The counselling session described here illustrates how I used a cyclic intervention with a client, i.e., we worked together to identify key issues in his life and a vicious cycle that was driving his presenting difficulties. The session shows how this occurred and how it helped the client.

This method often proved effective in ways that surprised me, and other counsellors might benefit from using similar interventions.

On other pages of this website, I describe how this type of intervention is consistent with key counselling theories, including psychodynamic and cognitive-behavioural therapies. See “The counselling pages on this website”.

I call the client Zed. He is a fictional character based on the many clients I saw during my ten years working as a problem gambling counsellor.

The identified cyclic dynamic

The method for generating and using the cyclic intervention is critical; however, let’s start with the intervention.

During a counselling session with my client Zed, I identified a vicious cycle that was a revelation to him. (Zed is a fictional client.)

You gamble more to feel respected – that’s when you are winning.		Damage: You lose more money & respect
	You need more respect.

During the session, we built a diagram of key parts of his story. The vicious cycle emerged from this diagram, and I summed it up, saying to him, “There is a cycle here: (1) the more you gamble to feel respected, while on winning streaks, (2) the more money you lose and the less respect you get at home and at work, so (3) the more you need respect, and (4) this throws you back to gamble more. This vicious cycle is making your life very difficult.”

The intake phone call

Zed rang our problem gambling counselling service. He spoke to our intake phone counsellor, who arranged for me to see Zed for face-to-face counselling.

The intake worker reported that Zed rang because his lawyer had told him that attending counselling might help him in court. He was 29 years old and living with his mother. He bet on horses at the racetrack, lost heavily, stole money from his workplace, lost his job, and was facing court. When offered our usual information sheets, he said, “No. Don’t bother. I don’t remember things.”

Session structure

Zed had told the intake worker that he didn’t remember things, so I planned to keep this counselling session simple. I often used a whiteboard in sessions and certainly intended to do so with Zed – to keep a running summary of the session in front of him. As we talked, I added keywords to a cobweb diagram on the whiteboard, organised as follows.

The counselling session meandered, but here I present separately:

• The final cobweb diagram.
• Zed’s story, arranged chronologically for clarity, and
• The resulting counselling intervention.

Zed’s cobweb diagram

Here is the cobweb diagram as it appeared at the end of the session. The vicious cycle is highlighted in red.

The diagram contains key words from the session, so they are cryptic when removed from the counselling session – and here you are seeing the diagram even before you’ve read Zed’s story. I’ve put it here, so you know what I mean by a cobweb diagram. One thing you can see is that what Zed liked about gambling dominated what he disliked.

I constructed the cobweb diagram as Zed and spoke, inserting the words Zed used. This final diagram mapped the key elements of his story.

Zed’s story

School and work

Zed left school at sixteen. He had been bullied and came to hate going to school each day. By year 11, he’d had enough and left to work in a supermarket. From there, he tried some labouring jobs on building sites before eventually settling into steady work at a hotel. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was reliable.

A relationship and a breakup

At twenty-three, he was renting a small bungalow tucked behind a larger house. Around that time, he met a woman he liked lots. She moved in with him, and for nearly a year, he thought it was going well. But she was fond of the pokies. The relationship ended abruptly when he discovered she had been withdrawing money from his bank account without his knowledge. He was blown away.

Football mates

Football helped him out of that dark period. At twenty-four, he earned a place on a local team. Making up for his light frame, he was fast and never gave up. He wanted to play in the finals, so he trained hard, and after training, he would go to the pub with other players. He said he liked being with mates.

Car accident

At twenty-seven, everything shifted. He was hospitalised after a car accident. One doctor said he might not be able to return to work for 3 months, and Zed worried about paying rent. He ended up giving up his bungalow when his mother suggested that he move into her rented house for a while.

He recovered more quickly than that, but when he returned to football training, hoping to reclaim his place, he struggled to regain form. Frustration simmered. His temper flared, and arguments followed. When the selectors didn’t slot him back in, he stormed out and did not return. Another source of identity and pride was gone.

Gambling

He had always enjoyed going to the horse races and placing the occasional bet, but now gambling took on a new intensity. Still twenty-seven and living with his mother, he became absorbed in racing. Losses mounted. He frequently gambled away money he had said he would contribute to rent and food. He said his mother called him “crazy” – and he half accepted the label, saying, “I suppose I am a bit crazy. I can’t stay away from the horses.”

His mother often suggested that he see a doctor about his memory. He spoke about this with irritation. He was not going to any doctor.

As his losses continued, he often found himself broke and stuck at home, watching television. The atmosphere in the house was tense.

On television, he really liked watching the Australian football team he followed. He said their captain was so brave, and everyone looked up to him.

The attractions of gambling

Whenever Zed spoke about racing, his voice lifted, and his face brightened. Some days at the track, he could do no wrong. His horses pulled ahead and won. People congratulated him, asked for tips, and bought him drinks. Strangers became companions; women noticed him. For a few hours, he was no longer a hotel worker living with his mother. He felt like a professional gambler — admired, competent, alive.

He was set on becoming a successful gambler and spoke dismissively of his hotel work. For him, it was a bad, dead-end job.

Stealing and the court

When he ran up debts, he became desperate and began stealing from work. His bosses found out, he lost his long-standing job, and they reported him to the police. Now he faced a court appearance, and the thought of his name appearing in the newspaper haunted him.

Zed’s difficulties

Zed faced so many difficulties. His gambling, stealing, and facing court. His “not remembering things” and his short temper. Perhaps he had suffered a brain injury in the car crash. How could he again find work, given that he had little education, no liking for any work he had done previously, no reference from a previous employer, and possibly a criminal record? At 29, life had left him scarred and weighed down by a string of defeats.

As I spoke with him, I felt so daunted by the challenges he would face in breaking free from his passionate attachment to gambling, finding a new job, repairing his relationship with his mother, and establishing a social life that would satisfy him.

The cyclic intervention

It occurred to me that he longed for others to respect him. I asked him whether respect was important to him, and he nodded.

I’d intended to keep the session simple, but I decided to talk him through a vicious cycle that was possibly dominating his life. As I spoke, I pointed to the relevant parts of the cobweb diagram. I also added the arrows and text to the diagram, which are now shown in red. I said things like:

• Wanting respect: It seems to me that you’re in a tough spot now and could be longing for respect, like the respect you have for the captain of the football team you follow, and the respect you felt from other players on your team. I added the “need respect” and the arrow between “Other” and “Likes” in the diagram.
• Feeling respected: You’ve said that when you are on a winning streak, you feel you can’t lose. And here in this room, when you talk about gambling, your face lights up. You are passionate about your gambling. It might be because during these winning streaks, you feel respected by others, like when people ask you for tips.
• Losing respect: However, you’ve often lost money and then lost respect at home, and now at work as well.
• Keep gambling: Then, just like on the football field, you don’t give up. You return to the horses, hanging out for your next winning streak and to feel respected once again.

Here again is that vicious cycle.

During a counselling session with my client Zed, I identified a vicious cycle that was a revelation to him. (Zed is a fictional client.)

You gamble more to feel respected – that’s when you are winning.		Damage: You lose more money & respect
	You need more respect.

During the session, we built a diagram of key parts of his story. The vicious cycle emerged from this diagram, and I summed it up, saying to him, “There is a cycle here: (1) the more you gamble to feel respected, while on winning streaks, (2) the more money you lose and the less respect you get at home and at work, so (3) the more you need respect, and (4) this throws you back to gamble more. This vicious cycle is making your life very difficult.”

Zed’s response

Zed responded, “That’s what’s on my belt.” He stood up and pointed to the playing card symbols, diamonds and clubs, embossed on his wide belt.

Zed: “A man made this belt for me with diamonds and clubs. I picked diamonds for gambling. The clubs are for respect: they’re strong. But you’re saying more, betting breaks respect, and, well, … I suppose that’s right. No one put it that way before.”

Zed had said he had difficulties at school and with memory, but he immediately understood this cyclic logic. Fortuitously, the critical elements of the cyclic intervention were on his belt, which could help him remember this new understanding of his gambling.

Later, he said, “Mum says I’m crazy, but perhaps that’s not so right.” The cyclic intervention provided him with a more productive way to understand his gambling, and he seemed relieved.

Zed had organised counselling at his lawyer’s urging, but now he was engaged with his counselling session.

After this session

I was amazed by his response to this intervention.

This session, along with others, demonstrated to me that simply making a cobweb diagram of the pros and cons of gambling on a whiteboard, along with the underlying “other issues,” can help reveal a cyclical dynamic surrounding a key desire or dread for the client —a dynamic that the client can readily understand and appreciate.  

The cobweb diagram showed a vicious cycle, with each part supported by the words Zed used to tell his story. The diagram summarised much of the session and was essential for helping clients understand this sort of intervention.

This process enhanced reflective listening, as it served as a reflection of the entire session and assisted my analysis of the whole. The result surprised both Zed and me and had a constructive impact on Zed.

The cyclic intervention offered Zed an explanation for his difficulties that he understood. It also suggested a clear challenge: how to disrupt the amplifying feedback cycle. Zed gained confidence and engaged with the counselling process.

An intervention I avoided

Here is one intervention that occurred to me during the session. I avoided it because I thought the intervention could alienate Zed, and a better intervention emerged.

Zed could have feared that there was something wrong with his head, and this could have been part of another vicious cycle driving his gambling. I discuss this on the psychodynamics page.

An intervention around stress

In the session with Zed, I identified the vicious cycle around Zed’s needing respect. However, in many sessions, a clear focus, such as “respect,” did not emerge. Sometimes, when this happened, I suggested to the client that their gambling could be a distraction from stresses in their life. Using the cobweb diagram showing key parts of their story using their own words, I presented this stress as part of a vicious cycle driving their gambling.

In this vicious cycle, the client (1) gambled to distract themselves from stress, but (2) would lose money, which tended to (3) increase these same stresses, so (4) their gambling would increase.

Clients often found this understanding of their gambling a relief, and returned to counselling.

Given adequate time, I could take this further with questions like, “Now, are you aware of any other issues that might be stressing you? I’m not asking you to tell me; you can keep these to yourself. I mean issues like secret affairs or deaths in the family. They could be recent or from long ago. Often these things disturb people and lead to puzzling behaviour.”

A Landscape of Paradox.

Zed’s gambling brought paradoxes into his life:

• His gambling to chase respect lost him respect.
• Gambling to chase money lost him money.
• Maybe he used gambling to convince people that he was smart and his brain was not damaged, but his gambling made people doubt his judgment.
• He gambled to meet women, but his losing kept him pretty safe from forming another relationship and perhaps more betrayal.

Problem gambling is a landscape littered with paradoxes, and cyclic diagrams can make these paradoxes clear. I explore paradoxes on the linked page.

Amplifying feedback cycles

To better understand how these amplifying feedback cycles function, particularly the factors that limit them, consider reading my page on amplifying feedback cycles.

Counselling Pages & References

The introduction to my counselling pages includes:

• Links to the other counselling pages, including those describing how this approach relates to other counselling practices and theories, see the top of the introduction page
• References for all the counselling pages, at the end of the introduction page.

These other web pages describe how this counselling fits with various counselling theories, and each offers a slightly different perspective on Zed.

Loaded 16 Nov 2025. Updated 18 Feb 2026.