PSYC-420: Final Exam (Gestalt Therapy, Behavior Therapy, Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy/Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Feminist Therapy, Mindfulness/Acceptance-Based Approaches)

Gestalt Therapy

Therapy that aims to integrate different and sometimes opposing aspects of personality into a unified sense of self
-Focus on client awareness, choice, and responsibility
-Grounded in the here and now
-Field theory, phenomenology, and dialogue, role-playing
-Doesn't use pathology language, no DSM-V
-Fritz Perls and Laura Perls

Holism (Gestalt)

Whole or completion, attending to all of functioning thoughts, feeling, behaviors, the physical body, language, dreams, self in the environmental context

Figure (Gestalt)

Aspects of experience that are most salient in the moment.

Ground (Gestalt)

Aspects of experience that are out of awareness/focus

Organismic Self-Regulation (Gestalt)

Healthy organisms strive for equilibrium/balance.
-Needs, interests, and sensations disturb an organism's equilibrium and there's an attempt to manage/resolve the disruption

Unresolved Figures in the Background (Gestalt)

Unacknowledged, often unpleasant, feelings, unfinished business.

Growth (Gestalt)

Acceptance without judgments and behaving in new ways.

Introjection (Gestalt)

The tendency to uncritically accept others' beliefs and standards as our own.

Projection (Gestalt)

Reverse of introjection. Disowning parts of ourselves and assigning them to others. Denial about an aspect of themselves, so they project it upon others.
-Ex: Blaming them for our problems, avoid taking responsibility for our feelings and who we are

Retroflection (Gestalt)

Turning backwards, turn stored energy back on the self instead of out into the environment. May be psychologically safer than taking action.

Deflection (Gestalt)

The process of distraction/veering of.
Ex: Overuse of questions, abstract generalizations, humor

Confluence (Gestalt)

Blurring of the distinction between the self and the environment (like two streams meeting to form a river). Enmeshment with another person is comfortable.
-"Blending with others"

Three Stage Integration (Gestalt)

Stage 1 - Discovery: A new realization.
Stage 2 - Accommodation: Recognition of choice
Stage 3 - Assimilation: Learning how to influence environment in a new way
-Miriam Polster
-Quality of a therapist's presence is critical to the process

Experiments (Gestalt)

Grow out of the interactions of the client and therapist, bringing the internal conflict forward into an actual process and experience the feelings associated with the conflict
Ex: Dramatizing a problem in the safety of the therapy session, relive a painful experience

Confrontation (Gestalt)

An invitation to examine thoughts, attitude, behaviors, gaps between verbal and non-verbal expression (ex: smiling while describing history of family chaos)

Exercises (Gestalt)

Used to elicit emotions, ready-made techniques.
Ex: "Making the rounds" by risking, disclosing, experimenting with new behaviors, reversal (reverse a typical behavior), exaggeration: intensity a movement or gesture to intensify the feel associated with it

Need-Fulfilment Cycle (Gestalt)

Used to assess a client's level of functioning in two primary and related areas: to what degree is the client aware of self and environment and can the client move into contact with aspects of the environment in ways that meet needs, achieve self-regulation, and promote growth and choice

Cycle of Experience (Gestalt)

Begins with physical sensations and proceeds through awareness (a sharpened sense of meaning), excitement, action, and toward contact with the environment

Behavior Therapy

A type of therapy that assumes that disordered behavior is learned and that symptom relief is achieved through changing overt maladaptive behaviors into more constructive behaviors.

Fogg Behavior Model

Behavior = Motivation x Ability x Prompt
B = mat

Operant Conditioning

The learning of voluntary behavior through the effects of pleasant and unpleasant consequences to responses
-Positive reinforcement: Add something
-Negative reinforcement: Escape from or avoid something aversive
-Positive punishment: Aversive stimulus added after behavior
-Negative punishment: Reinforcing stimulus taken away following behavior

ABC Model (Behavior)

Antecedent(s): Cue or elicit behaviors
Behavior(s): Dimensions of the problem
-Consequence(s): Resulting from the problem

Antecedents (Behavior)

Contributing events that precede the problem behavior
-Situational and internal events that are responsible for the behavior occurring in the first place

Consequences (Behavior)

Contributing events that follow the problem behavior
-Strengths or weakens a behavior, situational and internal events

Progressive Muscle Relaxation (Behavior)

Teaches how to cope with stress in the body, tensing and releasing muscle groups
-With repeated practice becomes a powerful learned response
-Very useful and widely used

Skills Training (Behavior)

An effort to teach the client skills that they may lack as well as new constructive behaviors to replace self-deprecating ones
-Assessment, instruction and coaching, modeling, role-playing, homework assignments
-Clients put into action the skills they're acquiring, receive feedback and reinforcement
-Gain new skills, ability to interact more freely and effectively

In-Vivo Exposure (Behavior)

Brief, graduated exposure to an actual feared situation or event without avoidance/retreat (use a hierarchy)
-Be sure that fear isn't being reinforced, clients learn that nothing bad is happening at each stage, new skills and coping strategies

Flooding (Behavior)

A treatment that extinguishes clients' anxiety by prolonged real or imagined exposure to high-intensity feared stimuli.
-May be uncomfortable and possibly distressing to the client, but these can be very successful
-Informed consent and therapeutic alliance is essential

Multimodal Behavior

A broad-based systematic and comprehensive approach to behavior therapy that calls for technical eclecticism
-Assumes that clients are usually troubled by a multitude of specific problems, dealt with using a wide range of specific techniques
-Therapists should select empirically supported treatments of choice for specific disorders

Basic I.D. (Behavior)

The conceptual framework of multi-modal behavior, assessment attends to each area of this in a client
-B - Behavior
-A = Affect
S = Sensation
I = Imagery
C= Cognition
I = Interpersonal relationships
D = Drugs and biological factors
-Identify modalities and select appropriate techniques for each difficulty

Ripple Effect (Behavior)

A change in modality tends to generalize to others, but the greater the number of discrete problems that can be overcome, the more profound the eventual outcome is likely to be.

ADDRESSING Model (Behavior)

Assesses a client's cultural influences
-Pamela Hays
-Age and generational influences
-Developmental and acquired influences
-Disabilities
-Religious and spiritual orientation
-Ethnicity
-Socioeconomic status
-Sexual orientation
-Indigenous Heritage
-National origin
-Gender
-Help client articulate ways in which cultural influences may contribute to the problem

Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI)

A test that measures the extent to which people responds fearfully to their bodily sensations
-Helps discriminate between panic disorders and other kinds of anxiety disorders

Cognitive Restructuring (CR) (Behavior)

Aka cognitive replacement, elimination of distorted or invalid inferences, disputation of self-defeating thoughts or beliefs, and the development of new, more adaptive coping thoughts, and self-statements

Interoceptive Exposure (Behavior)

A standard, evidence based component useful in outpatient settings, designed to intentionally induce the feared physical sensations, and to disconfirm misappraisals of bodily sensations
-Can be practiced as homework, a graduated hierarchy of a standard set of activism

Bibliotherapy

The use of self-help books and other reading materials as a form of therapy
-Cost-effective

Shaping

An operant conditioning procedure in which reinforcers guide behavior toward closer and closer approximations of the desired behavior
-A behavioral tool that helps clients build self-efficacy

Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT)

A form of cognitive-behavioral therapy in which clients are directly challenged in their irrational beliefs and helped to restructure their thinking into more rational belief statements
-Albert Ellis
-Time-limited, brief approach
-Goal is for client to have an unconditional self-acceptance and unconditional other acceptance

Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT)

Combines both cognitive and behavioral principles and methods in a short-term approach, has gathered more empirical research than any other approach to psychotherapy
-Judith and Aaron Beck

Cognitive Therapy

Therapy that teaches people new, more adaptive ways of thinking and acting
-Has similarities to REBT and behavior therapy

Behavioral Activation (BA)

CBT intervention that emphasized positive activities that can break emotional cycles.
-Understand how behaviors influence, understand the connections between thoughts and emotions
-Useful for depression and anxiety, how they keep us from achieving goals and finding enjoyment

Rational Emotive Imagery

Vividly imagine worst case scenarios, work through feelings and then change it to healthy negative feelings
-An exposure technique

Humor (REBT)

Help clients reduce irrational beliefs, highlight the absurdity of an idea

Cognitive Behavioral Model

Describes how thinking, feeling, and behaving are interconnected.
- Situation -> automatic thought(s) -> reaction {emotion, behavior, physiological response}

Action Plan(s) (The Cognitive Model)

Ideas can consist of asking clients to keep a notebook where they keep a list of challenging situations that occur over a course of a week, ask the client to pick one challenging situation during the week and begin to map out responses in 3 columns

Automatic Thoughts (The Cognitive Plan)

Thoughts that "pop up" simultaneously, not deliberate, most of the time we're not aware of them
-Core CBT principle: People's reactions always make sense once you understand what they're thinking

Decatastrophizing (CBT)

A cognitive restructuring technique to reduce or challenge catastrophic thinking.
-"What's the worst that could happen?" or "How likely is that to happen, from 0-100%?" or "What's the best thing that could happen?"

Selective Abstraction

A cognitive distortion where someone forms conclusions based on an isolated incident.
-Certain details are highlighted and other information is ignored

Overgeneralization

A cognitive distortion where one holds extreme beliefs on the basis of a single incident and applying them inappropriately to dissimilar events or settings

Personalization

A cognitive distortion where someone relates external events to themselves, even when there's no basis for it.

Labeling/Mislabeling

A cognitive distortion where one portrays their identity based on imperfections, mistakes of the past and allowing them to define their true identity
-A stereotype of all future behaviors

Dichotomous Thinking

"All or nothing thinking," a cognitive distortion categorizing experiences into either-or extremes
-Seeing something as a complete success or a complete failure

Arbituary Inference

A cognitive distortion where a conclusion is made in the absence of supporting substantiating evidence.

Magnification and Minimization

Cognitive distortions where a case of circumstance is perceived in a greater or lesser light than is appropriate.

Tunnel Vision

A cognitive distortion where people sometimes see only what they want to see or what fits their current state of mind.

Biased Explanations

A polarized way of thinking over times of distress, a cognitive distortion where one assumes another person has an ulterior motive

Mind Reading

A cognitive distortion where someone has a "magical gift" of being able to know what others are thinking without the aid of verbal communication

Socratic Method (Cognitive)

Questioning that probes about a client's irrational thoughts.
Ex: "Are there alternative viewpoints?" or "What assumptions are being made for?" or "Is this a useful way of viewing this?"

Feminist Therapy

Focuses on women's issues and strives to help women achieve greater personal freedom and self-determination
-Originated in response to the feminist and civil rights movements in the 1960s
-Major goal is empowerment, clients strive for self-acceptance, self-confidence, joy, and self-actualization
-Values women, men, and marginalized voices
-Uses techniques from other therapies
-Emphasis on demystification of the therapy process
-Egalitarian relationships
-Two goals are to relieve client's distress and alleviate sociopolitical oppression
-Avoid diagnostic labels, interpret DSM-V as reflecting dominant culture's definitions of pathology and health, clinical bias, blaming the victim

Contemporary Feminist Therapy

Focuses on all forms of oppression. Current feminist therapy most closely resembles existential and humanistic therapy.
-Grounded in empiricism, emphasizes relational intersections in love
-Influences treatment choices made by feminist practitioners

Gender Role and Power Analysis

Increase client's insight about how societal gender role expectations adversely affect women, how women and men are socialized differently
-Examine gender-role messages

Assertiveness Training (Feminist)

Woven in feminist therapy since its inception, teaches women how to assert their own right without being aggressive

Bilbliotherapy (Feminist)

Help clients understand how their own situation is connected with the common experience of all women
-Give readings from mental health professionals

Reframing Concerns and Symptoms (Feminist)

Symptoms of living in a culture that values male experiences over female experiences
-Reframing doesn't negate social symptoms
-Gain control of symptoms through cognitive and behavioral techniques, like stress and relaxation management, thought stopping, and positive self-statements

Taking Social and Political Action (Feminist)

Understand how distress as an individual woman is connected to women as a cultural group
-Social action is a way of refocusing and reframing anger
-Suggest the usefulness of anger, reinforce strong emotions as positive behavior

Mindfulness

Being alert, mentally present, and cognitively flexible while going through life's everyday activities and tasks.
-On purpose in the present moment and nonjudgmentally, John Kabat

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)

A stress reduction strategy based on developing a state of consciousness that attends to ongoing events in a receptive and non-judgmental way.
-Intensive group training (8-12 weeks)
-Meditation
-Mindful movement (yoga)
-Body awareness
-Emotional awareness
-Behavioral awareness
-Facilitated group experiments, can be a complement to individual therapy
-Focus on learning how to live in the present moment without judgment and with awareness
-Using the "observing mind" to direct experiences to the present moment (rather than ruminating on the past or worrying about the future)
-Experiential learning and self-discovery emphasized

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT)

An approach that combines elements of CBT with mindfulness meditation to help people with depression learn to recognize and restructure negative thought patterns.
-An 8-week group adapted from MBSR and includes components of CBT
-Aim is an exploration of our relationship with our thoughts, not necessarily the content of the thoughts
-Experiential, out-of-session practice, incorporating self-discovery and feedback

Beginner's Mind (Mindfulness)

An attitude of mindfulness, quality of awareness that is fresh, new, as if for the first time, with a sense of curiosity

Non-judgment (Mindfulness)

An attitude of mindfulness where you don't label thoughts, feelings, or sensations as good or bad, right or wrong, fair or unfair, rather taking note of thoughts, feelings, and sensations in each moment

Acknowledgement (Mindfulness)

An attitude of mindfulness where it validates and notes things as they are.

Equanimity (Mindfulness)

An attitude of mindfulness where it consists of balance and fostering at wisdom. Involves a deep understanding of the nature of change, allows us to be the process of change with greater insight and compassion.

Letting Be (Mindfulness)

An attitude of mindfulness where it allows things to be as they are with no need to try or to let go.

Self-Reliance (Mindfulness)

An attitude of mindfulness where we see for ourselves, from personal experience, what is true and not true.

Self-Compassion (Mindfulness)

An attitude of mindfulness where it cultivates love and care for ourselves, without criticism or judgment.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

A mindfulness-based program that encourages clients to accept, rather than attempt to control or change, unpleasant sensations.
-Accepting thoughts, feelings, sensations, being present
-Choosing a valued direction
-Taking action
-Goal: Increased psychological flexibility
-Newer, has been around for 20 years
-About loosening connections and getting rid of labels
-Imagery and metaphors, cognitive "diffusion"
-Anchor breathing
-Exploring the differences between suffering, pain, and resistance

Relational Frame Theory (ACT)

A theory of derived stimulus relations proposing that stimulus relations are inherently verbal and that accumulated experience with relational exemplars creates generalized repertoires of relating.
-Focuses on how humans learn languages through interactions with the environment, socially constructed

Non-striving (Mindfulness)

An attitude of mindfulness where there's no grasping, aversion to change or movement away from what's arising in the moment, not trying to get anywhere other than where you are.