Archive for Practicing the Option Method
How to do the Option Method
A summary handout on how to do the Option Method.
The Practice of the Option Method
The way to help people to be happy in the purest form would be to strictly ask questions while making very few, if any, statements. The reason for that is: you’re not going to tell someone what they should be feeling, or how they should be feeling, or that they shouldn’t be feeling the way […]
An Option Session Protocol (commentary)
The Attitudes behind the Questions of the Option Session
The Attitude Behind the Option Questions
A example of the attitude behind the Option Questions.
Introduction to the Questions
In this talk, Bruce Di Marsico introduces the Option Questions. One of the key attitudes in asking the Option Questions is knowing that if people are unhappy, they have their own reason. He concludes with addressing the ultimate answers that we get down to, such as “because I have always believed it,” and the ultimate […]
Variants of the Option Questions
Variants of the Option Questions
The Client is the Expert
In this lecture, Bruce Di Marsico discusses that clients are experts on their own unhappiness. Option Method practitioners, are not. His primary theme is that the practitioner helps somebody with the unhappiness that they want to deal with. Furthermore, something is only unhappiness if the client considers the feeling something they don’t like. In particular, […]
The Option Attitude/Functional Unhappiness
In this talk, Bruce Di Marsico talks about the foundation of the Option Method: the Option Attitude. The Option Attitude includes knowing that the client is always right, that your knowing why the client is unhappy does the client no good, even if you’re right, and that the Option practitioner is not here to make […]
The Option Method with Others
In this talk, Bruce Di Marsico talks about the prerequisites for someone to benefit or to help someone using the Option Method. There are no prerequisites. The Option Method can benefit those who do not accept its premises. The Option Method can be used fruitfully by those who are not perfectly happy. The practitioner and […]
Option as Therapy
In this talk, Bruce Di Marsico gives guidance for applying the Option Method. First, he explains that understanding more about the Option Method is not necessary. The core understanding is that our emotional states come from our beliefs, and that we use unhappiness to motivate ourselves. Knowing the core understanding better doesn’t require knowing more […]
I Am Not the Cause
If you have no “axe to grind”, no need for the other to believe this or that, no need to change them, no need for them to be happier; then you will help best…
Guidance in Questioning
In this talk, Bruce Di Marsico gives guidance to student therapists in working with people who have a very global view of unhappiness as permanent, pervasive and personal, such as “I’m unhappy about everything because that’s the way I am, and I will always be.” His fundamental guidance is: Unhappiness about the possibility of being […]
Everyone does not in practice want happiness
While anyone would probably assert that they want to be happy, in practice they are actually unwilling to be under numerous circumstances. And that is precisely why they are not happy then.
A Critique of Therapies (commentary)
Bruce Di Marsico spoke occasionally of Freudian, Reichian therapy, New Age and Existential ideology, and conventional religions. Here, we will look at his critiques, and then summarize the critique in general form.
Applying the Option Method personally/The Option Method compared to other therapies/Arguments against happiness
In this talk, Bruce Di Marsico explains how the Option Method works in the most general terms and how it compares to other therapies. He discusses how beliefs create emotions—in response to any event, you feel what you believe to be the “right” emotion to feel. If you are feeling a way you don’t like, […]