Cognitive and Behavioral Techniques Therapy Term Paper

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Cognitive and Behavioral Therapy

Cognitive and behavioral techniques / therapy

Cognitive Therapist Behavioral Techniques

Case of the Fat Lady

Cognitive behaviorist therapy is a blend of two therapies; cognitive therapy and behavioral therapy. Cognitive therapy first developed by Aaron Beck in 1960 has its focus on individual beliefs and their influences on actions and moods. Its core aims are to alter an individual mindset to be healthy and adaptive (Beck, 1976; Rathod, Kingdon, Weiden, & Turkington, 2008). Behavioral therapy focuses on individual aims and actions towards changing patterns in unhealthy behaviors (Rathod et al., 2008). Cognitive behavioral therapy assists an individual to focus on their current difficulties and relate on how to resolve them. Active involvement of both the therapist and the patient helps in identification of the thinking patterns in distort bringing into foresight a recognizable change in thought and behavior (Leichsenring & Leibing, 2007). Exploring and encouraging discussions on unrelated matters in the early stages help to maintain patients in the therapy while strengthening a technical component of the treatment. By helping the patient to perceive, the treatment to be trusting, safe and, collaborative it allows the process to be stronger and opens avenues to explore complex issues relating to the treatment.

Cognitive therapist can employ empathy to build rapport and facilitate feeling of mutual respect and trust. Empathy is a power of internalizing experiences from another person's point-of-view. It is necessary for the therapist to conceive an understanding of the patient from their background. In order to express empathy, the therapist should be careful not to be disrespectful of the patient's unique background through questions they ask. An emotional understanding is required of the therapist for a solid step towards a deeper realizing a solution to the patient's problem. Empathy helps in validation of patient's experiences while it steers clear the judgmental attitude that can easily erode trust and wiliness to share (Leichsenring & Leibing, 2007).

Genuineness as a cognitive behavioral technic is an ability to be truthful and authentic as such building a solid relationship between the patient and the therapist. It allows patients to explore the credibility of a therapist as well as take advantage of their genuineness to reveal more (Leichsenring & Leibing, 2007). Genuineness is expressed in various forms. In the case of Betty, in maintaining relationships, a therapist should encourage the patient to remain active and empowered in an attempt to facilitate the change behavior developments. Playing role behaviors is also a measure that can assure the patients of the therapist concern to alleviate their fears and problems in life.

Betty had faced up with societal rejections by male persons in the society. In many instances, Betty had attempted to go on dates but, her obese character pushed men away. From the experiences, she had in her obese life Betty resulted to an active sexual fantasy life avoiding physical contact with men. To deal with Betty's fear of relationships the therapist can restate the patients main concern thought in ways different reflecting emotions experienced currently by the patient. This will help to gauge the extent of the resentful feeling to the phenomenon in their life. It will also help the patient realize that they are their own hindrance to exploring meaningful satisfying relationships.

A therapist can also suggest a more detailed treatment to the patient where a specialist can be involved. This will open avenues to appreciate themselves even more despite their challenge (Burns, Kubilus, Breuhl, Harden, & Lofland, 2003). In the case of Betty, seeing a gynecologist helps to explore more on her sexuality and her desires as lady. The therapist can add to the specialist extermination by exploring measures to improve Betty's confidence through deeper revelation of her experiences as a child.

Betty automatic thoughts about losing weight set in a desire for her to conquer her greatest obstacle in life. Obesity has been part of Betty's life and her desire for weight loss comes in to create an avenue for acceptability in the society.

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Her desire to set aside obesity brings in more complications to the therapy treatment as it unravels more defects in her life. The therapist is tasked to ensure that Betty expectation about weight loss in managed in order not to develop further problems. As much as weight loss is important to Betty, her inability to manage the tremendous changes may throw her into dissociative disorder where she fails to achieve a balance of the events. A cognitive therapist ought to assist the patient to explore more of her inner self in order for her to manage expectations. This is easily allowing the patient to get in touch with who she really is other than fantasizing. The need for the patient to come to terms with the real persons and the reality in the society in important as far as automatic weight loss is concerned (Burns et al., 2003).

In Search of the Dreamer

Similar to Marvin's case, most people coping with chronic pain undertake some level of thinking that is catastrophic to their ailment. This category of patients engage in thought that try to link the cause of their chronic pain. For the case of Marvin, it is an association of his sexual experiences. In order to assist Marvin's ailment, a therapist can deploy measures to distort their awareness of the pain causing ailments. According to Leichsenring and Leibing (2007), automatic pain-related thoughts arise as a cognition of independent awareness relating an even to the pain. These thoughts further alter individual beliefs about themselves and their capabilities. The beliefs continually become ingrained deeply in the individual forming part of the core beliefs. Individuals can in this state end up with predictions that may seem to their own judgment accurate.

In order to, successfully distort the line of thoughts maintained by a patient, a Pain Catastrophizing Scale (Burns et al., 2003) can be used. The scale has thirteen (13) components that make it practical for clinical therapy uses. The patient is called upon to reflect on the pain experiences and indicate their extent. The reflection is measured using a five point scale where four (4) indicates the thought occurred all the time and zero (0) indicates the thought did not occur at all. This scale serves as a pre-treatment, mid-treatment and post-treatment assessments tool. It also serves as a measure to highlight to the patient, their negative thoughts. This aspect factors in a crucial role of the patient in participating in their own therapy.

Group therapy in the case Marvin's ailment can also serve as an effective way to treat his condition. According to Burns et al. (2003) group therapy offers an instructional and supporting function for clients to learn from others how their thought trail inflicts more pain to them. When one patient identifies their thought process, others will attentively try to relate their thinking process. In these interactions, patients will critique each other as they interrogate their own automatic thought. As one patient shares, their chronic pain ailments with the group a fellow patient will feel their ailment is not an isolated case there by bringing closer their understanding of their pain. Further relations in the group discussions and interactions will build support and set in a cohesive mood to encourage patients to dissociate from random thought. Subsequently as the group individual continue to change their line of thoughts others will feel encouraged to alter how they think or act on their desire to have some of the thoughts.

Race & Ethnicity

Matching clients with a therapist of similar race has been presumed to result in stronger therapeutic treatment. This presumption has sound theoretical underpinnings in social psychology. People typically associate with those they perceive to be similar to themselves. In line with this thought, further developments have emerged where therapist depict themselves as….....

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