These new experiences give clients a positive lens through which to see and experience the world. They can now choose not to succumb, as they habitually had in the past when difficulties arose, to states of chaos, depression and anxiety. Thus clients can function more productively in present day, reality settings. Because of its optimistic and hopeful world-view and philosophy and because of its emphasis on symbolic experiential satisfaction in the structures, clients come away from the work feeling hope and optimism. This therapeutic climate is encouraging to work within and therapists using PBSP report gaining more satisfaction and pleasure when using PBSP than when following with other therapeutic orientations.
Therapists use PBSP in groups and on a one to one basis, with a wide variety of populations.
It is successful in psychiatric settings, drug and alcohol treatment centers, pain clinics, and obesity treatment programs. It is effective with victims of abuse, incest victims, and adolescents in trouble with their emotions, the law and drugs. It has significant value in application to marriage and family problems and is now being used to alleviate executive stress and to deal with other organizational problems. PBSP is so basic and founded on such clear and understandable formulations that therapists with many varieties of professional training and experience find it adaptable to their own frames of reference. While it is not a fusion and amalgam of all the above, it does contain so much that is fundamental to all forms of psychotherapy that it relates easily to all major techniques used to treat emotional and mental problems.