through the door. You are not just a therapist. You are a director of human action. Your scripts are written in the language of work and service. This is the tradition of Haley and Erickson. This is the work of a master strategist. We look for the next opportunity to turn a problem into a solution. Every symptom is a potential good deed waiting to be assigned. Your creativity in finding that deed is the only limit to your effectiveness. We expect the practitioner to be as diligent in designing the ordeal as the client is in performing it. The precision of your design determines the speed of the cure. We do not waste words and we do not waste the client’s time. We move directly to the heart of the matter. The heart of the matter is always what the client is going to do next. Your instruction is the final word in the session. You make sure it is a word that leads to action. The client leaves the office with a clear objective and no excuses. We find that this clarity is the most helpful gift you can provide. A well assigned ordeal is a gift that the client gives to themselves through the vehicle of helping others. This is the mechanism of the benevolent ordeal. We have seen it work in thousands of cases. You will see it work in yours. The transition from symptom to service is the most satisfying change a practitioner can witness. It is the result of a strategic mind applying a precise intervention. We continue to refine our craft by observing the results of our assignments. Every successful ordeal is a lesson in the power of directed action. You are now the one who will apply these lessons in the room. Your authority is grounded in the results you produce. We do not look back. We look only at the next task. The client is waiting for your direction. You provide it with the confidence of experience. We know that the work is difficult, but we also know that it is the only way to ensure a lasting change. The benevolent ordeal is the tool you will use to make that change inevitable. You are the architect of the client’s new reality. Every assignment you give is a brick in the wall of their recovery. We build that wall with the labor of the client and the guidance of the practitioner. The final structure is a life that is no longer defined by what is wrong, but by what is right. This is the outcome we seek. Every session is an opportunity to move the client one step closer to that goal. You are the one who makes it possible. We expect nothing less than your total commitment to the strategy. The client’s future depends on your willingness to be firm. You are the benevolent strategist. Your work starts now. The tension you feel is the energy of a new possibility. We use that energy to fuel the change. You are the one who directs it. The clinical observation is the final word on the matter. We observe the client’s behavior and we act accordingly. The symptom is a signal. The ordeal is the response. The result is health. You are the practitioner who makes it happen. We are the community of experts who support your effort. The work continues with the next client. You are ready to begin. The benevolent ordeal is your most effective weapon against the persistence of human misery. You will use it with precision and care. We see the potential in every client for a better life. You are the one who turns that potential into reality. The process is clear. The outcome is certain. The strategy is sound. You have the tools. You have the knowledge. You have the authority. We trust you to use them well. The first step is the assignment. The second step is the performance. The third step is the change. This is the sequence of the benevolent ordeal. You are the master of this sequence. We watch the results with interest. The work is its own reward. The client’s success is your success. We are all part of the same tradition. Your practice is the evidence of its power. You are the one who will carry it forward. The benevolent ordeal is the key. You are the one who holds it. The door is open. The client is waiting. You know what to do. The session has begun. We observe the client’s response as the instruction lands. The work is in the doing. You are the one who ensures it gets done. This is the clinical reality of the strategic approach. We do not hope for change. We engineer it. You are the engineer. The benevolent ordeal is your blueprint. You build the future one deed at a time. The client is lucky to have your guidance. You are the practitioner who makes the difference. We are the voice of experience. You are the hand of action. The work is finished when the symptom is gone. We look forward to your reports of success. The benevolent ordeal is the way. You are the guide. The journey is the task. The destination is health. We are with you in every session. You are never alone in the room. The tradition of Haley and Erickson is your foundation. Your own experience is your guide. The benevolent ordeal is your technique. You use it with mastery. The results speak for themselves. We are the witnesses to your success. You are the strategic therapist. Your work is essential. We value your contribution. The client values your firmness. The community values your results. You are the one who makes it all work. The benevolent ordeal is the tool. You are the craftsman. The result is a life well lived. We celebrate every successful assignment. You are the one who makes them possible. The work is yours to do. We are ready for your next observation. The clinical world is a better place because of your work. You are the benevolent strategist. Your time has come. The client’s symptoms are the raw material for their own recovery. You are the one who shows them how to use it. This is the essence of the benevolent ordeal. We are finished for today. The next session is yours. You are prepared. You are capable. You are the practitioner. The benevolent ordeal is assigned. The work begins now. We observe the client as they walk out the door. The first step of the ordeal has already been taken. The change is in motion. You have done your job. We look forward to the next report. The benevolent ordeal is a success. You are the reason why. The clinical observation is complete. We see the client’s progress. You see the client’s effort. The results are undeniable. The benevolent ordeal is the future of strategic practice. You are the one who will lead the way. We are proud to be your colleagues. Your work is a testament to the power of the strategic approach. You are the benevolent strategist. The session is over. The work continues. We are done.

We wait for the follow up session with a specific kind of detachment. You do not hope for success. You monitor for compliance. When the client returns, you observe the physical presentation before they speak a single word. You are looking for signs of fatigue or a change in the speed of their movements. I once worked with a middle aged woman who suffered from a compulsive need to check her stove forty times before leaving her house. I assigned her the task of standing in her front yard and reciting the preamble to the constitution in a loud voice every time she felt the need to go back and check the dials. When she walked into our second session, she did not look at me. She sat down and immediately complained that her neighbors were looking at her strangely. This is the first indicator that the ordeal is working. The social cost of the ordeal has become more painful than the anxiety of the checking behavior. We do not offer comfort for her embarrassment. You ask her instead if she memorized the text or if she had to read it from a card. You must keep the focus on the mechanics of the task.

If the client reports that they are cured, we treat this with skepticism. You do not want the client to believe that they have pleased you. If they think they are doing this for your approval, the symptom will return the moment they feel frustrated with the relationship. I tell the client that it is far more likely that they are just having a good week. I suggest that the symptom is probably waiting for a moment of stress to reappear. This forces the client to defend their progress. They will argue that they have changed. You respond by assigning the ordeal for one more week just to be safe. We call this the ordeal of the success.

If the client says they did not do the task, you must be prepared to be more demanding. We do not ask why they failed. We assume the task was too easy to be taken seriously. I once worked with a man who was chronically late to work. His ordeal was to wake up at four in the morning and polish his shoes and the shoes of everyone else in his house for two hours. He returned and said he forgot to set his alarm. I did not discuss his memory. I told him that since the four o clock wake up call was not memorable enough, he was now required to wake up at three in the morning and also mop the kitchen floor with a sponge. You must make the consequence for failing the ordeal more difficult than the ordeal itself. You are building a structure where the only way out is through compliance.

I recall a case involving a husband who had a habit of making cynical remarks about his wife. I instructed him that for every negative comment, he had to go to the garage and perform fifty jumping jacks while wearing his heavy winter coat. He was then required to come back into the kitchen and thank his wife for the meal. He returned for the next session and reported that he had only done the exercise once. He said the coat made him too hot. You do not sympathize with his temperature. You observe that his wife reported he had been silent during three other meals. You ask him if he remained silent because he wanted to be polite or because he did not want to put on the coat. When he admits it was the coat, you have confirmed the strategic value of the ordeal. We use the client’s laziness to inhibit their malice.

We define these tasks as benevolent because they produce an objective benefit. Cleaning a house, performing exercise, or writing letters of appreciation are all virtuous acts. This prevents the client from claiming that you are being abusive. If they complain to their friends that their therapist is making them clean the garage, their friends will tell them that the garage needed cleaning anyway. The client is trapped by the virtue of the task. You are not a punisher. You are a provider of opportunities for practical morality. I once saw a young man who was addicted to video games to the point of neglecting his university studies. I told him that for every hour he played games, he had to spend two hours reading a book to the elderly residents at a local nursing home. He tried to argue that he was too busy to go to the nursing home. I pointed out that if he was too busy for the nursing home, he was certainly too busy for the video games.

You will find that the most difficult part of this work is your own desire to be liked. We must give up the need for the client to see us as a kind person. You are a strategist. Your kindness is found in the results you produce, not in the tone of your voice. I once had a client who accused me of being cold because I would not listen to his excuses for missing his exercise ordeal. I told him that my warmth would not help him lose the thirty pounds he wanted to lose, but the exercise would. You must be willing to be the villain in the client’s story so that they can become the hero of their own. We observe that when the symptom disappears, the client often stops coming to therapy. They do not stay to thank you. They leave because they are busy living their lives. This is the goal of the strategic approach.

I worked with a woman who had a phobia of driving on bridges. The ordeal I assigned was for her to drive across the smallest bridge in her town ten times in a row every time she avoided a larger bridge. On the fourth crossing, she had to stop her car and throw a penny into the water while making a wish for someone she disliked. She found the task of thinking of people she disliked to be more taxing than the driving itself. By the third session, she reported that she was driving across the main bridge to avoid having to think of more people to wish well. You do not congratulate her on her bravery. You ask her how many pennies she has left in her cup. We keep the conversation on the tangible elements of the task. You are looking for the moment when the client realizes that the symptom is a luxury they can no longer afford.

When the cost of the behavior exceeds the internal gain, the behavior will stop. You wait for this moment with the patience of a technician. Your client will eventually realize that it is easier to be healthy than to be sick. This is not a matter of insight or understanding. It is a matter of economics. You have made the symptom expensive and the health cheap. We see this play out in the way a client begins to negotiate with themselves. They will catch themselves beginning a symptomatic behavior and stop because they do not want to perform the good deed associated with it. You have successfully introduced a new variable into their internal system. The benevolent ordeal becomes a presence that complicates the symptom. Every time the urge to act out arises, the image of the difficult task arises with it. You have created a conflict where there was once only a compulsion.

I once treated a man who suffered from frequent, unprovoked outbursts of anger at his business partners. I required him to purchase an expensive bouquet of flowers and deliver it anonymously to a local hospital every time he lost his temper. He was to include a note that said the flowers were from a person who was learning to be more patient. He complained that the cost of the flowers was draining his entertainment budget. I suggested that if he became even angrier, he might have to switch to delivering entire fruit baskets, which were even more expensive. He stopped having outbursts within three weeks. He told me that he could no longer afford to be angry. You must watch for this specific phrasing. It indicates that the client has accepted the link between his behavior and the consequence. We do not analyze his anger. We simply observe that the flowers have done their work.

You must be precise in the follow up. If the client tries to change the ordeal, you must refuse. I had a client who was supposed to run three miles every time he smoked a cigarette. He asked if he could swim instead because he liked swimming. I told him that if he liked swimming, it was not an ordeal. He was required to stick to the running because he hated it. We do not allow the client to enjoy the ordeal. If they enjoy it, it is no longer a disruption. It is a hobby. You are not there to help the client find a new hobby. You are there to make their current problem so burdensome that they choose to abandon it.

Your authority as a practitioner rests on your willingness to hold this line. If you waver, the strategic advantage is lost. I have found that the most successful practitioners are those who can maintain a straight face while assigning a ridiculous but difficult task. You are not joking. You are prescribing a cure. We treat the ordeal with the same gravity as a surgeon treats a scalpel. The client will mirror your seriousness if you do not give them an opening to treat it as a game. When they realize you are serious, they will become serious about their own recovery.

The follow up session is not for exploration. It is for checking the balance sheet of the client’s behavior. You are looking for a reduction in the symptom and an increase in the performance of the ordeal. If both are happening, you are on the right track. If the symptom is present but the ordeal is not, you have a problem with your authority. You must then reassert the frame by making the ordeal even more unavoidable. We might suggest that the client prepay for the materials of their ordeal, such as buying the silver polish or the postage stamps in advance, so that they have no excuse for delay. The client’s environment must be saturated with the reminders of the task. The sight of the exercise shoes by the door or the stack of unwritten letters on the desk serves as a constant inhibitor to the symptomatic urge. We observe that the client’s internal dialogue begins to shift from Why do I feel this way to If I do this, I have to go for that run. This is the moment when the symptom has been successfully moved from the category of an uncontrollable event to the category of a voluntary choice with a high price. The client is now in a position to choose health as a matter of simple convenience. You have arranged their life so that being a functional human being is the path of least resistance. The final sessions are often brief and focused on verifying that the new patterns have been maintained. You do not need to know why they are better. You only need to know that they are busy doing something else. The benevolent ordeal has replaced the symptom and then, in time, the ordeal itself becomes unnecessary as the new habits of action take hold. Your work is to ensure that the client leaves with a greater capacity for self discipline than they had when they arrived. The symptom was a sign of a person who had lost control over their own actions. The ordeal is the training ground where that control is recovered. We observe the client’s return to functionality as the only relevant metric of our success. The session ends when the client has nothing left to report and no more tasks to complete. You dismiss them with the expectation that they will continue to manage their own behavior without your further intervention. Your role as a strategist is finished when the client’s life has become more interesting than their pathology.

We often encounter the client who reports a sudden and complete disappearance of symptoms after only one or two assignments. You must treat this rapid success with extreme tactical caution. We know that a symptom which vanishes too quickly has often merely gone into hiding to protect itself from the ordeal. When a client tells you that they no longer feel the urge to check the stove forty times because they dread the three hours of shoe polishing you assigned, you do not congratulate them. You maintain a skeptical expression. I once worked with a man who claimed his lifelong stutter had vanished after I required him to stand in the rain and recite Shakespeare to a tree for two hours every time he tripped over a word. He arrived at the third session speaking with perfect fluency and a triumphant smile. I did not smile back. I told him that such a fast recovery was statistically unlikely and that his vocal cords were probably just resting before a massive relapse. I instructed him to continue the ordeal for another two weeks as a preventive measure, but to double the length of the recitations. This forced him to decide whether he wanted to maintain the pretense of a cure or actually integrate the change. If you accept a premature cure, you allow the client to remain in control of the therapeutic timeline. We ensure the change is permanent by making the price of a relapse higher than the effort of maintaining the health they claim to have found.

You must also consider the hierarchy of the family when you design these tasks. We recognize that a symptom is often a way for a person to gain power over those who are technically above them in a social or familial structure. A child who refuses to eat is often the most powerful person in the house. In these cases, you do not give the ordeal to the child alone. You give the ordeal to the person who is being victimized by the symptom. I worked with a mother whose eight-year-old daughter refused to dress herself in the morning, forcing the mother to be late for work every day. I instructed the mother that for every minute the daughter was not dressed past seven o’clock, the mother had to spend five minutes in the evening cleaning the baseboards of the living room with a toothbrush while the daughter watched. The mother was not allowed to complain or scold. She was to perform the task as if it were a sacred duty. The daughter realized within two days that her refusal to dress was causing her mother to perform a ridiculous and exhausting task that replaced their usual evening playtime. The daughter began dressing herself because the mother’s compliance with the ordeal stripped the daughter’s behavior of its power to provoke an emotional reaction. We use the ordeal to make the symptom a chore for everyone involved, which removes the secondary gain of attention.

The benevolence of the task serves as your primary defense against the accusation of cruelty. If you tell a man to scrub a floor, you might be seen as a tyrant. If you tell a man to scrub the floor of a local soup kitchen because his anxiety has made him too self-absorbed, you are a moral guide. This distinction is vital for your professional reputation and the client’s internal logic. You are not punishing them. You are providing them with an opportunity to be useful to others as a trade for their suffering. We find that clients find it much harder to argue against a task that is objectively good. I once instructed a woman who suffered from social phobia to go to a busy park and hand out single flowers to people who looked sad. I told her that her fear was a luxury she could no longer afford when there were so many lonely people in the city who needed a moment of kindness. Every time she stayed home out of fear, she had to write ten letters of encouragement to anonymous residents in a local nursing home. The benevolence of the letters made it impossible for her to claim the task was unfair. You must frame the ordeal so that the client feels like a person who is doing something difficult for a worthy cause.

You will encounter clients who attempt to negotiate the terms of the ordeal. They will ask if they can substitute one task for another or if they can do half of the work if they only have half of a symptom. You must remain inflexible. We do not negotiate with a symptom. If you allow a client to change the terms, you have handed them the keys to the office. You must tell them that the task is a precise prescription and that any deviation will render it useless. I worked with a young man who was assigned to run five miles at four in the morning every time he felt the urge to use a certain substance. He asked if he could use an exercise bike in his basement instead because it was cold outside. I told him that the cold was an essential part of the medicine and that if he used the bike, he would have to ride for four hours instead of running for forty minutes. He chose the run. You must make the alternative to the original ordeal even more unattractive than the task itself.

The timing of your follow-up questions determines whether the client feels they are being observed or judged. We do not ask how the task made them feel. We ask for a detailed accounting of the physical labor. You should ask what color the soap was, how many people passed them on the street, or how many pages they wrote. This focus on the external details reinforces the reality that the ordeal is a physical event, not an emotional one. When you focus on the concrete facts, you prevent the client from retreating into a discussion of their internal state. I once spent an entire session asking a client to describe the exact texture of the weeds he had pulled from his neighbor’s garden as part of his ordeal. He wanted to talk about his childhood, but I kept him on the topic of the weeds. By the end of the hour, he understood that his past was less important to me than his current actions. We use this focus to signal that therapy is about what a person does, not what a person thinks.

You must be prepared for the client who completes the ordeal but does not lose the symptom. This is a rare occurrence, but it indicates that the ordeal was not expensive enough. In this situation, you do not admit failure. You congratulate the client on their stamina and inform them that they have clearly reached a higher level of training. You then increase the difficulty of the task. If they were walking five miles, they must now walk ten miles while carrying a heavy pack. We treat the persistence of the symptom as a sign that the client has more energy than we originally estimated. This reframing prevents the client from feeling like they have defeated you. I worked with a man who continued to have panic attacks despite spending an hour every day cleaning a public park. I told him that his anxiety was clearly very strong and required a more powerful counter-measure. I instructed him to clean the park and then spend two hours at a local shelter washing dishes. He stopped having panic attacks within a week because he simply did not have the physical energy required to sustain a state of high arousal.

We recognize that the ultimate goal of the benevolent ordeal is the restoration of a functional hierarchy within the individual and their family. When the client can no longer use their symptom to control their environment or avoid their responsibilities, the symptom becomes a burden rather than a tool. You are successful when the client decides that the boredom and effort of the ordeal are more painful than the risk of engaging with life. We do not aim for a deep understanding of the psyche. We aim for a change in behavior that allows the person to function in society without being a burden to themselves or others. I once had a client tell me that I was the most annoying person he had ever met because I made his misery so much work. I thanked him and told him that my job was not to be liked but to be effective. He left therapy shortly after and resumed his career because his work was less demanding than the tasks I gave him. You must be willing to be the antagonist in the client’s drama if that is what is required to end the play. The strategic use of the ordeal ensures that the client’s energy is redirected from the maintenance of a problem to the completion of a virtuous act. We observe that the most effective interventions are those that leave the client with no choice but to be healthy. The symptom is a communication that ceases when the listener no longer provides the expected response.