Practitioners carefully formulate each intervention, and when employed in the mental health setting, each intervention is selected to achieve a specific objective at that moment, during the session, and throughout the treatment. For example, mental health workers might find it desirable in a particular case to promote conversation with a shy and anxious person. In other cases, they may need to stem the flow of speech in overly talkative subjects who ramble excessively to mask their feelings. Each response type consists of several verbal techniques. During therapeutic dialogue, therapists may select and employ any number of these techniques to achieve specific ends.
Students then pair off and alternately role-play client and therapist to practice the technique.
Through consistent practice, students become more proficient in each technique. Over time, awkwardness gives way to confidence and fluency. Techniques are added as weaves in a fabric, ultimately forming the seamless dialogue of therapy. As with therapists, the principal tool of negotiators is the ability to communicate with subjects in a way that resolves an incident with a minimum of injury or loss of life. Likewise, some of the language and techniques of psychotherapy can be applied in incidents encountered by law enforcement, such as domestic disputes, suicide interventions, and critical incidents.6 Going beyond standard conversational art, therapeutic communication conveys that negotiators are listening actively to subjects, concerned about their welfare, and invested in bringing the incident to a safe resolution.