Practice Program

Finding the Right Words

A Companion to the Finding the Right Words Field Guide

Created by David Feinstein, PhD

Finding the right words is a skill that has to be called on in the moment it is needed. The Practice Program comprises 144 clinical vignettes that recreate those moments: a client, a scene, and a decision about the next tapping statement. You choose from several plausible alternatives.

Each vignette picks up in the middle of the work. Assume the obvious has already been done — the client’s own charged words have been reflected back and tapped on wherever that was called for. The question is never whether to honor the client’s language. It is where the next phrase should go from there.

After a vignette, the program explains the merits and liabilities of each choice. It also goes beyond the individual case, naming which of the language variations the best answer draws on, so that what you have just seen becomes a resource you can call on by name. Each item then closes with a takeaway that states the underlying principle, so you leave recognizing a pattern you can apply with your own clients. Threaded through the reasoning are brief clinical asides, observations that catch a familiar moment from an unexpected angle.

The wrong-answer explanations carry as much of the teaching as the correct ones. Each names why a reasonable response misfires at this particular point — sometimes a sound move at the wrong moment, sometimes a beginner’s overreach, sometimes a phrase that sounds clinically astute but doesn’t advance the session.