AN OVERVIEW OF FOURTEEN SESSIONS OF PPT（Positive Psychotherapy）
The details can be found in my book Positive Psychotherapy: A Treatment Manual co-authored with Dr. Rashid.（Rashid and Seligman, 2011）
Session 1: The absence or lack of positive resources (positive emotions, character strengths, and meaning) can cause and maintain depression and can create an empty life.
Homework: The client writes a one-page (roughly three hundred words) “positive introduction,” in which she tells a concrete story showing her at her best and illustrating how she used her highest character strengths.
Session 2: The client identifies his character strengths from the positive introduction and discusses situations in which these character strengths have helped him previously.
Homework: The client completes the VIA questionnaire online to identify his character strengths.
Session 3: We focus on specific situations in which character strengths may facilitate cultivation of pleasure, engagement, and meaning.
Homework (starting now and continuing through the entire course of therapy): The client starts a “blessings journal,” in which she writes, every night, three good things (big or small) that happened that day.
Session 4: We discuss the roles of good and bad memories in maintaining depression. Holding on to anger and bitterness maintains depression and undermines well-being.
Homework: The client writes about feelings of anger and bitterness and how they feed his depression.
Session 5: We introduce forgiveness as a powerful tool that can transform feelings of anger and bitterness into neutrality, or even, for some, into positive emotions.
Homework: The client writes a forgiveness letter describing a transgression and related emotions and pledges to forgive the transgressor (only if appropriate) but does not deliver the letter.
Session 6: Gratitude is discussed as enduring thankfulness.
Homework: The client writes a gratitude letter to someone she never properly thanked and is urged to deliver it in person.
Session 7: We review the importance of cultivating positive emotions through writing in the blessings journal and the use of character strengths.
Session 8: We discuss the fact that “satisficers” (“This is good enough”) have better well-being than “maximizers” (“I must find the perfect wife, dishwasher, or vacation spot”). Satisficing is encouraged over maximizing.
Homework: The client reviews ways to increase satisficing and devises a personal satisficing plan.
Session 9: We discuss optimism and hope, using explanatory style: the optimistic style is to see bad events as temporary, changeable, and local.
Homework: The client thinks of three doors that closed on her. What doors opened?
Session 10: The client is invited to recognize character strengths of significant other(s).
Homework: We coach the client to respond actively and constructively to positive events reported by others, and the client arranges a date that celebrates his character strengths and those of his significant other(s).
Session 11: We discuss how to recognize the character strengths of family members and where the client’s own character strengths originated.
Homework: The client asks family members to take the VIA questionnaire online and then draws a tree that includes the character strengths of all members of the family.
Session 12: Savoring is introduced as a technique to increase the intensity and duration of positive emotion.
Homework: The client plans pleasurable activities and carries them out as planned. The client is provided with a list of specific savoring techniques.
Session 13: The client has the power to give one of the greatest gifts of all—the gift of time.
Homework: The client is to give the gift of time by doing something that requires a fair amount of time and calls on her character strengths.
Session 14: We discuss the full life integrating pleasure, engagement, and meaning.引自 有效的积极心理学练习
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