Therapy Theories Flashcards
(21 cards)
- Aims to change behavioral, emotional, and thinking patterns associated with dysfunction
- Developed to treat intense emotional swings, impulsiveness, confusion regarding the self (identity), and suicidal behavior
- Teaches mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, emotion regulation, distress, tolerance, and self-management
- Good for Borderline Personality Disorder
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
- Change through understanding multigenerational dynamic
- Individuals cannot be understood in isolation from one another, but rather as part of their family
- Family members are driven to achieve a balance of internal and external differentiation, which causes anxiety, triangulation, and emotional cutoff.
- This can be changed by understanding multigenerational or current family dynamics and patters.
Bowen Family Therapy
- Change through finding meaning in life
- Founded upon the belief that it is the striving to find a meaning in one’s life that is the primary, most powerful motivating and driving force
- Understanding purpose
Logotherapy
- Change through increased awareness of here-and-now experience
- Focuses on the process, what is actually happening, and the content, what is being talked about
- Emphasizes what is going on in the present moment within both the client and the therapist rather than what has happened
- Empty Chair technique example of bringing issue into present moment
Gestalt Therapy
- Change through insight/understanding of early unresolved/unconscious issues
- Insight oriented therapy
- Explore client’s transference
- Identify defense mechanisms
*introduced by the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud.
Psychodynamic Therapy
- Change behavior through reinforcements and punishment
- Identify the problem, monitor behavior, reinforce desired behavior
- Shaping is a form of operant conditioning in which the increasingly accurate approximations of a desired response are reinforced
- Good for children with behavioral problems
Behavioral Therapy
- Change happens by learning to modify dysfunctional thought patterns
- Clients explore patterns of thinking and beliefs that lead to self-destructive behaviors
- Once an individual understands the relationship between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, he or she is able to modify or change his or her patterns of thinking to cope with stressors in a more positive manner
- Focus on automatic thoughts, schemas, assumptions, beliefs
Cognitive Therapy
- Change happens through supporting clients to take actions to address the problems in their lives. Short term.
- Focus of help is on -defined problems and goals; Social worker is open about purposes and nature of service, eschews hidden agendas
- The client’s problems, goals and the nature and duration of service are explicitly stated and agreed upon by both the social worker and the client
- Change is affected primarily through problem-solving actions or tasks the client and practitioner undertake OUTSIDE of therapy. The social worker helps clients select tasks.
Task-Centered/Problem-Solving Therapy
- Change through remodeling the family’s organization
- Many family problems arise as a result if maladaptive boundaries and subsystems within the family system
- A systems approach that address relationship dynamics of the whole family
- The therapist helps the family understand how family structure (relationships and hierarchies) can be changed, the impact of rituals and rules, and how new patterns of interaction can be integrated into the family
Structural Family Therapy
- Change occurs through recognizing disempowering social forces and empowering the client. The therapist helps the client recognize these disempowering forces or influences, a process which can ultimately empower the client
- The therapist recognizes that with every symptom there is a strength and also shows the client that she is her own rescuer and equal to the therapist
- Good for eating disorders
Feminist Therapy
- Change occurs through accessing the client’s strengths and resources
- This is a brief, goal-directed therapy focused on client’s strengths and resources
- Focuses on what the client wants to achieve instead of focusing on the problems
- Focuses on the client’s strengths and resources in order to create a more effective future
Solution-Focused Therapy
*Trauma treatment for children and adolescents. Involves the child’s parents/caregivers, with individual sessions for both he child and the parents, as well as joint parent-child sessions.
*It helps reduce emotional and behavioral trauma symptoms and is a relatively short term treatment.
*Includes three stages: stabilization, trauma, narrative, and integration and consolidation.
Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TFCBT)
*A model for understanding how relationships with early caregivers impact our long term functioning.
*How a caregiver responds to an infant’s/toddler’s cues shapes that child’s view of the world.
*Used to assess the bond between mother and child by observing how the child responds when their caregiver leaves and returns to the room.
Attachment Theory
*Looks at the complex impact trauma has on a client, including how it affects their efforts to cope and function in all areas of life. Integrates the impact of trauma into every aspect of treatment.
*Looks at the psychological, neurological, biological, and interpersonal effects of trauma.
*Includes the view of the client having been hurt by someone or something.
*Emotional/psychological and physical safety are crucial and treatment should not begin while the trauma is still occurring; safety must be established first.
*Treatment focuses on clients gaining back control and empowerment in their lives.
Trauma Informed Therapy
*A short term, present focused therapy that helps clients identify and replace self-defeating rigid though patterns, beliefs, and unhealthy behaviors that interfere with their life goals with healthier thoughts and behaviors that help them achieve their goals.
*Looks at the underlying reasons people jump to conclusions rather than just focusing on the inaccuracy of the belief and labeling it as a cognitive distortion.
*Teaches unconditional self-acceptance.
*Some tools used include: cognitive reframing, visualizations, self-help tools, and homework assignments.
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
*Change occurs by learning to modify dysfunctional though patterns, which then in turn alters emotions and behavior.
*Once a client understands the relationship between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, they are able to modify or change the patterns of thinking to cope with stressors in a more helpful way.
*A change in thoughts causes a positive shift in emotions, and the change in emotions causes a change in the problematic behavior.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
*Change occurs by externalizing the problem(s) and creating a new story that emphasizes the client’s competencies and strengths.
*It is a respectful and non-blaming approach that can be used in both individual and community work.
*It views clients as the experts in their own lives.
*Problems are viewed as separate entities from the client; the therapist externalizes the problem by separating it from the client.
*The therapist highlights unique outcomes that occur when the client focuses on a different storyline than the one holding the source of their presenting problem(s).
Narrative Therapy
*Change occurs by creating conditions for the client to grow through the therapeutic relationship with the presence of three essential components from the therapist: congruence/genuineness, unconditional positive regard, and empathy.
*The therapist believes the client is able to do what is necessary for growth, change, and self-actualization.
*The client determines the goals of therapy, with the therapist being non-directive.
Client Centered Therapy
*Change occurs in the family through action-oriented directives and paradoxical interventions given by the therapist.
*The therapist takes an active and directive role to facilitate change, particularly around patterns of communication.
*The goals are to solve the presenting problem, eliminate symptoms, and to change dysfunctional patterns of interaction.
*Interventions include positioning, retraining, and paradoxical directives.
Strategic Family Therapy
*Change occurs by alleviating symptoms of trauma through Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing of trauma.
*Based on the idea that trauma overwhelms normal cognitive and neurological coping.
*During treatment, clients recall distressing images/memories while engaging in bilateral stimulations/controlled eye movements.
*Utilizes desensitization techniques.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
*This theory observes and analyzes all of the systems that contribute to a person’s behavior and wellbeing.
*Social workers focus on strengthening those systems, which can include improving and creating more supportive systems through connections to community resources.
*This theory is part of what makes social work unique; social work doesn’t look at a client’s problem(s) in isolation, but acknowledges that a client’s behaviors and presenting issues are the result of the factors/systems that work together in that client’s life.
*A person’s social environment, neighborhood, community, home environment, economic class, spiritual beliefs, etc. all impact how a person thinks and behaves.
Systems Theory
