welcome to your overview of counseling theories brought to you by AllCEUs.com by understanding the origins of distress we're better better able to deal with distress counseling theories assert that problems stem from ineffective relationships or thoughts in adulthood personality theories speculate the distress stems from more innate long-standing problems often starting in childhood and learning theories emphasize the fact that distress and behavior is learned from exposure to rewards and punishments so we'll start out with our counseling theories person-centered counseling asserts that humans are good and forward moving unless they're blocked by something blockages often occur from a lack of unconditional positive regard which leads to low self-esteem and low self-efficacy or a low sense that someone can actually accomplish a succeed by creating a nurturing positive environment people will naturally move in the right direction so if we remove those blockages that inhibited the person from fulfilling their highest potential they will naturally gravitate towards growth according to person-centered theory there are six necessary conditions for change the therapist and client have to have psychological contact each person's perception of the other is important and must exist client in congruence or vulnerability in congruence exists between the clients experience and awareness causing vulnerability or anxiety which increases motivation so we have to get to the point where the client is ready to make a change there this congruence or genuineness the therapist has to be there in the moment we have to provide unconditional positive regard that is we provide positive regard for the person not necessarily the behaviors an empathic understanding of what's going on not sympathy but true empathy getting down into the into the trenches with the client and the client has to perceive the therapist as being empathetic understanding and exhibiting unconditional positive regard rational emotive behavior therapy and cognitive behavior therapy are little bit different and they focus on changing the current evaluations of situations and/or the person's reactions to those evaluations of situations distress in this theory is caused by a combination of the event and the person's perception of the event by using the ABCs people can evaluate their beliefs and reactions to events a is the activating event B is the person's beliefs about the events and C is the consequences basically this theory says that the activating event occurs and then the consequence and in that millisecond between the person's emotional upset there's a litany of automatic beliefs that goes through their head some of them are rational some of them not so much with rebt the person then goes back and D disputes those beliefs removes those ones that are over generalized irrational or fundamentally wrong and with what's left those rational beliefs the person is left to eat evaluate their reaction was an effective reaction did getting angry at somebody who cut you off really do any good or was it a waste of your energy you can see here we've written out the a is the activating event B is your beliefs assumptions or interpretations of an event C the consequences B is disputing the irrational beliefs what is the evidence for my belief is the person who cut me off in traffic really intended to kill me did they really intend to be rude was it a personal flight and then evaluating the reactions and consequences of our behavior for their effectiveness now once we start talking about the agencies the actions beliefs and consequences we need to help people identify their irrational beliefs or irrational thoughts so we're going to go through some of the ones that have been identified number one it's a necessity the necessity to be loved or approved by almost everyone for virtually everything when our consumers believe this they're setting themselves up for failure because it's just not going to happen they're not going to be loved or approved of by everyone all the time that's just unrealistic they need to be able to develop a sense of self pride in what they do and not rely on others to tell them that they're okay they're good enough they're smart enough and if people like them irrational idea number two is that one should be thoroughly competent adequate and achieving in all possible respects again this sets us up for failure everybody has things they're good at and it's building on those strengths but someone who is a brain surgeon may not be a very good chef someone who is a wonderful electrician may not be a good singer there are a lot of things that were not good at but accepting the fact that nobody is good at everything is something that a lot of our consumers need to take a look at I asked my my patients a lot of times to look at themselves and when they start feeling like they're judging themselves ask themselves would I hold my best friend my sister or my child to the same standard would I expect them to be good at everything all the time or is that unrealistic irrational ideas three certain people are bad or wicked and should be severely blamed and punished well yeah certain people are bad and wicked but that's like one hundredth of one percent of the population that is unable to feel empathy and become serial killers or whatever the rest of us we feel empathy we may make bad choices but this is where we have to help people see that number one what's in the past is in the past and they can make amends for it but they can't change it number two what is in the past has made them who they are today and again they can use that for their benefit and for a growth or they can use that to beat themselves down and number three our behaviors are just that they're our behaviors they're not necessarily us good people do bad things so helping consumers separate their self-worth from their behaviors so they can start making better behaviors because they believe they're a good person irrational idea number four it's terrible and catastrophic when things are not going the way we want well isn't that self-centered things don't always go the way we want we don't control the world in the world does not revolve around us and once we get our head wrapped around that it is easier to accept that you know sometimes things go wrong sometimes we have a crappy day but are we going to let that ruin our entire mood ruin everything or are we just going to say okay well that's not going well and so I need to make some adjustments when you get up in the morning if you go out to start your car and it's dead well that's not the way you wanted things to go in the morning are you going to let that ruin your entire day irrational idea number five happiness is externally caused and people cannot control their emotions well hopefully if people are using rebt or CBT they believe that by changing their thought patterns and being more optimistic that they can feel better happiness is something that we choose we can choose to do things that make ourselves happy we can choose to feel happy or we can choose to look at the negatives and everything and just be a grump people need to figure out what in their lives they can do to make themselves happy puppies kittens squirrels children exercise watching football what is it that makes your clients happy because they can choose to do those things irrational idea number six if something is dangerous or fearsome we should dwell on it what good does dwelling on something do that's worried it doesn't change it it just brings it to the forefront of your mind and sucks your energy if you are constantly worried that there's a spider somewhere in the room that you are because you're afraid of spiders you're going to waste a lot of unnecessary energy being on guard and looking for spiders and wondering if that little speck on the wall is actually a spider or just dirt if something is dangerous or fearsome we need to help our consumers figure out how they're going to address it and deal with it consumers who have been victims of trauma may be afraid to be a home alone may be afraid of the dark may be afraid of a lot of things they need to figure out how they're going to deal with that so it doesn't drive them absolutely think and daddy irrational idea number seven it's easier to avoid facing many life difficulties and self responsibilities than to undertake more rewarding forms of self-discipline well yeah it is easier in the short term it is a whole lot easier to check the mail put it all in a bag and stick it in a drawer somewhere and not pay the bills but when you like to start getting turned off and your computer gets turned off and you don't have any water running then it's not so easy just like when you get a scrape you want to wash it out and put antibiotic cream on it or whatever in order to keep it from getting infected or it's going to fester if we don't face our responsibilities then a lot of things are going to start kind of falling apart or deteriorating and kind of like that open wound they're going to start to fester and cause negative things within our life and it's going to be a whole lot harder to fix instead of prevent irrational idea number eight the past is all-important and because something once strongly affected your life it will indefinitely do so well sort of part of this again is helping people realize that the past is the past and it can't be changed and it is has impacted who you are and the way you perceive things but you have a choice you can perceive yourself as a victim or you can perceive yourself as a survivor you can look at what happened in the past and feel sorry for yourself and see all the ways it's negatively impacted your life or you can look at all of the things in the past and see how it has made you stronger see what it's taught you see what you might have gotten out of it look for the silver lining and this is annoying to people when they first start doing it because they're like really you want me to look for a silver lining and that well yeah we've got to figure out what you might have gained from it we've got to figure out if it's still impacting you today which it probably is in one way shape or form how are you going to use that how are you going to integrate that into who you are for the positive instead of letting it suck your energy and make you feel bad irrational idea number nine people and things should not be different and it's catastrophic if things do not immediately change people and things should be different well yeah we don't like it when things don't change right away all of us would like things to go our way all of us would like things to change I would like it to be sunny outside right now but it's not so am I going to get all fired up in a tizzy about it no it's not catastrophic I just have to figure out what I'm going to do today besides go on a run things don't change immediately I just took over a program where I work and it's a mess and it's not going to change overnight and yeah it's a little stressful but is it catastrophic no I need to give the program time to change when we go on a diet we don't lose 15 pounds right away we need to give ourselves and our bodies time to do what it needs to do and many Americans I can speak for American culture are very immediate gratification oriented if something doesn't happen right now I just can't stand to wait well we need to get rid of that we need to you know get past the immediate gratification and realize that some things take time and are they worth waiting for irrational idea ten maximum human happiness can be achieved by inertia or inaction or by passively enjoying oneself really in the short term maybe you know I wouldn't mind spending a weekend some weekend sitting on the couch and watching cartoons with my daughter and pretty much doing nothing but is that maximum human happiness if it goes on and on and on no maximum human happiness results from us experiencing life and feeling successes because we've done something we can point to something and say I did that and I'm good at that just sitting on the couch eating bonbons and watching television all day isn't going to produce a sense of self satisfaction help your clients identify what things they want to do five months from now five years from now where do they want to be and what achievements do they want to have accomplished most of them will have at least one or two and they're not going to look at you go I really don't want to do anything in life I just you know and if they do then you might want to evaluate them for major depressive disorder but I digress more irrational thoughts include emotional perfectionism I should always feel happy confident and in control of my emotions again we're looking at this always always and never and all those words that are very extreme set us up to feel overwhelmed or disappointed are we always in control of our emotions no there are things that catch us off-guard that make us extraordinarily scared extraordinarily angry extraordinarily sad and you're not always going to be in complete control only spock was in complete control so what we want to help people do is help them maximize the times that they feel happy and confident and help them recognize tools to help them control their emotions when they feel like they're getting out of control and to give themselves a break when something catastrophic happens and they boohoo cry for a few hours that's what we do and then we need to move on but some people get stuck or feel just completely out of control and helping them devise a way that they can feel safe while it's still experiencing their emotions is extremely useful in helping people feel like they are more competent in the emotional realm next one is I must never fail or make a mistake really I wouldn't expect my child to do that I wouldn't expect my husband to do that and I sure as heck don't expect myself to do that because I fail I make a mistake I make lots of mistakes and I learn from them if we don't stretch ourselves if we don't push ourselves past that little comfort zone we may not fail very often but if we fail we need to look at whether that's going to be perceived is a negative comment about us or just an identification of well this is a skill we don't have i tried gardening let me tell ya that's not a skill i have i had corn it grew really tall and really pretty it was all shriveled up inside so you know yeah i didn't do so well at gardening but there are other things I can do and you know we all make mistakes on a daily basis learn from them be able to laugh at yourself everybody makes mistakes and if you can laugh at yourself and laugh at yourself especially when you do something stupid and we all do then it's going to be a much happier life perceive perfectionism people will not love and accept me if I'm perceived as a flawed and vulnerable human being well let me ask you this will people love and accept you if you're perfect and you never make any mistakes or will that put them on the defensive we're all flawed and if we're not willing to accept that then we have got some issues we all are vulnerable at times and that's okay it's when you're vulnerable all the time and you're seeking another person in order to make you feel safe that it becomes a problem fear of disapproval or criticism I need everybody's approval all the time you're not going to get it this was a hard lesson for me to learn when I first started teaching because I wanted all my students to like me and you know what that never happened every semester I have 75 students and there would always be two or three they just really didn't like class the majority liked it wrapping my head around the fact that the majority liked it was a lot harder then ignoring the fact that that three didn't fear of being alone if I'm alone that I'm miserable there's a difference between being alone and being lonely people who are alone are comfortable within themselves and find happiness and contentment in the things they do and friendships that they share but they don't always have to have someone like right on their side being lonely is when you're looking for someone to fill up this empty pit that's inside of you because you don't feel good enough about yourself and you're relying on them to tell you you're okay and they're relying on them to tell you that you deserve to breathe the air my worst depends on my achievements hmm when a child is born are they not worthy they certainly haven't achieved much yet but we love them just the same when a child starts to walk and starts to do things you know they haven't figured out a cure for cancer they've just been who they are so are they not worthy people need to identify what makes them worthy what makes them a good human being conflict phobia people who love each other shouldn't fight well we shouldn't have knock-down drag-out fight no but people who love each other can also respect each other's differences and agree to disagree emotive phobia I shouldn't feel angry anxious jealous etc being afraid of feeling emotions can really hinder life because we feel emotions all the time and if we box them up and try to keep from feeling them not only does that take a lot of energy but it also takes a lot of the highs and the lows out of life and life is very dull entitlement people should always be how I expect them to be no you are not entitled to have me act any particular way now I can choose how to act but there's no sense of entitlement that has really ever gotten anybody anywhere that's demanding respect or demanding something from someone else before you earn it all or nothing thinking I've either got to have an A on this exam or I'm a complete failure if I don't have the biggest house on the block I'm nothing if I can't do it all the way I don't want to do it at all what impact does thoughts like that have on people's self-esteem and their willingness to try new things if they are so afraid that they will try something and they won't be perfect that it keeps them from trying that will probably hinder them from doing a lot of things in life over generalization is when we take one thing like not being good at math and generalize it to I'm stupid or taking something like I don't like to clean the house and generalizing it to I'm a lazy slob we're taking behaviors and we're generalizing them into personal characteristics and we're taking isolated behaviors people also can use mental filters they dwell on the bad and let it discolor everything again it's the person who gets up in the morning stubs their toe and okay the rest of the day is just going to suck well people who are not operating on a negative mental filter will get out of bed stubbed their toe and say well now the day can only get better from here how do your consumers choose to perceive the day when one bad thing happens do they dwell on it they discount the positives if something good happens to them is by luck or by chance but if something bad happens to them is a personal reflection jumping to conclusions again over generalization your husband comes home smelling like women's perfume so do you jump to the conclusion that he's cheating on you or do you start making hypotheses about why that might have happened maybe he was at the department store buying you new perfume and he was trying on different ones to see what they smelled like maybe he was shoved into an elevator with a bunch of people who were oversensitive there are a lot of different reasons but if we jump to conclusions especially negative ones without enough information then we can really get ourselves all worked up for no apparent reason magnification is making mountains out of mole hills have consumers ask themselves how much will this matter tomorrow how much will this matter six months from now how much does this negatively impact who I am as a person emotional reasoning we feel bad so we must be bad a lot of our consumers come to us and they're depressed and they feel like crap and that feeling is translated into I must be crap helping people separate their emotions and how they feel from who they are is important and all those should shoulda coulda woulda but didn't have them wiped that word out of their mouth should don't cross their lips you thought I was going to say shouldn't cross her lip student yeah uh-huh labeling label ourselves negatively instead of trying to learn from the situation or thinking about the best way to overcome it again this goes with over generalization and everything else when one thing happens or when we fail at one thing we label ourselves as stupid or incompetent or worthless you notice we don't ever label ourselves with something gentle like not so good at it has to be failure blame we hold other people responsible for our pain or blame ourselves entirely for every problem the blame game doesn't do any good what we need to do you know in in recovery there's a saying that when you point at someone else when you blame someone else there's three fingers pointing back at you so yes you want to look at the things that you can change look at your part in it but also identify the things you cannot change and figure out how you're going to accept the situation or change the situation just blaming somebody for it holding them hostage doesn't change anything just leaves you energy depleted and feeling miserable we can't expect people to read our minds we can't expect disaster all the time or we're going to set it up and we're going to see disaster and we've got to remember that you know some people have a bad day and just because they didn't smile at you doesn't necessarily mean that they don't like you they must may just be having a bad day and it may have nothing to do with you make sure that we help consumers identify their own personal boundaries and check their thought patterns because a lot of times they take interpretations from other people's behavior and personalize it when there's nothing personal about it at all the control fallacy if you see feel externally controlled you see yourself as a helpless victim of fate conversely it can hold you responsible for the pain and happiness of everyone around you if you think you control everything then you feel like you've got the weight of the world on your shoulders if you feel like everything is controlled outside of you then there's nothing you can do and it's just fate reality is somewhere in between again there are things we can control there are things we cannot control and we have to figure out what the difference is the fallacy of fairness I'm not even going to go there life ain't fair get over it the fallacy of change expecting other people will change to suit you if you just pressure or control them enough no people will change when the benefit of change is greater than the benefit of staying the same so there needs to be a motivation for them to change and it may not be you being wrong is unthinkable and you will go to any lengths to demonstrate your rightness I learned this in doc school they would keep asking you questions in your dissertation defense until you identified the fact that you don't know everything they just wanted to make sure to humble you and make sure you realize that you didn't know everything we need to realize that it's okay to say I don't know people need to realize that sometimes we're wrong and it's okay to say sorry I was wrong especially if you try to fix it heavens reward fallacy you expect all your sacrifice and self-denial to pay off as if there were someone keeping score and you feel bitter when the reward does not come well if we're talking about heavens reward then maybe it's not going to come till you get to heaven just because you do five nice things this week doesn't mean that next week five nice things are going to happen to you now you have to figure out whether you're expecting people to do things in return and whether you're doing things and holding people hostage or you're doing things because the reward comes from the fact that you're doing something nice if we can't find reward in our own behaviors we certainly shouldn't hold other people hostage to praise us moving on to reality therapy reality therapy is sort of dr. Phil s we're moving on from strict examination of our thought patterns that lead to our feelings and basically focusing on the present and asking us are our consumers is what you're doing getting you what you want how is that working for you reality therapy spends less time on identifying what consumers cannot do directly such as changing their feelings and physiology and focuses on what they can do what behaviors can you do to change the situation or get you where you want to be it avoids criticizing blaming or complaining I'm not going to focus on what you're not doing or what you're not doing well I'm going to focus on what you can do better and what things you might want to try doing reality therapy tries to stay non-judgmental but encourages people to ask is what I am doing getting me closer to the people I need it also teaches that excuses stand in the way of making needed connections reality therapy is based on understanding that we can't do it all by ourselves we need connections we need supports and we need to make sure that what we're doing is actually a step toward where we want to be and not just some tangent off somewhere reality therapy focuses on specifics who are your clients disconnected from that could be useful or helpful in this situation it helps them make specific workable plans to reconnect with the people they need and follow through on what was planned by helping them evaluate their progress that whole follow through and looking at progress we don't usually do very well we set goals we say we're going to do something and then we drop it reality therapy really new Jers people through the whole process and it encourages the consumer and the clinician to be patient and supportive but keep focusing on the source of the problem disconnectedness trying to do it all on your own assuming that you don't read anyone or anything else now we move on to psychoanalysis according to Freud all of our behaviors and our feelings are mo defied model them are impacted motivated by the it'd our our sexual anger primitive drives the ego the one that we kind of show to the real world and the super-ego or sort of the angel that says this is what you should be doing your morality and your virtues it says the conscious mind is what you're aware of at any particular moment your present perceptions memories thoughts fantasies and feelings working closely with the conscious mind is what Freud called the preconscious or what we might call the available memory the largest part by far is the unconscious it includes all the things that are not easily available to awareness including many things that have their origins there such as our drives or instincts and things that are put there because we can't bear to look at them in the end the unconscious is the source of our motivations as I said on the last slot slide the ID's the ego and the super-ego the it is your instinctual part it works with a pleasure principle to take care of needs immediately this immediate gratification and it's generally very procreation of the species fight or flight very instinctually based the ego helps the person search for objects to satisfy the id's wishes but in a socially acceptable way it's sort of your filter as the ego struggles to keep the inn happy it meets with obstacles in the world it keeps a record of consequences it learns this record of things to avoid and strategies to take becomes the super-ego there are two aspects to the super-ego the conscience which is an internalization of punishment and warnings and the other is called the ego ideal it derives from rewards and positive models presented to people as children so the super-ego again is sort of that ideal self that virtuous person that is always sending messages about what should yeah here those shoulds again should be done defense mechanism even if you don't ascribe completely to psychoanalysis I found defense mechanisms to be extremely useful concepts to help people understand some of the things of why they do what they do when the person feels great internal conflict then they exhibit things called ego defense mechanisms denial they just shut it off say I can't go there done sublimation they take the energy that the inn wants to use for something negative like they want to beat the crap out of somebody and they put it into something positive like going on a run or working out with a punching bag displacement is putting feelings that you have towards an unsafe object on a safer object such as you get angry at your boss you can't scream at him and throw a hissy fit but you go home and talk or scream at your spouse because you couldn't scream at your boss so now your spouse is going to take the brunt of your irritability not to say that's good but when people realize what they're doing then they can find a better outlet humor these are the people who when things get tense they crack jokes reaction formation is acting the opposite when somebody should be really really devastated they may start laughing when they are really really angry they meet maybe extra super sweet this was furthered by Alfred Adler who said that striving for perfection is a single Drive or motivating force between all of our behavior and experience now if you look at Maslow's hierarchy and that whole working towards self-actualization and a lot of the other theories they have their own way of saying the same sort of thing as humans we are constantly in the process of trying to evolve and get better at something admin felt that there were more that there were three basic childhood situations that most contribute to a faulty lifestyle disabilities if someone doesn't come along to draw their attention to others they will remain focused on themselves so if they have a disability they focus on it and dwell on it until somebody says hey you know get your head out of the sand and let's go do something pampering many children are taught by the actions of others that they can take without giving and neglect children learn inferiority because they are told and shown every day that they're of no value they learn selfishness because they're taught to trust no one since we're not perfect our personalities are accounted for by the ways in which we do or don't compensate or overcome our failures so we need to think about again what's the meaning behind our consumers behavior what is motivating it because until we provide them motivation for an alternative behavior they will remain stuck moving on to Erikson Erikson believes that we develop through a predetermined eight stages progress through each stage is determined by our success in all the previous stages so if you get stuck at one stage you're stuck and you can't progress until you've resolved that it's not like you can hop a stair that is wobbly each stage involves certain developmental tasks if a stage is managed well we develop a certain virtue or strength the first stage is trust versus mistrust this happens during infancy if the child begins to believe his caregivers to be reliable and begins to trust that his internal feelings like when he's hungry he gets fed and when he's cold he gets a blanket then he begins to trust that not only are his feelings correct but there is someone there that will take care of them and this produces hope the second phase is the toddler stage autonomy versus shame and doubt the child learns that it's safe to explore the world they'll go out explore a little bit and they'll come back and sit on Mommy's lap they'll go out explore a little bit more and come back but they're always welcomed back and there's always a safe place to return to this produces the virtue of will now some of us who've had toddlers are not quite so sure that willfulness is a virtue but in the big scheme of things we do want children to be have a desire to take risks purpose comes in the kindergarten stage initiative versus guilt the child can do things on his own if he feels guilty about making choices he'll not function well this is when we need to help children learn to make good choices not punish them for making any choices at all if every time they make a choice we punish then they're just going to stop making choices and expect someone else to do it for them one of the disagreements or choices that a lot of kindergarten children start to make is what are you going to eat for breakfast cold pizza not so much helping children realize that you know cold pizza may be okay for lunch but let's start breakfast with something else now a lot of us are sitting there going we ate cold Pete's all the way through college yeah well we did but that doesn't necessarily mean we were functioning well we need to help children learn to use their value system when they're making their choices and make successful choices so they can be proud of themselves and have a sense of purpose and confidence which takes us to our next one confidence industry versus inferiority around age six to puberty so that whole school age time the child is comparing themselves with other people and defining their self-worth in comparison to other people now this can be people at home this can be people at school this can be models and people in magazines movies and on television the media is one of the influences as well as the school in what the child thinks they should be like and they compare themselves to what they think the ideal person is fidelity comes from identity versus role confusion this happens in the teen years high school they start questioning themselves who am i how do I fit in if the parents continually push the person to conform to their views often the teen will face identity confusion and rebel they won't know what they believe and they just kind of go on like little automatons or sometimes they rebel and say no I don't want to believe your way I don't know what I want to believe but you are being too overbearing so I don't want to hear what you have to say then they move on to love intimacy versus isolation this comes in the young adult the 20-something when they figure out who do I want to be with or date what am I going to do with my life will I settle down all these questions about you know who they're going to be when they grow up is our coming out now and they're trying to figure out how to love themselves and how to love other people this is followed by generativity versus stagnation or the midlife crisis we look back when we hit a certain age and start measuring our accomplishments and failures some people look back over their life and go yeah I've done pretty good other people look back over their life and go really I've gotten nothing accomplished and I'm 55 years old am I satisfied or not this is when people often start making lists and doing all the things that they wanted to do when they were 20 the need to assist the younger generation grandma grandpa they want to help people younger people learn from their mistakes stagnation comes from a feeling of not having done anything to help the next generation and then ego integrity versus despair or old age some people handle the concept of death well they reflect on their past and they either conclude that yeah you know I've led a worthwhile life or Wow I have screwed up the last eighty-five years and from this comes wisdom obviously a successful resolution is concluding that they have contributed a fair amount and they're okay they're happy with where they're at helping consumers identify their successes going back to some of the other slides and encouraging them not to focus on their failures but identify all of their accomplishments next we move from almost completely internal to almost completely external classical conditioning behavior modification strict behaviorists have no interest in dealing with things that can't be seen and measured so feelings they don't care what they want to look at as physiological reactions and behaviors as a result of a stimulus classical conditioning involves presentations of a neutral stimulus along with a stimulus of some significance so for example poor old Pavlov's dog the Bell is a neutral stimulus most dogs if they've never you know gone through training with it you ring a bell and they kind of look at you like that's really loud but nothing happens Pavlov's dogs every time that bell was rung he was given steak ah so now when Pavlov's dog hears that bell ring he expects he's going to get steak so he starts to salivate so that unconditioned stimulus the steak became associated with a stimulus that had no intrinsic value the Bell classical conditioning is most important in helping us understand why we seemingly neutral stimuli evoke responses from a client sometimes clients will walk in they'll see something in your office and it will throw them into a tizzy seemingly neutral stimuli walking into a doctor's office is a perfect example or a dentist's office if people have had no experience with it before shouldn't really have any associations with chairs with paper on top of them that would make them anxious but guess what people who've gone to the dentist's office before or the doctor's office and sat in one of those chairs with paper on it and had something not-so-pleasant happen get anxious before they as soon as they see that chair that chair itself has no intrinsic value to it but it's been paired with something unpleasant so now every time you see it you think this is not so good operant conditioning is the use of consequences to modify the occurrence and form of behavior this is basically treatment planning we want to reinforce positive behavior by either providing a reward or taking away something negative in the residential facility I work at the consumers are there for 30 60 90 120 days depending and at a certain point it gets boring to be around there they start going stir-crazy so a negative reinforcement for them is taking them off campus to do something fun like going bowling provided that everyone has met certain goals punishment is a consequence that decreases a behavior for example providing something unpleasant such as making someone write an essay when they break the rules negative punishment is taking away something positive again at the facility I work at occasionally we will have to put the whole house on tight house so they lose their TV privileges their phone privileges and they have to go to they have lights out at 10 o'clock instead of 11:30 extinction is the elimination of a behavior by removing the reward if you do something and there's no benefit to it eventually you're going to stop doing it now social learning theories take that idea a little bit further and say that people learn from one another through observational learning imitation and modeling monkey-see monkey-do people learn by watching their peers about what they can do what they can't do they learn what the consequences are if they see someone do something and get in trouble they're probably not going to do it but if they see somebody do something and get away with it then they've learned that it's possible to beat the system people can learn by observing behavior and the outcomes of those behaviors learning can occur without a change in behavior cognition is the awareness and expectations of future consequences and can have a major effect on the behaviors that people exhibit so if we have an awareness and expectations of future consequences we know that if we do this we're going to get arrested and going to jail then we think you may not be worth it reciprocal causation is the concept that the person the behavior and the environment can have an influence on each other people may not typically behave a certain way in certain environments think about when your children go to the Grandma's house do they behave differently it's the same person but they exhibit different behaviors in a different environment I remember one day I went to pick my son up from school and the preschool teacher said that he was in the bathroom washing his hands I said really she said yeah we might never get him out he loves to be in there washing his hands and play in the water I said my son is washing his hands No that behavior was strongly rewarded at school so he did it a lot and it was fun now take him home and he'd show up at the dinner table with mud dripping from his fingernails so there was a difference in that situation also because he had peer pressure and peer approval of what was going on there are four conditions that are necessary before an individual can learn attention they've got to pay attention if they're oblivious to what's going on they're not going to learn a thing retention they must remember what they saw if they don't remember what happened when JimBob did something then they're not going to learn anything from it even if they were paying attention rehearsal the third condition is the ability to replicate the behavior can they do the same thing and motivation learners must want to demonstrate what they have learned now we'll take cooking as an example I am a really good Baker I am not such a good cook I do okay but I am NOT a good cook I pull out one of those recipes that has like 17 steps to it you might as well hang it up so I don't have the attention span to even get all the way through the recipe let alone to retain it and replicate it so in order for people to learn there has to be a motivation for them to pay attention now if I were in home in class that would prop well it was different because I had a grade writing on it so my motivation was my grade so I paid more attention and devoted the energy to retaining the information and practicing it a lot of this has to do with helping consumers increase their motivation to learn self-regulation consumers need to learn to set goals and standards monitor their own behavior I don't really like the word judge judge themselves they need to say am i doing what I need to do am i making effective choices and they need to react revisit and reinforce if they are not being super successful then they need to look back at the situation and say hmmm what could I do differently they need to revisit the situation identify how they're going to change their behaviors and reinforce those changes implications of social learning theory students learn a lot by observing others describing the consequences of behavior can effectively increase the appropriate behaviors and decrease inappropriate ones so if we tell people what's going to happen and they actually believe we mean what we say we may be able to keep them from making poor choices modeling can be used in conjunction with shaping that means if we show the correct behaviors we model what we want them to do if we reward any attempt on their part to do the same thing then they're going to be more motivated to try it again to increase the rehearsal exposing people to a variety of models behaviors and lifestyles can help them broaden their space of learning people must believe that they are capable or have a sense of self-efficacy in order to be motivated if they don't believe they can do anything or do something then they're not going to devote the end jeetu paying attention trying to retain the information and then practicing it help students or consumers set realistic expectations for themselves they are not going to be the best in the world overnight set small goals and help them teach themselves self-regulation techniques there are going to be times when whenever they're doing is getting frustrating so how do they deal with the frustration there are going to be times when ever what they're doing isn't real rewarding how do they deal with that there going to be times when they don't want to do it how do they deal with that one thing my mentor taught me in graduate school was try fifteen and what he meant by that was if I didn't want to do something namely work on my dissertation I needed to sit down and do it for 15 minutes and after 15 minutes it still felt like I was pulling teeth just stop and give myself a break and say you know I'm not really focused today I'll come back tomorrow most of the time once I started it really wasn't a big deal the same can be applied to exercise journaling reading pretty much anything try 15 in summary there are a multitude of theories that describe why we do what we do most boil down to clients lacking self-confidence or motivation to do the right thing by helping people identify obstacles to their behaviors or motivation we can help them improve their quality of life ask them what is stopping them what is stopping them from changing or what would improve their motivation what would make them more motivated to change we also get to ask people what are the benefits and drawbacks to both change and staying the same because changing and staying the same both have benefits and both have drawbacks here's some further reading on personality theories