Life Grid

The Life Grid (per McWhirter) is useful in locating behavior, values, etc. within various social domains.  The Life Grid allows a more complete tracking and avoids over-simplification.  Tracking a person's problem description using the Life Grid can clarify what the difficulties consist of, the role of each one, and how they interact.  In this way you can find the sequence of Doings, enhance the client's model from static to dynamic, test the degree of connection in thinking and gather more information; unpack thinking and decide where change work is needed.  For example, the sequence could be behavior, process, thinking… [?]

Area       ® Levels  ¯

Self

Family

Peers

Work/ School

System

O.M.

 

 

 

 

 

Identity

 

 

 

 

 

Beliefs

 

 

 

 

 

Values - Towards

 

 

 

 

 

Values -Away

 

 

 

 

 

Skills/ Habits

 

 

 

 

 

Experience Base

 

 

 

 

 

Concepts

 

 

 

 

 

Language

 

 

 

 

 

Senses

 

 

 

 

 

Movement

 

 

 

 

 

Environ-ment

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Structural differences between each level are important.  For example, Identity, Beliefs, and Values all involve judgments, but Identity involves judgments about "who I am", Values involve judgments in terms of the evaluative triangle, and beliefs involve conclusions about how things work.  Beliefs are more tentative compared with Identity.

[I wonder about other models and which ones are most profitably used in describing or exploring which of the (upper) levels: 

Beliefs, for example, could be profitably explored using In-Time/Between-Time/Through-Time; more specifically, if you believe that a particular sprout is a grape plant, the structure of the belief may have to do with some instantaneous sense of "grapeness" (In-Time), recognition of exactly this form of grape from previous experience (Between-Time), or how this sprout develops to become a recognizable grape (Through-Time).

Values could be explored using Like/Want/Need:  If you go away from depressed people, is it that you like to avoid them, want to avoid them, or need to avoid them?  If it is need to avoid, then there may be a belief about certain negative consequences which always occur if you don't avoid which, in turn, could be explored using Time, Transit-Transfer-Transform, FADS, etc.  If it is want to avoid, the affective dimension of the Evaluative/Motivation Triangle may best be used to clarify.