Switch chairs and answer as them

Sit in their chair, become them for a few minutes, and answer what you just said.

Por que funciona

At points in the dialogue the person moves into the other chair and speaks as the significant other. Enacting the other brings out how you carry them inside you, which is often harsher or more rigid than they were. As the dialogue goes on, the enacted other sometimes shows something new, such as their own limits or regret, and that is one route to the shift in how the other is seen that resolution depends on. When the other stays rejecting, that too is information.

Como fazer

1. After you have spoken, move to the other chair. Take a moment to settle into how they sat and spoke.
2. As them, respond to what you just heard. Let it come out the way they would really say it, not how you wish they would.
3. Move back to your own chair and answer them. Go back and forth a few times.
4. If, as them, something softer or more honest appears, let it be said. If nothing does, return to your own chair and notice that.

Evidência

Moving between chairs is part of the task as described in the Emotion-Focused Therapy training texts and in a 2026 systematic review. Greenberg and Malcolm (2002) found that a shift in the client's view of the other was part of the resolution process linked to better outcomes. A 2025 virtual reality version, in which participants alternated seats, did not differ significantly from a waitlist in its main comparison with 52 participants, though unfinished business decreased within the intervention group. (clinical)

Chair-switching has not been tested separately from the rest of the dialogue. Speaking as someone who hurt you badly can be destabilising; if you start to feel you are losing yourself in their voice, stop, return to your own chair and get support.

Fontes

• Elliott, R., Watson, J. C., Goldman, R. N., & Greenberg, L. S. (2004). Learning Emotion-Focused Therapy: The Process-Experiential Approach to Change. American Psychological Association.
• Ottingerová, L., Halamová, J., & Szitás, D. (2026). Experiential therapies including Chairwork: A systematic review of randomized controlled trials. Frontiers in Psychology, 16, 1692630.
• Greenberg, L. S., & Malcolm, W. (2002). Resolving unfinished business: Relating process to outcome. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 70(2), 406-416.
• Halamová, J., Ottingerová, L., Haladova, Z. B., & Greenberg, L. S. (2025). Unfinished business in virtual reality: Development and preliminary evaluation of an empty chair intervention grounded in emotion-focused therapy. Internet Interventions, 42, 100885.

Erro comum

Making the other person say what you want to hear. Giving them an apology they would never give feels good briefly but skips the real work; the shift has to come from voicing them honestly.