Three Models of Counselling - Coursework Example

Introduction Many situations we think about in life are believed to be the actual effects of our reactions. Nevertheless, these reactions also affect our thoughts and our feelings. Therefore for anyone to live healthy life he or she must change her behaviour and also the way of her thinking. The process of changing one’s ways of thinking and the behaviour is what is referred to as cognitive behavioral therapy. In other words the cause of sadness in most people is as result of what they think. So cognitive behaviour therapy basically, can be applied in situations where a bad pattern of behaviour has been recognized. It is recommended for the treatment of the following mental problems; personality problems, social disorders, anxiety, abuses, traumatic stress, eating disorders and also moods swing. The therapy is also not suitable to every patient. This is because for the case of a severely psychotic patient like brain damage may not be effective Cognitive therapy It falls in the branch of psychotherapy treatments. It is a therapy that seeks to really enable a patient to walk over all her problems by simply helping her to identify as well as change any wrong thinking, emotional reactions and behaviour. A patient is required to come up with new beliefs, do away with any form of wrong thinking, correct their relations with others and also change her behaviors (Elis, 1992). The therapy involves a total collaboration between the doctor and the patient. The therapy is required to challenge the thinking of the patient, correct them where need be and also come up with new ways of doing and perceiving things. A thought like the one somebody he or she is very useless and can amount to nothing needs to go through a scrutiny by the help of cognitive therapist. Behavioral therapy This is a form of psychotherapy aimed at technically, getting rid of some very serious undesired behaviors. This therapy is very helpful in trying to improve a relationship between couples like the issue s of intimacy, forgiveness, stress, pain depression, anxiety among others. This therapy is known to be empirical, contextual, monistic, probabilistic and relational (Mahoney, 1974). How cognitive behaviour therapy works It aims at combining an individual’s goal of behaviour and cognition. Therefore, it assumes that the patient involved does not really react to the reality but rather to his own wrong and much distorted patterns of thinking. Therefore, by attempting the therapy, a therapist is just trying to make the affected person aware of their wrong perceptions and then change them to the right ones. The therapist therefore works closely with the patient to identify any behaviour that is leading him or her in the wrong direction. There are a number of good techniques that are used in the cognitive behaviour therapy (Meichenbaum, 1977). They are as follows; behaviour homework and assignments are given to the patient. This is whereby the patient is asked by the therapist to attempt a new form of reaction in the same situations as earlier. These are like behaviour experiments. Then, one is taken through a cognitive rehearsal. In this part, the patient is required to imagine some very hard situations for them. Then the therapists help them through guidance on how to deal with it. The patient is then required to rehearse the steps mentally so that the therapist can know how well the patients can master. The next step is journaling. In this step, the patient then is asked to keep a diary of the records of everything that he or she goes through. This enables the patient to learn through her situations and do necessary corrections on her behaviour. This step is very important because it enables the patient to learn positive behaviors and then reinforce them in her life. Then the therapist and the patient can also act some situation in which the therapist creates so hard situations and leaves the patient to react on them accordingly. In the aspect of conditioning, the therapist will make use of some reinforcement to encourage the patient to adopt them. Then in systematic desensitization, fearful situations of the patients are used by the therapist to enable the patient to deal with them. Finally, the patient may be exposed to validity testing whereby; patients are required to test their validity by maybe defending their reactions. It is evident that cognitive therapy and behavioral therapy are very important treatments in human (Wayne, 2006).). This is because many situations we think about in life are believed to be the actual effects of our reactions. Nevertheless, these reactions as well influence our thoughts and our feelings. Therefore for anyone to live healthy life he or she must change her behaviour and also the way of her thinking. The process of changing one’s ways of thinking and the behaviour is what is referred to as cognitive behavioral therapy. Family therapy This entails the counseling of the couple or the family but in very intimate relationships for the purposes of nurturing the developments and the changes. The change in this kind of therapy is viewed in the terms of interaction systems between all the family members. It is one of the therapies that emphasizes on the importance of family relationships as a very key factor as far as psychological health is concerned. In this kind of therapy for the solution to be sought there must be the involvement of the rest of the family members (Roger & Roger, 2004). The involvement of the family members is very important and is considered as the first step to healing of the affected since the family is involved in the sessions of the counseling. It is the responsibility of the therapist to be able to involve the family members in the therapy in manner full of wisdom, strength, and supports the system in a wider way. The family therapy techniques There are range varieties of techniques which are used in the counseling as far as this model is concerned namely; communication theory, psycho education, relationship education, psychotherapy, reality therapy, systems theory, system coaching and relationship education. The therapy in terms of the session’s numbers a patient needs to attend depends on the situation one has gone through but it should be noted that the average number of session rangers between 5-20. The therapist is supposed to meet several members of the family for the same session (John, 1996). This is very advantageous in the sense that it helps the family members to improve the ways in which they value the relationships they have in the family. Also the interaction patterns of the family members during the session are mastered as well as improved. This kind of therapy mainly focuses on the issue of interaction habits that exists in homes and completely overlooks the aspects of impulses of analyzing the unconscious mind as well as the childhood trauma of an individual. It has a very distinctive therapy because of the fact that it its analytical as well as perspective framework and does not focus on the number of all people that are actually present in the session of the therapy. The family therapist is most relational kind of therapist because their interest is mainly on what goes on between the individuals rather than in an individual’s life. Many are the times depending on the circumstance they also review the past e vents to be able to solve the current situation (Lynn, 2002). It should be noted that the family therapist are usually concerned with the solution to the problem and not on the cause of that particular problem. The main base of this therapy is the fact that a family is as itself a social entity that is governed by its own rules and regulations and has its own structures as also patterns especially of communication which differ depending on the family. Some of these patterns are determined by the parents’ values and beliefs and also the different personalities of the family members as well as the extended family influences. The therapy focuses on a number of concepts like the fact that an individual’s illness in the family can be a cause of the whole family’s problem. This means that treating a single member who is ill is just like dealing with the symptoms of a disease and not the disease itself hence the rest of the members will also be down with the same issue after one member is treated (Philip, 2007). Also another concept is the fact that a change of one family member can easily affect the entire structure of the whole family. Roles of the therapist He or she is responsible for teaching the family members how the family function generally and their roles in the family Helping the family to be able to less focus on the ill member of the family and instead to put their focus on the entire family Helps the family in the identification of the conflicts as well as anxieties and also helps the family to come up with the strategies of solving the problems Strengths and empowers the family members to be able to work together on the process of solving their family problems Teaches the family members ways in which they can be able to handle their conflicts as well as changes occurring in the family. This kind of therapy is very active in the sense that the members of the family are even given assignment like the parents given the assignment of delegating some responsibilities to their children. After the therapy the people are expected to have learnt much about themselves as well as the functionality of their own families. The therapy has had very excellent results in dealing with issues like conflicts between the parents in their relationship, children who have very bad behaviour or have great problems in school work, the teens or even the kids who have problems in associating with others and also a family with a member with a chronic illness, issues like alcoholism and also depression. This therapy has a disadvantage of the fact that it can worsen problems like if it is not done by a very well trained therapist. In cases where the therapy is stopped soon before the issues are dealt with then the problems may not be solved. In case a family member refuses to fully participate in the therapy then the therapy may not be successful at all. Psychodynamic therapy This is a therapy that needs a lot of psychology in depth. It is aimed at revealing the patient’s unconscious content in terms of psyche for the purposes of alleviating psychic tension (Glen, 2010). It is very similar to psychoanalysis but the difference is only in the issues of content because it is not very deep. It is very depend on the therapist and client’s interrelationship. There are some very key principles which are entailed in this therapy It emphasizes on the intrapsychic as well as unconscious centrality with relation with development It takes defenses as development in the internal structures of psychic for the reasons of avoiding the unpleasant consequences due to conflicts. Psychopathology is developed from the early days of childhood The internal experiences of an individual are organized mainly around the interpersonal relations Free association is the main way of exploring internal problems as well as conflicts Trust is very important for the therapy to succeed There are a number of approaches that are used for this therapy. It should be noted that for a successful therapy at least the sessions must be for a total of two years. This is due to the fact that the main aim for the therapy is to ensure that the personality as well as character of the client is completely changed or rather to be able to integrate the some of the development lessons that the client missed out on in the days he or she was struggling with the problems (Jon, 1999). It is believed that change in the client can be easily evident through the rapid sessions or in the beginning of the process of the therapy. The therapist considers the attitude which is associated with the unconditional acceptance in the sense that he or she must hold the client in a very high regard because after all the client is still a human being irrespective of the problems he or she is going through (Penny, 2005). Therapists are then expected to cultivate a relationship with the client so as to be able to get to understand whatever is going on in their subconscious minds and they are able to do that by their academic knowledge, experience or personal knowledge. It is the responsibility of the therapist to judge the level with which the client is in touch with his or her own feelings, the feelings one is not yet aware of and through interpretation the therapist is able to make a judgment. The therapist tries to understand the feelings of the client especially in knowing how painful they are, how tolerable they are and how conscious the client is to those feelings. The therapist tries to help the client to come in contact and be aware of his or her own feelings as well as to be able to deal with the issue of being defensive all the time (Steve, 2008). Conclusion All the models are in one way or another focused in helping the clients to deal with some very important human problems which involve the inner feeling and being of the human beings. The process of changing one’s ways of thinking and the behaviour is what is referred to as cognitive behavioral therapy the process of changing one’s ways of thinking and the behaviour is what is referred to as cognitive behavioral therapy. Family therapy and entails the counseling of the couple or the family but in very intimate relationships for the purposes of nurturing the developments and the changes and the Psychodynamic therapy is a therapy that needs a lot of psychology in depth and is aimed at revealing the patient’s unconscious content in terms of psyche for the purposes of alleviating psychic tension. References Elis, A. (1992). Cognitive behaviour therapy: Reason and emotion in psychotherapy, 23(2), 87-115. Glen, O. (2010). Long-Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy: A Basic Text. Edmonton: American Psychiatric Publishers. John, B. (1996). Family therapy: first steps towards a systemic approach. London: Routledge. Jon, F. (1999). Psychodynamic psychotherapy: learning to listen from multiple perspectives. New York: Psychology Press. Lynn, H. (2002). Family therapy: An intimate history. W.W. Norton: Norton. Mahoney, M. (1974). Cognitive and Behaviour Modification. An academic and search engine. 3(2), 45-80. Meichenbaum, D. (1977). Cognitive behaviour therapy. A clinical review. 10(4), 39-50. Penny, R. (2005). A handbook of short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy. London: Karnac Books. Philip, B. (2007). Basic family therapy. New York: Wiley-Blackwell. Roger, L & Roger, D. (2004). Family therapy: a constructive framework. New York: Sage. Steve, K. (2008). Psychodynamic Therapy: Conceptual and Empirical Foundations. Michigan: Routledge. Wayne, F. (2006). A brief introduction to cognitive behavior therapy. Cognitive Therapy Review, 63(4), 40-57. Read More