The LOAD METHOD for de-escalating despair is also provided for you with your annual license agreement.  For this reason, we ONLY provide this to our Supportive Mental Health Professional Members that are trained to intervene on handling folks that are in the midst of despair.  This special approach was correlated to our special TaT interviewing process that we use to gather Positive Practice information.

Please note that all TaT Training materials are proprietary property and therefore, are not permitted to be printed without permission of McGrath Method, LLC. The information is to only be shared with TaT Facilitators and Mental Health Professionals that have paid for this exclusive TaT service.

The ‘LOAD METHOD’ Background

When the special Think about Thinking™ (TaT) Interviews began, many types and ages of people were interviewed. On of the interviewees was a young man that was at the graduating stage of becoming a counselor.

One of the jobs that he had taken on at that time was at the police station in the State of Washington. When the police came across someone that they believed to be mentally unstable they would bring them into their station for a psychological evaluation. No, my friend was not the counselor; his job came after the person had been evaluated to be at a high risk of harming themselves and/or someone else. While the evaluating counselor went about scheduling the person (which sadly, the system was so backed up, appointments were typically 2-3 months later).

 1)     Provide Calmness

 2)     Supply Empower

  3)   Activate Hope

He was to accomplish all of this in a very short period of time. “How am I supposed to do that? None of that was in my training!”, he thought to himself.  All he could think about was how the  Think about Thinking interview he had experienced the night before had made him feel. It had calmed him to think about how he was thinking and empowered him to hear his own thoughts. “And so, I gave them a small TaT Interview”, he later confessed.

He started off connecting with the person by describing despair. As he went on to question them about their LOADed emotions, they immediately calmed. By listening to them, they felt valued, which calmed them all the more. As they remembered things that worked effectively for them in the past, they became empowered. When he reaffirmed that they have it in them to get through situations, because they in the past, it strengthened them further and restored some hope. When he asked if they would like to learn more ways to handle their thoughts and emotions, their hope extended to making their future appointments.

 Through this shortened version of the TaT Interview, all the objectives were met and more. And yes, the rate of attendance of his participants making their scheduled appointments soared compared to others. The exciting thing about this adapted usage of the Think about Thinking core concepts is that now along with TaT being proven to effectively work as a preventative approach in avoiding despair, it has also been successful as an Interventive method for de-escalating despair with the LOAD Method. The LOAD Method has since been implemented in the Think about Thinking™ Certification materials for Mental Health Professionals.