Self Systems and Relationship Systems: Achieving Lasting Change

Abstract

Redecision therapy, the joint creation of Bob and Mary Goulding, now is nearly 30 years old and still state-of-the-art therapy, its methods facilitating rapid change. Redecisions are by their nature powerful and tend to endure, but the Gouldings knew that a redecision is only an essential beginning, not a magic potion, and they recognized that lasting change results from the interplay of many factors. Through the use of two case examples, this article illustrates ways in which superficially similar redecisions can have very different consequences in the internal self system, and thus for external relationship systems, as new and durable patterns of behavior emerge.