Push-Button Technique sequence:

Push-Button Technique sequence:

• A. The client writes about feelings in a diary.
• B. The client visualizes a happy event, but only recounts it without emotion.
• C. The client visualizes a happy event, re-experiences the happy feelings, then an unhappy event and its feelings, and finally returns to the happy event to re-experience the happier feelings.
• D. The client visualizes a neutral event.

Answer: (C)

The Push-Button Technique trains clients to regulate their emotions by intentionally cycling through different emotional states during guided imagery. The idea is to use a signal or “button” to shift mood so the person can both access positive feelings and process distress in a controlled way, strengthening their tolerance and coping.

The sequence shown—visualize a happy event, re-experience the happy feelings, then imagine an unhappy event with its feelings, and finally return to the happy event to re-experience the amplified happiness—embodies this toggling. By first anchoring positive affect, then introducing and processing distress, and finally re-engaging with the positive event to enjoy even stronger positive feelings, the client learns to manage arousal and integrate both positive and negative experiences. This contrastive, controlled exposure is the essence of the technique.

Other options don’t provide this deliberate alternation between positive and negative content or the reanchoring of positive affect after processing distress, so they don’t align with how the Push-Button Technique is designed to work.