Final Exam Flashcards

Question

What is meaning in existential therapy?

Answer 1

- All humans must find some meaning in life, although none is absolute and none is given to us. - We create our own world and have to answer for ourselves why we live and how we shall live. - One of our major life tasks is to invent a purpose sturdy enough to support a life; often we have a sense of discovering meaning and then it may seem to us that it was “out there” waiting for us

Answer 2

- Overshadowing all these ultimate concerns, the awareness of our inevitable demise is the most painful and difficult. - We strive to find meaning in the context of our existential aloneness and take responsibility for the choices that we make within our freedom to choose, yet one day we will cease to be. - And we live our lives with that awareness in the shadow. - Death is always the distant thunder at our picnic, however much we may wish to deny it. - *Existential psychotherapy emphasizes the importance of* *living mindfully and purposefully, aware of one’s possibilities and limits in a context of absolute freedom and choice. Death, in this view, enriches life.*

Answer 3

This is an exercise to connect with the various inner voices of the self, the various archetypal energies we all carry. Usually we ‘edit’ what we say and don’t allow for the complexities of opposing opinions or emotions to be present regarding a situation or relationship. This exercise can help ‘untangle’ the intensity of emotional or psychological energy that can feel like a knot inside of our bodies. 1. Draw a small circle at the center of a piece of paper and write inside that circle the ‘knot’ you are currently experiencing. It could be a situation, a decision you need to make, a relationship or anything else you are feeling tangled up about. 2. Draw 7 ‘spokes’ coming out of the circle. 3. Write ‘child self’ on the first spoke of your wheel. Allow the child self so say whatever she needs to say about the tangle and write that in the space under the first spoke. 4. The second spoke is the teen self / young adult self. Again, allow this energy of you as a teen or young adult to fully express what she needs to say. Here is the list of 7: a. Child Self b. Teen / Young Adult self c. Anxious / Fearful self d. Angry self e. Over - Responsible / Religious Do – good self f. Wild / Out of control / Gypsy – break the rules self g. Elder / Crone self 5. Allow yourself to feel all these energies within you. What was an ‘aha’ moment for you? What did you become aware of? Write this down. 6. Finally, draw a big circle around the whole thing and write the word Love. What if you knew that all of the aspects of yourself was held in love? Are you able to turn to all the parts of yourself with compassion and kindness? Are you able to listen and notice what needs to be heard? 7. What did you learn? What did you become aware of?

Answer 4

Gillian led us in an activity that helps clients discover their **core values** which in turn, can help them make consequent decisions with **“inner consent”**. The activity was as follows: 1. Ask the client to describe what a perfect day in their life looks like. 2. Out of the activities that the client described, extrapolate their core values. For instance, if they mentioned family time multiple times, then you can assume that “family & interpersonal relationships” is a core value for them. 3. If the client needs to make a decision, create a table listing their core values at each column heading and potential answers to the decision for each row heading. 4. Evaluate each possible answer according to each core value out of 5. 5. Add up the sums for each potential answer. 6. The potential answer with the highest score reflects a solution that aligns the most with the client’s core values.

Answer 5

I am ___(object in dream)___ My purpose is ______________ I like being __________ whose purpose is ___________ because _____________ I don’t like __________ ___(my name)____ my message to you today is ___________

Answer 6

- chair exercise — your depression, anxiety, and grief is in that chair, what would you say to it - reverse roles

Answer 7

- human beings possess vast resources for self-understanding and self-direction. - individuals are most able to access their own creative resources when provided a relationship offered by a genuine, congruent therapist who is experiencing unconditional positive regard and warm acceptance and is empathically receptive to the client’s own perceived realities.

Answer 8

1. People are born with the potential to be rational (self-constructive) as well as irrational (self-defeating). 2. People’s tendency to irrational thinking, self-damaging habituations, wishful thinking, and intolerance is frequently exacerbated by their culture and their family group. 3. Humans perceive, think, emote, and behave simultaneously.

Answer 9

- Rogers’s ethical vision of the person is expressed in scientific language by his axiomatic concept of the *actualizing tendency* - Rogers’s theory posits that organisms are motivated to maintain and enhance themselves. This tendency is inherent in the design of all living organisms. - The significance of this view is that people do the best they can under the circumstances they perceive and that are acting on them

Answer 10

individuals demand that their wishes be satisfied, that they succeed and be approved, that others treat them fairly, etc.

Answer 11

- In psychotherapy, Rogers was attuned to the fact that each person has a unique temperament, a unique history of experiences and learnings, and a way of using the therapeutic situation. His approach is **oriented to the phenomenology of the unique person.** Rogers posits that every organism possesses an inherent ***organismic valuing process*,** and only to the extent that the emerging self of the person can assimilate their lived experiencing can congruence or wholeness be achieved.

Answer 12

- For Rogers, **congruence**, the state of wholeness and integration within the experience of the person, is the hallmark of psychological adjustment. Rogers regarded *congruence* as the most basic of the attitudinal conditions that foster therapeutic growth. On one hand, Rogers depicted congruence as **transparent communication** - the therapist does not deny the feelings being experienced, even when the feelings may be antitherapeutic, and that the therapist is willing to express and be open about any persistent feelings that exist in the relationship.

Answer 13

To help individuals become less demanding through minimization of demandingness.

Answer 14

Congruence, unconditional positive regard, and empathic understanding of the client’s internal frame of reference are the three therapist-provided conditions in client-centered therapy

Answer 15

1. Distraction - a therapist can try to divert a patient into activities such as sports, a political cause, yoga, etc. 2. Satisfaction of demands: satisfy clients needs so they feel better (i.e., therapist gives their love or approval to the client). 3. Magic and mysticism: therapist is some kind of magician who will take their problem away.

Answer 16

A - adverse event B- beliefs about adverse event C- emotional consequences D - dispute the irrational beliefs E - effective new philosophy

Answer 17

The more one tries to become who one is not, the more one stays the same. Knowing and accepting the truth of one’s feelings, beliefs, situation, and behavior builds wholeness and supports growth.

Answer 18

Other terms for this condition are warm acceptance, nonpossessive caring, and a nonjudgmental openness to the client as a person and his or her behaviors, beliefs, and values. Biases and prejudices go with us into the therapy room, but within that relationship, the therapist makes every effort to be aware of evaluative or judgmental responses and to set them aside. If the reactions are troublesome and threaten unconditional positive regard, then the responsible therapist takes up the basis of the judgments with a trusted consultant.

Answer 19

1. Contact - being in touch with what is emerging here and now, moment to moment. 2. Conscious awareness - primary therapeutic tool along with dialogue. Being in touch with what is. 3. Experimentation - the act of trying something new to increase understanding. (i.e., role-playing, two-chair work)

Answer 20

The awareness of one’s awareness process

Answer 21

1. Both believe in the potential for human growth. 2. Both believe that growth results from a relationship in which the therapist is experienced as warm and authentic (congruent). 1. Gestalt therapy has a more active and experimental phenomenological approach (similar to behavior techniques, but designed to clarify the patient’s awareness rather than control her or his behavior) 2. Gestalt therapist is more inclined to self-disclose about his or her own feelings or experience.

Answer 22

1) helping patients become aware of how they avoid learning from experience 2) how their self-regulatory processes may be close-ended rather than open-ended 3) how problems in current awareness limit one’s ability to experiment to broaden awareness.

Answer 23

Lifespan Integration is a gentle, body-based therapeutic method which heals without re-traumatizing. In 2003, Peggy Pace published the first edition of her book, Lifespan Integration: Connecting Ego States through Time. In her book Pace describes the new therapeutic method which she originally developed to heal adult survivors of childhood abuse or neglect. Pace soon found that LI therapy facilitates rapid healing in people of all ages, and is effective with a wide range of therapeutic issues. Lifespan Integration relies on the innate ability of the body-mind to heal itself. LI is body-based, and utilizes repetitions of a visual timeline of memories to facilitate neural integration and rapid healing. During the integrating phase of each LI protocol, the therapist leads the client through a series of chronological timelines of memories of their life. The Lifespan Integration technique causes memories to surface spontaneously, and because of how memories are held neurologically, each memory which surfaces is related to the emotional theme or issue being targeted. The resulting panoramic view of the client’s life gives the client new insights about lifelong patterns resultant from the past trauma or neglect.

Answer 24

Gestalt therapy is an exploration rather than a direct attempt to change behavior. Gestalt therapy prioritizes an active relationship and active methods to help patients gain the self-support necessary to solve problems.

Answer 25

Direct experience. Focus is always on the here and now. Therapist focuses on what the patient does and how the patient does it.

Answer 26

Helping patient focus on his awareness. “What are you aware of, or experiencing, right here and now?”

Answer 27

Enactments, mental experiments, guided fantasy, body awareness, two chair work

Answer 28

The reality that although we want to live on and persist in our being, we will eventually die. We alone are thrown into existence without a predestined life structure or destiny that each of us must choose how to live fully, happily, and ethically.

Answer 29

Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of personality: personality is a system of forces that are in conflict with each other.

Answer 30

False. It is not a comprehensive psychotherapeutic system, but rather, a paradigm by which a therapist views and understands a client’s suffering.

Answer 31

The past is important only insofar as it is part of one’s current existence and how it has contributed to one’s current concerns.

Answer 32

False. The existential therapist strives to reduce crippling levels of anxiety, but not to eliminate it. The therapist’s task is to use the anxiety constructively.

Answer 33

1. a focus on the here and now 2. viewing the therapist-patient relationship as one of fellow travelers

Answer 34

Through **authenticity** and **presence**, the therapist strives to counter **avoidance** and **withdrawal**.

Answer 35

False. Disclosure does facilitate therapy, but the therapist still needs to be mindful of boundaries

Answer 36

False. Although existential therapy primarily has its applications in individual therapy, existential themes and insights can be successfully applied in group therapy, couples therapy, family therapy and so forth.

Answer 37

Grounding skills: 5 things you can SEE 4 things you can TOUCH 3 things you can HEAR 2 things you can SMELL 1 thing you can TASTE

Answer 38

Negative Non-verbal Intensity Marker: ex: crying, shifting in chair, leaning away/back in chair

Answer 39

Negative Para-verbal Intensity Marker: ex: a shift in tone/pace/pitch, more frequent breaths and stutters

Answer 40

Negative Verbal Intensity Marker: ex: "realllyyy hard"

Answer 41

Positive Non-verbal Intensity Marker: ex: smiling, laughing, leaning forward, hand on heart

Answer 42

Positive Para-verbal Intensity Marker: ex: empathetic, soft tone of voice,

Answer 43

ex: "the best moment ever"

Answer 44

Para-verbal Conflict Marker ex: uncomfortable laugh, halts, hesitations in speech, raising vocal pitch at the end of sentences (?)

Answer 45

Verbal Conflict Marker: ex: "on one hand", "part of me", "but...", "however..."

Answer 46

Non-verbal Conflict Marker: ex: gesturing two sides of the body with hands, one hand on the head the other towards the stomach, (gut vs. head) (head vs. heart)

Answer 47

Connected Capable Count

Answer 48

Breathing (diaphragmatic breathing) Progressive Muscular Relaxation Autogenics Imagery Grounding

Answer 49

Activating Event Beliefs Consequences

Answer 50

Activating event Beliefs Consequences Disputations Effective New Belief (philosophy)

Answer 51

black or white thinking, ex: if you fall short, you are a total failure

Answer 52

you see a single negative even as a never-ending category

Answer 53

only seeing the negative details and dwelling on them exclusively

Answer 54

reject the positive interpretation even though there are no definite facts that support your conclusion

Answer 55

no facts to support the conclusion ex: mind reading ex: fortune teller

Answer 56

catastrophizing vs. ignroing

Answer 57

"I feel it therefore, it must be true"

Answer 58

"oughts" "musts"

Answer 59

"I am a loser" "I am a failure"

Answer 60

You see yourself as a negative event you are not solely responsible for or have control over

Answer 61

thoughts, emotions and behaviours affect one another - changing your thoughts, will change how you feel and behave.

Answer 62

1. What do you see and hear? 2. What meaning do you make of this? 3. What are your feelings about this meaning? 4. What are your feelings about your feelings? 5. What defences are getting triggered? a. blame - project ? b. placate - deny? c. super-reasonable - ignore? d. irrelevant - distort? 6. What are your rules for commenting? 7. What is your (external) response?

Answer 63

"it is all my fault" "I don't count" Apologizing, excuses, whiny, nice, overly cheerful

Answer 64

"What is the matter with you?" Blaming yelling angry controlling

Answer 65

stiff rigid seems cold gives advice boring "One must be logical"

Answer 66

restless insensitive silly attention-getting tells jokes

Answer 67

Intensity markers are bodily cues can indicate whether the client is processing something positively or negatively. Intensity markers can be classified as verbal (i.e., adverbs and adjectives), paraverbal (i.e., volume, pitch and pacing of voice), and nonverbal (i.e., gestures, postures, and bodily movements).

Answer 68

(i.e., adverbs and adjectives)

Answer 69

(i.e., gestures, postures, and bodily movements).

Answer 70

(i.e., volume, pitch and pacing of voice),

Answer 71

positive **verbal** intensity markers can include saying things like “I’m so relieved" or "It's great to feel more settled.". These can denote a client’s interest, pleasure or satisfaction. positive **paraverbal** intensity markers can be expressed through excited, rapid tones or slow, empathetic tones, which may indicate a client’s interest or pleasure. positive **nonverbal** intensity markers can be breathing a sigh of relief or relaxing into their chair. This can signal to the counsellor that the client is relaxed and at peace.

Answer 72

Negative **verbal** intensity markers can include phrases like “This is so hard for me right now.”, indicating fear, sadness or even anger from the client. Negative **paraverbal** intensity markers can be expressed through crying, shaking or holding one’s breath, indicating distress or sadness from the client. Negative **nonverbal** intensity markers, on the other hand, may be erratic bodily gestures, widening of the eys, or shifting in one’s seat. These cues can denote uncomfortableness or negative emotions from the client.

Answer 73

Conflict markers, on the other hand, are verbal, paraverbal, and nonverbal cues that indicate the client is in internal conflict with some thought or idea. They are not negative or positive, just neutral.

Answer 74

**Verbal** conflict cues can be the words “but”, “however”, and/or “maybe”. Adding “isn’t it?” at the end of sentences also indicates a verbal conflict marker. This can mean that the client is unsure of the situation and is at strife with themselves. **Paraverbal** conflict markers include halting or hesitating in speech. Creating a question out of a statement by raising one’s pitch at the end of it also constitutes as a paraverbal internal conflict marker. This can denote feelings of uncertainty or strife. **Nonverbal** conflict markers include gesturing across the body, or making opposite movements with body parts. These gestures can indicate that the client supports one thing while also supporting anoter conflicting idea at the same time.

Answer 75

- stresses thinking, judging, deciding, analyzing, and doing - assumes that cognitions, emotions, and behaviours interact and have a reciprocal cause and effect relationships - is highly didactic, directive and concerned as much with thinking as feeling - teaches that emotions stem mainly from our beliefs, evaluations, interpretations and reactions to life - created by Albert Ellis

Answer 76

- born with potential with rational and irrational thinking - we have the biological and cultural tendency to think crookedly and to needlessly disturb ourselves - we learn and invent disturbing beliefs and keep ourselves disturbed though our self-talk - we have the capacity to change our cognitive, emotive, and behavioural processes

Answer 77

A rational-emotive explanation of personality is almost as easy as ABC. - A are the **Activating events** of life, - such as rejection by a lover or failure to get into a graduate program. - B represents the **Beliefs** that individuals use to process the activating events in their lives. - These beliefs can be rational (rB), such as believing that the rejection was unfortunate and regrettable or that the failure was annoying and unpleasant. - The beliefs can also be irrational (iB), such as thinking, “It was awful that I was rejected,” “I will never be loved again,” or “How terrible it is that I didn’t get into graduate school; they have prevented me from ever being successful.” - C, the person experiences the emotional and behavioral **Consequences** of what has just occurred.personality is formed by ABCDEs

Answer 78

- irrational belief causes emotional consequences - ABCs explain psychopathology - activating event does not cause the emotional consequences, it is what you believe about the event that does

Answer 79

- assumption - irrational ideas (from rigid and dogmatic beliefs and unrealistic and overgeneralized attributions) lead to self-defeating behaviour - examples - “I must have love or approval from all the significant people in my life” - “I must perform important tasks competently and perfectly” - “If I don’t get what I want, it’s terrible, and I won’t be able to handle it.”

Answer 80

- considered an educational process - learning goals include: - to identify the interplay of thoughts, feelings, and emotions - to identify and dispute irrational beliefs that are maintained by self-indoctrination - to replace ineffective ways of thinking with effective and rational cognitions - to stop absolutistic thinking, blaming, and repeating false beliefs

Answer 81

- seen primarily as precondition for effective treatment - therapists demonstrate unconditional acceptance for the client as a person, but not necessarily liking - therapists evaluate client’s beliefs and behaviours - self-disclosure is common

Answer 82

- Founder of Cognitive Therapy - Originally trained in the psychoanalytic tradition - Approach heavily rooted in empiricism - Developed popular instruments, including Beck Depression Inventory & Beck Anxiety Inventory - Beck & Ellis did not collaborate but approaches are very similar

Answer 83

- CT emphasizes empiricism more than REBT - CT relies more on evidence to alter belief while REBT focuses more on philosophical conversion - CT is more structured, REBT is less so - CT is less confrontational than REBT

Answer 84

- Insight-focused therapy - Emphasizes changing negative thoughts and maladaptive beliefs - Assumes: - People’s internal communication is accessible to introspection - Clients’ beliefs have highly personal meanings - These meanings can be discovered by the client rather than being taught or interpreted by the therapist

Answer 85

The pattern that triggers depression 1. Clients hold negative views of themselves “I am a lousy person” 2. Selective Abstraction Client interprets life events through a negative filter “The world is a negative place where bad things are bound to happen to me.” 3. Client holds a gloomy view of the future “The world is bleak and isn’t going to improve.”

Answer 86

- Similar to REBT’s theory of psychopathology - **Maladaptive cognitions & dysfunctional attitudes cause psychopathology** - Underlying cognitions vary specifically with behavioural disorder **(cognitive specificity)** - Dysfunctional beliefs are not irrational per se, but too absolute or broad - Schemas: cognitive organization

Answer 87

- After symptoms begin to subside, treatment shifts to underlying cognitions - Identification of problematic schemas and their remediation - Successful clients pass through stages: - Become aware of thinking - Recognize what thoughts are awry - Substitute accurate for inaccurate judgments - Receive feedback on the effectiveness of change

Answer 88

1. What’s the **evidence**? 2. What’s **another way** of looking at it? 3. **So what** if it happens?

Answer 89

- **Collaborative empiricism:** shared mission to determine dysfunctional thoughts & pursue better ones - Client is an active partner - Therapist provides **support** and **direction**; however, empathy is not necessary or sufficient for success Therapist engenders **responsible dependency** in client

Answer 90

Gestalt psychology is a school of thought that looks at the human mind and behavior as a whole. When trying to make sense of the world around us, Gestalt psychology suggests that we do not simply focus on every small component. Instead, our minds tend to perceive objects as elements of more complex systems.

Answer 91

Healthy personality: - Does not become preoccupied with social roles. - They are nothing more than a set of social expectations that we and others set for ourselves. - The mature person does not adjust to society, certainly not to an insane society such as ours. - Healthy individuals do not repeat the same old, tired habits that are so safe and so deadly. - In taking responsibility for being all that they can be, such people accept Perls’s attitude of living and reviewing every second afresh. - They discover that there are always new and fresh means-whereby they can complete their end-goals.

Answer 92

The goal of Gestalt therapy is **to teach people to become aware of significant sensations within themselves and their environment so that they respond fully and reasonably to situations.** Gestalt therapy is a ***form of psychotherapy that focuses on a person's present life rather than delving into their past experiences***

Answer 93

**1. the phony, ** -phony because they represent only half of who we are. -If the character we construct is mean and demanding, for instance, then we can be sure that below the surface is the opposite polarity of wanting to be kind and yielding. -Our phony characters attempt to shield us from the fact that authentic existence involves, for each individual, facing personal **polarities** **2. the phobic, ** -we are phobic about the pain that ensues from facing how dissatisfied we are with parts of ourselves. -We avoid and run from emotional pain, -it help us avoid what is genuinely hurting **3. the impasse, ** -the point at which we are stuck in our own maturation -we are convinced that we have no chance of survival because we cannot find the means within ourselves to progress when environmental support is withdrawn **4. the implosive, ** -to experience deadness, the deadness of parts of ourselves that we have disowned. -person is frozen like a corpse. **5. the explosive. ** -emancipation of life’s energies. -The size of the explosion depends on the amount of energy bound up in the implosive layer. -To become fully alive, the person must explode into orgasm, into anger, into grief, and into joy.

Answer 94

Top Dog: - We experience Top Dog as our conscience, the righteous part of us that insists on always being right. - Top Dog attempts to be master by commanding, demanding, insisting, and scolding. Under Dog: - Under Dog is the slavish part of us that appears to go along with the bullying demands of Top Dog’s ideals but in fact controls through passive resistance. - Under Dog is the part of us that acts stupid, lazy, or inept as a means of trying to keep from successfully completing the orders of Top Dog.

Answer 95

**empty-chair technique** When clients drift back into resentment of the past * Here clients are asked to imagine that the is present in the empty chair, and they are now free to express to the parent what they held back from saying. * Such expression in the present of unfinished resentments allow clients to bring closure **Games of dialogue** in which patients carry on a dialogue between polarities of their personality, such as a repressed masculine polarity confronting a dominant feminine polarity **I take responsibility** in which clients are asked to end every statement about themselves with “and I take responsibility for it” **Playing the projection** n which clients play the role of the person involved in their projections, such as playing their parents when they blame their parents **Reversals** *in which patients act out the very opposite of the way they usually behave in order to experience a hidden polarity of themselves **Rehearsals** in which patients reveal to the group the thinking or rehearsal they most commonly do in preparation for playing social roles, including the role of patient **May I feed you a sentence?** in which the therapist asks permission to repeat and try on for size a statement about the patient that the therapist feels is particularly significant for the patient

Answer 96

Perls certainly endorsed the need for therapists to be more congruent—or, as he would prefer, more mature—than clients. - It is also a rule of Gestalt therapy that the relationship should be an *I*–*Thou* relationship, or what Rogers would call a genuine encounter. - Neither in theory nor in practice did Perls accept the Rogerian concept of unconditional positive regard. - encourages infantilization.

Final Exam Flashcards

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