Some announcements before we begin

• Announcement 1: I am getting close to announcing the full detail on something that I have been working on for months. I am writing a book. It will be about Deliberate Practice, of course. You will have to watch this space (subscribing is a great way to do that) or look out for me on social media to find out more. If all goes well I will announce the book fully within a month.
• Announcement 2: I have decided to finally have a hard launch for the Deliberate Practice coaching service that I can offer. You can find more info here.
• Announcement 3: Thanks to help from my brother. I have put up a YouTube channel. For now, the plan is just to create brief and funny videos (mostly using the Simpsons), but as I build up the courage I aim to start posting my own video content as well.

Please note: There’s a very quick survey at the end of this piece, where I ask your opinion on what you have read here today via a question. It will only take a couple of seconds before you go. I would be very grateful if you have time to provide an answer.

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I’ve been thinking a lot. No surprises there, right?

I’ve been trying to come to terms with how I actually practise. Yes, I have systems that I have built through years of Deliberate Practice. Systems that have helped me become a more engaging and effective therapist. But those systems don’t fully encapsulate what processes I use to go from an undesired behaviour to a desired behaviour – the process I follow to act differently in the therapy room. For instance, how did I practise my desired behaviour of allowing dead person goals for my new clients?

In my Deliberate Practice tip #6 I talk about some ideas on how to identify a desired behaviour but I say almost nothing about how to actually practise your chosen desired behaviour.

This piece is going to be a critique of a process of practising called ‘behavioural rehearsals’, based on my own experiences and of some other people as well. I will therefore advocate for ‘mental rehearsals’ being a more effective practising process, for some people at the very least, including myself.

I also want to be very clear about what I’m not saying in this piece. I’m not saying that behavioural rehearsals don’t work, they do. There’s research to support that. I have just come to believe that it’s not the only way for therapists to practise.

While I know many disagree with me, I also believe that you can still be doing Deliberate Practice without behavioural rehearsals.

In saying that, I don’t expect behavioural or mental rehearsals to work for everyone either. If that’s you, I hope you one day find something that does.

So what are behavioural rehearsals?

There’s a very common process for practising, which I have now already mentioned. Almost all fields of performance use it. Athletes use it, musicians use it, my personal trainer uses it. The list goes on.

It’s called behavioural rehearsal.

I’ll give you an example with my personal trainer. Let’s say we are doing a bench press. My PT observes me as I perform a bench press – I usually do at least five. After the set, he will give me feedback. He might instruct me to change my feet positioning when I do the next set. I then do the next set with his feedback in mind. After that set he might give me another instruction. I do another set with that new instruction in mind. Once my PT is happy with how I’m doing the bench press, we might do the final set to lock in all the lessons – so I have a proper technique in future. My PT will also ask me “how are you feeling?” or “how was that?” as we do the sets, to make sure it’s not too easy or too hard. He will then adjust the exercise difficulty based on my response. An exercise set will go for no more than two minutes at most.

That’s a behavioural rehearsal. Soccer players do it when they are learning a better way of passing. Basketball players do it when they learn free throws.

It’s also sometimes called procedural learning. Basically, the idea that you learn by doing.

So of course, when Deliberate Practice came to therapy, someone eventually decided that in order to get better at therapy. Therapists needed to do behavioural rehearsals.

It makes sense, right?

There are therapists now that swear by the necessity of behavioural rehearsals – including those at Sentio University – including my friend, Jordan Harris.

I even started my Deliberate Practice journey back in 2021 via behavioural rehearsals. It’s what my coach at the time, Nathan Castle, taught me to do. We would use behavioural rehearsals in most of our coaching sessions, at least until I started requesting we stop doing them. Nathan was trained in Deliberate Practice coaching by the folks at Sentio university.

Because it’s what other performance fields do, it therefore makes sense that we should do it too, so people just accept it. I’m not sure many people have really questioned it.

I haven’t done a behavioural rehearsal for anything therapy related in years. Literally. I know I wrote about how much I enjoyed them with Nathan, but that doesn’t mean they were the best way for me to practise. It’s easier to kid yourself into enjoying something when you think it’s the only way.

I know I’m not alone, I’ve had numerous therapists tell me that behavioural rehearsals are not for them, but they don’t know what else to do.

Over time, I started to feel like behavioural rehearsals were just too clunky and taxing. There’s an added amount of unnecessary pressure, because you have to speak out loud (that’s what makes it behavioural). What if I’m not ready to speak?

The gold standard is to do it with three therapists. One acting as the therapist, one as the client and one that observes to provide feedback. Who can get three therapists together on a regular basis? Not me!

Back when I was trying to do behavioural rehearsals, because I couldn’t find anyone to do them with. I had to download text to voice software, so my computer could act as the client. It was time consuming. What if I didn’t have my computer on me?

So how did I eventually come to this conclusion that behavioural rehearsals are not optimal practice (in my view)?

The problems with behavioural rehearsal didn’t fully click with me until I found a another way that works better for me.

If not behavioural rehearsals, what did you do instead?

I started trying to do internal behavioural rehearsals, in that I’d just do the rehearsal in my head. What I’m now calling mental rehearsals. For example, I would identify a difficult client situation from a past session and imagine myself responding to that client differently. I’d imagine as many different responses as I could. I’d then imagine the client saying something else entirely and practice internally responding to that too. I could go on and on.

I’d do this whenever I got a spare chance. Most commonly on my way to and from work. No music, just me, my thoughts and a note taking app on my phone.

I’d write down the ideas I like or a reflection that came up during the mental rehearsal session.

There’s a number of things I might internally rehearse:

• Past advice I got (e.g. from a coach)
• A story
• An analogy
• A concept
• A past conversation
• Imagined or future conversations
• Rationales and explanations
• Consolidating what works

My mental rehearsals were validated by a linked in post, which I referred to in my previous post:

Some therapists will tell you that behavioural rehearsals are the only way to practise. I’ve had some people argue already that they just don’t think that mental rehearsals can be considered practice. The main argument seems to be that there needs to be some sort of external physical action for practice to take place.They therefore argue that mental rehearsals are not practice, but something else.

I’m here to tell you I don’t think that’s true, that mental rehearsals can be another way of practising, if you need it. In my mind, something is practice so long as it ends up creating behavioural change. My mental rehearsals do get me to engage in a new or different behaviour than what I was doing before (i.e. I eventually end up saying out loud the thing I had spent time only mentally rehearsing) – that sounds like practice to me?

As I try to encapsulate in the diagram above, I don’t care how you practise. So long as the process leads you to performing and actually doing your desired behaviour. That you go from practising in ‘back of house’ to performing out in ‘front of house’. I don’t care how you get there. Because either way once the behaviour is performed you can get feedback on the behaviour (e.g. from the client verbally, from their reactions and a coach) and then that feedback leads to you altering the desired behaviour as needed.  

It’s not uncommon for a mental rehearsal to come out of my mouth for the first time once I’m with a client. It’s in the therapy room, when with a client, where I feel most comfortable to try such things in a behavioural sense. The therapy room is one of my sanctuaries where I feel secure and safe – because I have spent thousands of hours in these spaces. I don’t feel as safe talking to a coach, my computer or to a pillow…

Even safer still, I actually feel safest when I’m in my head. My head has been my ultimate sanctuary for my entire life. I can be as neurodivergent as I like, in my head. It’s a great way to practise what I want to say and play around with it.

Sure, I could become more comfortable in doing behavioural rehearsals outside of therapy sessions (e.g. with a coach, to my computer or a pillow), but why should I when I already have a method that works for me and is so much easier?

My faith in mental rehearsals doesn’t just come from my observations of seeing it work for practising therapy. Mental rehearsals are actually something I have done for as long as I can remember. I’m very often rehearsing or revisiting conversations in my head, including imaginary conversations. It’s been a way of honing my social skills without having to suffer through only practising by doing. There’s a good chance that if you have had a conversation with me, at least one thing I said to you was previously rehearsed, in some way shape or form. I’m not alone too, neurodivergent people mentally rehearse to increase their confidence in communicating with others, especially those of other neurotypes. Mentally rehearsing is a common neurodivergent trait and it works.

So why can’t mental rehearsals work for therapists? I haven’t heard a convincing answer yet, perhaps because there just isn’t one. It’s not like we’re practising super complex physical behaviours as therapists. All we really have to practise is how to say something in a certain way, it’s not rocket science.

Besides, I already have enough to practise as it is. I don’t really want to be worrying about how I practise too. If there’s an easier way, I’m all for it. Especially when finding easier and more accessible ways is absolutely integral for sustaining Deliberate Practice.

Ok, even if I accept the argument that mental rehearsals are not practice. I still wouldn’t care. I’m happy to call it something else, if it turns out to be the best option. I’d be happy to do that because what I’m doing is working. Agan, I haven’t done behavioural rehearsals for years (not even in coaching) and look at my outcomes stats gradually improving.

I’ve just found what works for me, I’m willing to bet I wouldn’t be the only one for this to work. I can make mental rehearsals way more flexible than behavioural rehearsals. It has all the power of my imagination behind it. Behavioural rehearsals are not as flexible. What might work when kicking a ball, doesn’t work in therapy. The ball doesn’t talk back to you in unpredictable ways.

While I can practise one scenario in 15 minutes of behavioural rehearsal. I can practise twelve scenarios in the same amount of time, when mentally rehearsing.

In a single practice session, if you rehearse mentally you can be prepared for many scenarios, if you rehearse behaviourally you’ll be prepared for one.

Mental rehearsals can also be way more fun, while still being challenging.

Proponents of behavioural rehearsals will say that the danger is that my rehearsals will be too biassed, because there’s no external input (e.g. from a coach). The thing is, while my rehearsals might be biassed, I do eventually get feedback, mostly from clients. I can also raise what I’ve rehearsed with my coach too.

Yes I might repeat behaviours in sessions with clients sometimes too, but this is engaging in a feedback loop – not a rehearsal.

I don’t need another person, I don’t need any equipment, I don’t need to be in a private room – I just need my brain.

I could do a mental rehearsal within 15 seconds of finishing this post.

This is my way of giving you permission. If there’s a new desired behaviour you want to do in therapy, but you don’t feel ready to act it out – then do mental rehearsals instead. There’s far less busy work involved. You will feel safer/less vulnerable, it’ll feel more flexible and faster. Give it a go on your way to work.

Suggestion: Take a challenging client situation you had in the last week. Reflect on it. Then rehearse responding differently to that client? Try it a few different ways. Write down your different responses as well.

The hope is that you will find some responses you like. If you mentally rehearse them enough they will then come out when they are ready, once you are with a client. It’ll be automatic. It feels like slow motion when mine comes out, when I’m with a client. Something I rehearsed in my head, so many times, is now coming out of my mouth for real – it’s a strange feeling. I don’t even try to bring out my rehearsals, I let it happen naturally.

Want a real challenge? Try to imagine yourself doing therapy with Trump or Putin. You may not be totally ready if you one day come across someone like that, but you’ll be closer to ready.

Power to you if behavioural rehearsals work for you. I’m still open to there being a place for them in a therapist’s toolkit. Maybe a behavioural and mental rehearsal regime would be a powerful combination?

For now, I don’t need to find out. In a super busy and whole life, I need a way of practising that’s as easy and enjoyable as possible, while still being challenging.

Due to my lived experience, my opinion is now this: You don’t have to do what an athlete does, you just have to think like one.

Mental rehearsals have worked so well, that my brain loves to do them whenever I’m idle. If I want to turn it off, I just engage myself in another active activity. For me, behavioural rehearsals went into the too hard box. Therapy is not sports. We need to do a better job of deciding what can be translated from sports into practising as a therapist. It’s too easy to assume what works for other performance fields, must work for us too. I’m ok to be proven wrong, but for now mental rehearsals are the best answer I have – so why not give it a try?

Here’s that very quick survey before you go:

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