Challenges in Conceptualizing Behavior

• Victim Mentality: People viewing themselves as victims of unconscious drives, needs, their families during childhood or their environments in which they exist as adults

• Learned Helplessness

  • The passive resignation produced by repeated exposure to negative events that are perceived to be unavoidable

  • control problem rather than a competence problem

• Diathesis-Stress Model

  • Attempts to explain a disorder, or its trajectory, as the result of an interaction between a predispositional vulnerability and a stress caused by life experiences

  • Diathesis: predisposition (biological, genetical, psychological conditions)

  • Stress: caused by life experience

  • Predispositional Vulnerability: ex. Difficult childhood but is in a healthy environment, good support system

  • Overclassification of illnesses

    • International Classification of Diseases (ICD)

    • Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM)

    • Tend to be too book-ish in how we see people (we tend to see the symptoms more than the person themselves)

    • Overdiagnosis: focuses too much on the inside of the person as diseases

• Maddox, 2002

  • Psychological problems can also be ineffective patterns in living that exist between people in social interactions rather than “inside” people as diseases

• Challenge of Diagnosis

  • Making diagnostic treatment and policy decisions primarily on deficiencies of the person, instead giving strong consideration to strengths of both person and environment

  • Abnormal behavior > Normal behavior

  • Internal characteristics > External factors

  • Weakness > Strengths

  • Disruptive behavior > Developmental age

• As a Result

  • Psychologists may begin to react to patients as if they are helpless and need to be fixed.

  • Self-fulfilling prophecy begins to operate and patients see themselves as helpless and passive characters of their own lives

• Seligman (2002)

  • The message of POSIPSY movement is to remind our field that it has been deformed. Psychology is not just the study of disease, weakness and damage. It is also the study of strength and virtue.

  • Treatment is not just fixing what is wrong, but building what is right. It is not just about illness or health, it is about work, education, insight, love, growth and play

• Four-Front Assessment Approach by Wright & Lopez

  • Areas of client weakness (impaired social skills, low intelligence, emotion dysregulation, labile moods, personality problems)

  • Areas of client strength (hopeful, grateful, forgiving, courageous, resilient, high intelligence, mood stability, healthy personality)

  • Deficits or destructive forces in the client's environment (unsafe environment, living conditions, presence of abusive relationships or neglect, exposure to discrimination, etc.)

  • Assets and resources in the client’s environment (secure living conditions, supportive relationships, opportunities for success, stable employment)

  • Include the following areas as well:

    • Developmental stage of client

    • Culture

    • Context of behavior

    • Religion

    • Community

    • Educational background

    • Family dynamics

  • Understand a person's needs and resources to facilitate best ways to carry out therapy/intervention.

• Positive Psychology Interventions

  • Positive Psychotherapy

    • Approach to treatment that is built on the enhancement of positive traits, building of strengths and helping clients find untapped resources for positive change.

    • Fixing what is wrong is only half of the challenge.

    • Therapists see clients as “active seekers of health” (Keyes & Lopez, 2002)

      • who can be very creative problem solvers if therapists just work with their clients to nurture already existing skills, talents, and strengths

    • Therapists need to amplify client strengths and decrease negative emotions

    • Counseling Psychology – focus on individuals who need assistance with life adjustment problems, career plans, relationship difficulties and other problems of living

    • Helping people lead lives that are more fulfilling

    • Personal Growth and Human Potential

      • People utilize a very small part of their potential and all have the capacity for growth.

      • Help people overcome their self-imposed limits

  • Person-Centered Therapy

    • Man’s capacity for personal growth and self-actualization

    • From Carl Roger’s Humanistic Theory

  • Interventions based on Positive Psychology

    • Solution-focused therapy - focus on finding solutions than dwelling on the problem

    • Wellbeing Treatment – using Ryff’s 6 dimensions of wellbeing

    • Personal Growth Initiative – active, intentional psychological development

    • Hope therapy – wellbeing is anchored on hope

    • Increasing positive emotions

    • Relaxation increase a sense of meaning and purpose; created through laughter, sense of humor, engaging in activities that are intrinsically motivating, by enhancing empathy, and with activities that involve both challenges and skills

    • Transform bad mood to good mood by talking to a friend, listening to music, reading, exercising, taking a warm bath, walking outdoors, looking at the bright side of the situation

    • Increasing activity level is an effective way to stimulate positive mood

• Behavioral Interventions for Happiness

  • Behaviorist assumption → if a person experiences more positive emotions than negative, then he or she is happy

  • Read positive self-statements, watch happy movies, increase positive activities and listen to cheerful music

  • Pleasant Events Therapy: make list activities that they enjoy and then simply to do more of the activities that produced the greatest increase in positive mood

• Application

  • Increasing Resilience

    • Resilience: the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress — such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems, or workplace and financial stressors

    • The road to resilience is likely to involve considerable emotional distress.

    • While certain factors might make some individuals more resilient than others, resilience isn’t necessarily a personality trait that only some people possess.

    • Resilience involves behaviors, thoughts and actions that anyone can learn and develop

    • Interventions to Increase Resilience

      • Reduce risk factors that may decrease or destroy resilience within family and community (including Big Brothers/Sisters program, good public services/health/school, connected neighborhood)

      • Promote and build resilience in children and adolescents - ‘within-the-child’ qualities include positive self-esteem, good social skills, problem-solving and academic abilities, positive outlook on life and a good sense of humor

    • Seven Traits of Resiliency (Wolin & Wolin, 2000)

      • Insight - provide clarity and to pierce through denial and confusion

      • Independence - distance themselves from trouble

      • Good relationships - building healthy emotional ties

      • Initiative - create a sense of self-efficacy

      • Creativity - transform their emotional into creative works

      • Humor - keep a sense of humor and ability to laugh at difficulties

      • Good moral standards - able to act from a sense of conscience, even when others did not

  • Fordyce’s Happiness Training Program

    • Happiness Training Course

      • Cognitive retraining to be applied on belief and attitude about happiness

      • Point out the irrationality or impossibility of that belief and suggest a substitute belief that is more amenable to lasting happiness

      • Example: “It is absolutely necessary that I be loved by most people in order to be happy” →CHANGE TO → “I would like to be loved by those people who are important to me”

    • Be more active

    • Spend more time socializing

    • Be productive at meaningful work

    • Get organized

    • Stop worrying

    • Lower your expectations and aspirations

    • Think optimistically

    • Orient yourself to the present

    • Work on healthy personality

    • Develop an outgoing social personality

    • Be yourself

    • Eliminate negative feelings

    • Develop and nurture close relationships → #1 source of happiness

    • Value happiness – put it first in your life

  • Emotional Storytelling

    • Writing is a way to deal with difficult emotions resulting from trauma or other problems:

      • Write about any issue that you are currently living with

      • Find a location in which to write whew you won’t be disturbed

      • When you write, do not worry about spelling, grammar, or the quality of your prose. Just put it down on paper

      • When you write about the event, write about both what happened and your feelings surrounding the event, both positive and negative

      • Generally, it is helpful if you plan to keep what you write private

  • Applications of Mindfulness

    • Mindfulness therapy (Jon Kabat-Zinn)

      • Based on the idea that if we try to ignore or repress unpleasant thoughts or sensations, then we only end up increasing their intensity

      • Clients are taught to allow thoughts, images, and sensations to occur, observe them non-judgmentally, and then let them dissipate as other thoughts and sensations naturally replace them

      • Steps:

        • Step 1: Automatic Pilot

        • Step 2: Dealing with barriers

        • Step 3: Mindfulness of the breath

        • Step 4: Staying present

        • Step 5: Allowing and letting be

        • Step 6: Thoughts are “Not Facts”

        • Step 7: How can I best take care of myself?

        • Step 8: Using what’s been learned to deal with future moods