Person Centered Theory of Personality and Behavior

This episode was pre recorded as part of a live continuing education webinar on demand. CEUs are still available for this presentation through all CEUs register@allceus.com counselortoolbox I'd like to welcome everybody to today's presentation on person centered theory of personality and behavior. Now this was a webinar or whatever you want to call it that was actually recorded or request requested by one of you. So you know, let's just launch in and we'll see where we go. We're going to define or review person Centered Theory. Explore how person centered theory can help us understand differences in individuals responses to situations. Explore how person Centered theory can be useful in developing effective treatment plans and interventions. So person Centered theory, we're going back to counseling 101. We're going back to Carl Rogers. And according to Carl Rogers, the self concept is an organized and consistent set of beliefs about oneself and includes valuation of what the self is and what the self can do. Now let's think for a second. Where did this concept of self come from? If you go from the tabula rasa, you know, we're born and we're a blank slate. Where does this all come from? And Roger said largely it was from conditions of worth and what we learned in our environment. That is what was rewarded versus what was not rewarded when we did it. So when we're watching people and growing up, our parents are going to say, oh, that person is so successful because. Or that person is a good person because. And we register that and we say, okay, so this is a good thing that we want to do. And we see other things happen. You know, that whole social learning thing going on and we learn things that we don't want to do. But each person experiences life differently. You can even have two twins, two identical twins living in the same household. You know, we're not talking about adoption studies here. And guess what? They are going to have different perceptions to a certain extent of a lot of things. Unless they like, never go out in public when they're separate and get separated from one another. They're going to have different interactions, they're going to have different friends, they're going to have different opinions. Look at your own children if you've got children or your friends kids if you don't have any. They can grow up in the same household and have very, very different behaviors, very, very different personalities. I know mine do. And a lot of that is based on partly their innate temperament and how that temperament interacts. If you think back to broffenbrenner's ecological theory, how that innate temperament interacts with their microsystem and their mesosystem. People are competent, trustworthy and forward moving. In person centered theory, we say, you know what, you, the person are at the heart of what's going on. So it's not up to me to tell you what works for you and what doesn't work for you. It's up to you to tell me what works for you. You're confident, you know what works for you. You know what you've done in the past that hasn't worked. You know what you've done in the past that has worked. And I want to, when I'm working with a client, I want to empower them and encourage them to recognize that, you know what, I did stuff in the past and it worked, or it worked a little bit. And the things that work a little bit we can build on. We want to help people learn that their instincts and their thoughts and their feelings are trustworthy. They are, they are good and they're competent. And if we provide this supportive, nurturing environment, theoretically people will move forward towards what they define as a rich and meaningful life. And that is different than what I define as a rich and meaningful life or you define as a rich and meaningful life, which is one of the core concepts of person centered theory. A lot of times, you know, I worked in private pay mental health clinics, I worked in public mental health clinics and I worked in private practice and people that we see in those different places, a lot of times in the clinics, we were taught to funnel them into certain programs, we were taught to funnel them and have certain treatment plans and certain interventions that we used. And while certain treatment plans and interventions may be a useful starting point, a useful launch point to open a discussion, it's really important to recognize what the individual wants to move towards. If, for example, in substance abuse, this comes up a lot, when people come into substance abuse treatment, most programs are abstinence based programs. They're going to say the ideal outcome of treatment is sustained abstinence from alcohol or other drugs. Some people, that's not where they're at. Their idea of what recovery is is returning to controlled use. And you can argue that until the cows come home. I'm not saying it is as cut and dry as we may talk about, but in a person centered environment, we say, okay, if controlled use is what you want your end goal to be, then then let's work towards that. Individuals can move in a positive forward direction as defined by that person when provided with empathy, congruence and unconditional positive regard. So let's take this client that is coming into treatment for substance abuse and maybe co occurring disorders. They want to not have to say they can never drink again. All right? That's overwhelming for a lot of people to say when they first come to treatment. It's not for me to argue if they see how they might eventually be able to engage in social controlled use. Okay? I am not to judge. I am to be there to be empathetic with them and recognize how hard this change is and how scary it is and how unpleasant it is where they're at right now. And they don't want to stay there and to have empathy for them and want to help them make positive changes to move towards what's going to make their life meaningful. Congruence is really being there with the client. And this is a hard one in substance abuse because you have some clinicians who are just hardline, abstinent. So it's very hard for them to be accepting and working with somebody who's working towards a different goal. So it's harder for them to be congruent and be supportive and happy and all that kind of stuff. Congruence means really being true and honest. If you feel something, you know, obviously you're going to use some tact with it. But if I have a bad feeling about something, I'm going to tell my client, you know, I have a bad feeling about this. Give you an example, I had a client, well, two clients actually, who are discharging from residential at the same time, and they decided that they were going to move in together. And these were two male clients that wasn't as. It wasn't a romantic relationship at all. They just decided it was practical. And I had a lot of concerns and reservations about that. So in order to be congruent, I mean, I was empathetic. I understood that they needed to get somewhere other than where they had come from to reside. They were trying to get clean, sober living, all that stuff. You know, I hear where they're coming from. But I felt it was probably a bad choice. So in the auspices of congruence, I told the client, you know, I am supportive of whatever your choice is. However, let me tell you what my concerns are and you can take them or leave them. You know, just take what you need and leave the rest. And then that came with also unconditional positive regard. I respected the client for who he was and I was going to be supportive of his choices even if they didn't agree with mine. But I felt in order to ethically address that situation, I had to tell that client, you know what? I think this is a bad idea. And these are the reasons. The client obviously had some arguments or responses to that. And my goal ultimately was just to know that he had thought through all of the potential hiccups, hurdles and problems that could come with that situation. He had. And so, you know, obviously he embarked upon that. The way we behave and respond across situations is really what our personality is. And when we're thinking about personality, I want you to think about personality disorders. And a quote, good personality, and I didn't have any other term to use, is something that is not personality disordered. We're talking about the two ends of the spectrum. So a lot of these characteristics came from going through the DSM and identifying characteristics that were identified more commonly in your personality disorders. So if somebody lacks empathy and self and other awareness, we tend to look at that as a problem. When people have a good personality, they have empathy and self and other awareness. Think about when you were knee high to a grasshopper. I mean, children, when they're that young, are egocentric. Most children have the capacity to feel what other people are feeling. They don't have real strong boundaries, but empathy and really understanding where the other person is coming from, that's much later. We need to learn how to take other people's perspectives as we grow, grow up. And when people are really young, they're just not capable of doing that so much. When people are in an environment that rewards empathetic behavior, when they're in an environment that models self and other awareness and empathy, then people are going to learn that that's good and, and that's going to become one of those behaviors that's more ingrained respect for self and others. This is another one. If you grow up in an environment where people don't respect one another, then you're probably not going to learn to respect one another. But if it's rewarded and reinforced in your family of origin and in your meso system, then you'll probably develop that. So this is how personality sort of develops for each individual. And you can have different people that have totally different experiences from the same family, a stable sense of self. We don't want somebody who is to develop this sense of I'm whatever you need me to be in order to get approval from you. We really want to work on helping people establish that stable sense of self, the ability to self validate and self love and this kind of dovetails with a stable sense of self. Because a lot of times, I mean, think about histrionic personality disorder, dependent personality disorder, and borderline. These people tend to have not a very good sense of self and they're looking to others for validation. They're needing that. There's this fear of abandonment always. And if we can help people develop that ability to self validate and self love and realize that, you know, they're all that in a bag of chips, they're not going to be able to please everybody all the time, but they can be true to themselves. It will help them gain some liberation and some sense of freedom, emotional stability. With people in the, With borderline personality disorder, for example, they can go from love you to hate you in 2.3 seconds. We want to identify people or help people develop the skills to be emotionally stable. And that doesn't mean only being happy or never getting angry. That means being able to experience the range of emotions, but also being able to tolerate distress and moderate their reactions. Responsibility is another one of those things that comes up in the personality disorder diagnoses. People who are irresponsible, especially in multiple areas of their life, motivation and a desire to grow. They're generally content people think about people, you know, who you're like. You know, that person has a really good personality. I really enjoy hanging out with that person. Are they generally angry and miserable and anxious and agitated and restless? Usually? Probably not. They're probably generally content. They may want to learn new things, but they are generally content with the way things are and wanting to. Wanting to grow from there, and they enjoy the company of others. Now, I put an asterisk beside this because introverts, for example, get nervous when there's a whole lot of people around. My husband and my daughter really prefer to be in situations in which there are, you know, two, three, maximum of like six people around at one time because the stimulus is overwhelming. When they're in large groups of people, then there are other people that are, you know, more extroverted, that tend to. We draw our energy from other people. So just because someone doesn't want to go to parties and be around people all the time doesn't mean they've got a personality disorder. You know, it may just mean that's their temperament and they prefer a more introverted way of being. And sue brings up a point that, you know, we wonder if personality disorders may be caused by lack of training or adequate parenting or due to trauma in childhood before the window closes, because a lot of our Traits may, according to some theories, be set by the time we're entering school. Now, regardless of when that window closes, when we look at people who have personality disorders, we see that their behaviors began at a very young age and they're pervasive through all areas of their life. It's not just at school or just in relationships. Hence the definition of or the diagnosis, diagnostic criteria of the personality disorder. When we look at people, for example, who have borderline personality disorder, most of them have had significant trauma in their life in one way or another. And when you look at the behaviors in terms of a creative survival mechanism for the child, you know, the person may be 28 now, but if you look back to when that child was eight and what they were enduring and experiencing and what they were cognitively capable of understanding, those behaviors were probably learned back then and reinforced back then. And then. They were just never challenged or changed as the person grew and developed new resources. I personally have worked with a lot of people with personality disordered symptoms, and I've seen their ability to alter a lot of those behaviors once they start to develop the skills. Look at Linehan's work with dialectical behavior therapy working, I believe that began as a project to work with people with borderline personality disorder. And she is able to help people with BPD, as well as other things, develop the skills they need to maintain emotional stability, to learn to self validate and self love, to develop a more stable sense of self respect themselves and others. She works with people who don't have these qualities and helps them develop them. So I believe in many ways, personality disorders as we tend to look at them, aren't necessarily as damning as maybe we were once taught to believe. So the five characteristics, according to Rogers, and these are going to sound similar to what we just talked about, are the person who is fully functioning is open to experiences both positive and negative. And again, think about dialectical behavior therapy, DBT and acceptance and commitment. Therapy says life is going to have pain with it. That's just reality. And we need to be open to experiencing the pain as well as the joy and recognize it is what it is. It's a transient moment, but we need to be open to those experiences because that's what gives our life color, if you will. Fully functioning people are in touch with everyday experiences without preconceptions. They're mindful of what's going on, focused on the present and not always in the past or in the future. They're focused. We talked in the last class about relationships and focusing on and holding the current relationship hostage for what happened in prior relationships. Well, the fully functioning person is mindful and focused on the present, and they recognize that this person that they're in a relationship with now different than anybody else they've ever been in a relationship with, and this situation is different. So they're focused. They've learned from the past, and their impressions are informed by the past. But they also recognize that their impressions and their assumptions may not be 100% spot on because this is a whole new situation in the present. Fully functioning people are aware of and attentive to facts, feelings, and gut reactions. Fully functioning people don't just use emotional reasoning, but they listen. When I was in my internship, I had a great supervisor, and one of the things that she used to talk about with the clients was head, heart, and gut honesty. Does the head say it's right? You know, the logic side. Does the heart say it's right? Does it make you feel happy? Is it what your heart says you should do? And then the gut, which is kind of the mediator of them both. If your gut's doing flippy flops, then something may be amiss in there. But fully functioning people are attentive to all three of those and go, yes, I'm in alignment. I'm grounded. I'm congruent with whatever I'm thinking right now is congruent with who I am and it's all good, or whatever I'm thinking and getting ready to do right now in some way is not congruent logically, emotionally, or ethically with who I am. So I don't feel good. Fully functioning people are willing to take risks and be creative. It takes a lot of courage to take risks, to get outside of that comfort zone, and to be creative at solving problems. People who are not fully functioning tend to like to stay in their box and do things the way they've always done. Not growing, not expanding, but just moving along and trying to keep their head down. Fully functioning people have a sense of contentment with life and a desire for new challenges and experiences. So they're content. Things are good the way they are. However, good is wonderful, but I want to keep moving forward. It's kind of like being on a vacation and you stop at one place on your vacation destination and it's really fun. But there's so much more to see and do and learn that you want to continue on your journey. Thinking about these things, how do these impact personality and behavior? If you're not open to experiences, how does that Impact your personality. How does that impact what you do if you're not in touch with everyday experiences? Or if you judge everything based on preconceptions instead of saying, okay, you know, let's look at this situation as it is. We tend to get stuck in a rut if we are not mindful and not open to experiences. And we can tend to be more defensive and withdrawn and feel stressed out a lot if we're not open to new experiences, because new experiences happen all the time. So if you're not open to new experiences, then you're constantly trying to push them away. So therapeutic question, if you will, how can the self concept, the I am impact personality and behavior? And some of this is cultural, some of this is personal. For example, if I say I am a soldier. Now if somebody says I am a soldier, you have certain preconceptions to what that person might be, like what that person might do. That person has had those preconceptions selectively reinforced within them. So, for example, we think of soldiers as being neat and tidy, you know, keeping their bunk made and their closet straight and all that kind of stuff. So someone who's a soldier may embody that in their behavior because that's what's been rewarded. I am a Christian. You know, there are certain roles, functions, attitudes, those sorts of things that are ascribed to Christianity. So if somebody says I am a Christian, a lot of times the behaviors that they have and their personality may be shaped by what their Christian community has reinforced within them. Okay, some others, I'm a woman, obviously I'm a geek, I'm a nerd, I'm a bully, all of those things I am. When I say I am something, then I am taking on this role and everything that comes with it as I know it to be. And those behaviors have been selectively reinforced. When somebody, somebody doesn't, you know, they're not born a bully, they become a bully. They become a person who enacts those sorts of behaviors. And you want to look at, you know, in what way was that reinforced in that person's growing up, in what way was that protective for that person? Some people may say I'm a failure or I'm a screw up. Okay, If I have that as a I am statement, if that's who I am, then I'm certainly not, probably not going to be nearly as willing to take chances or to put myself out there because I feel like I'm a failure. I will always be a disappointment. If I keep telling myself that, then I am going to probably Create self fulfilling prophecies. I'm unlovable, everybody leaves me. I'm a victim or, and this is one of my soapboxes here. People are not their diagnoses. But too often we tell people they are a schizophrenic or they are an addict or they are a this or they are that. They are a person who has schizophrenia. They are, yes. It takes longer to write. However, it's important to unhook from that. Just like when we talk about in acceptance and commitment therapy, unhooking. Instead of saying I have to have a cigarette, saying I'm having the thought that I have to have a cigarette, we can help people start to unhook from some of these things. And we're not negating it, you know, but encouraging them to unhook from it by saying, I'm having the thought that I'm a failure or a screw up and remembering that thoughts can come and go. We've talked a little bit up until now about how behaviors, how we develop our personality by those behaviors that are selectively reinforced when faced with a choice. People do things that are most rewarding. And those things that are most rewarding could be in the short term or the long term. So for example, exercise. You know, I get up in the morning at 4 o' clock and I'm thinking, oh, do I really want to get dressed and go to the gym? In the short term, no. Sitting on the couch with my dog and drinking coffee is way more rewarding than going to the gym in the long term. Is it more rewarding? Is going to the gym and staying healthy more true to who I want to be and my identity? Well, yeah, so I forego the short term, the reinforcement in the short term, for the reinforcement in the long term. And it's important to help people look at that. And that again goes with the acceptance and commitment therapy. The matrix that we looked at a lot of times. Our dysfunctional behaviors are ones that provide immediate relief in the short term, but they actually pull us away from our longer term goals. People will continue to do behaviors that are rewarded and cease behaviors that are punished. If I do something enough times and it just doesn't work, I'm not going to do it anymore. I may do it two, three, five times. I don't learn really quickly, but eventually, if I don't succeed, I'm probably not going to do it again. When people are growing up in dysfunctional environments and they show empathy or they show compassion, or they try to help out a friend and it Backfires on them, or that behavior gets punished in some way, they may not do it again, or they may only try one or two more times and then say, you know what, whatever. Peace out. I can't deal with y' all humans anymore. I'm gonna go hang out with my dogs. We want to look at people's history and see what was rewarded and what was punished in order to understand why they react the way they react to a particular stimulus, why that happens. When one of the gyms that I go to, they have this alarm that goes off if theoretically two people come in at once. Oh my gosh. And it is a really loud, startling alarm. I jump out of my skin every time it happens. That's my history. Now other people in the gym don't even seem to notice it. And I'm like, how can you not notice that? But from a person centered perspective, my experiences are very different theoretically than their experiences. We do want to understand people's reactions, and we want to consider everything in a situation. Not just a sound, but transference reactions. I had a professor one time when I was in college. Great professor. Loved her to death as a teacher. But she reminded me of somebody in my past that really grated on my every last nerve. And I had to consciously fight that transference reaction because she was an awesome teacher and most of us just adored her. And it was important to pay attention to that. So these are things from a person centered perspective. We need to realize that, you know, you may have a class full of 30 people and one person in there doesn't like you, and it, well, it could be you, but it also could be their reaction to you based on their prior experiences. Even intermittent reinforcement can maintain a behavior. So if you help out a friend once and it goes okay, and then you help out another friend and oof, it goes really bad, and then you help out another friend and it goes bad. You know, it's intermittent. Then the fifth time you help somebody, it goes, well, and you're like, okay, maybe those last three times were just flukes there. So I'm gonna help somebody out again. It'll keep maintain a low level of that behavior. Fixed ratio reinforcement means every time you do something, it gets rewarded or punished. Or every fifth time you do something, it gets rewarded or punished. Variable ratio means you don't really know when it's gonna happen. You know, you could get a reinforcement after the first time you do it. You could get a reinforcement for the behavior after the sixth time you do it. And variable ratio reinforcement actually tends to maintain behaviors a lot longer than any other kind of reinforcement. So if you have something that just every once in a while the person gets a reward from it, then they're going to keep trying to get it. And this is actually the schedule that we kept our pigeons on when. When I was in graduate school and we trained our pigeon in the behavior modification lab to do the hokey pokey. It was really cute. But fixed interval means after a certain amount of time, there's a reward. We get paid on a fixed interval schedule of reinforcement. Every two weeks, you get a paycheck. Variable interval is, again, it could be you get paid after a day. It could be you get paid after two weeks. You just never know when it's going to come. So your variable schedules of reinforcement tend to be. Tend to keep behaviors going more often or longer than your fixed schedules of reinforcement. Why is that important? Because when people grow up in dysfunctional environments, their home environment, for example, may be extraordinarily dysfunctional, but then they've got a lot of good friends, and those relationships go really well. And so sometimes the behavior gets punished, but a lot of times it gets rewarded, which may keep them doing that behavior. Core concepts in person centered theory or therapy treat people with dignity and respect and support their personal perspectives. And sue raises a good point that one of the reasons transgender youth may have a difficult time and really struggle with anxiety and depression and various issues is because they don't have a lot of references to identify with. So when they say the I am, there's not a whole lot of stuff to fill in, and a lot of the stuff that's there, unfortunately, is negative. So we want to help them fill that I am. If they say I am transgender with all kinds of positives, so they can take on that Persona if that's who they are, and they can wear it with pride, if you will. Person centered theory provides autonomy and choice. We're not going to tell them what the best thing is for them. We're not going to tell them that they should get a divorce or they shouldn't get a divorce or they need to abstain or they can use controlled drinking or whatever. We're not going to tell them that. We're going to give them information about options and encourage them to search within themselves to find what makes the most sense in their mind to be true to who they are. Person centered theory builds on individual strengths, needs, abilities, and preferences. It's not the here is the same treatment plan I gave the last 17 people that came through here it's the tell me what strengths you have. Tell me what characteristics help you get through the tough times. Tell me what characteristics you have that you're proud of. And that could be creativity. That could be, they've got a lot of friends. Whatever it is, tell me what your needs are as you define them. What is it that you need to help you achieve your rich and meaningful life? What abilities do you already have? Let's build on what you already have. Let's not start by reinventing the wheel you have gotten. You, the client, have gotten to this point with the skills that you've had. And you may not be at the point you want to stop. You may want to feel better than you are now, but you've done things along the way to survive. What are your survival tools? What are your abilities? What can you do and what can we build on? And what are your preferences? What is it that you want out of treatment? What does your rich and meaningful life look like and what are your preferred ways of getting there? If somebody wants to work on substance abuse recovery and they want to go to 12 step meetings and they want to embrace the abstinence lifestyle, but they want to also take advantage of medication assisted therapy, those two things in some communities are seen as mutually exclusive. Abstinence versus medication assisted therapy. There are programs, there are actually 12 step programs for methadone, anonymous and some other things where people can go and still do the 12 steps while they're on medication assisted therapy. So we need to listen to their preferences and help them figure out, okay, how can we help you achieve your goals and get the support that you need? Which takes us to develop understanding relationships in the natural environment. We want to help people figure out where their resources are, the people that they can call on. We don't want them to be dependent on us forever. It's just, it's not ethical and it's not helping them. We want them to figure out how to develop this support network and how to take advantage of resources in the community to better exist within their community of choice. And we provide support and services that are responsive to individual needs. Person centered techniques emphasize congruence and genuineness. We want to be present with the client and we want to be genuine about how we feel. I mean, like I told you with that example earlier, I had strong reservations about some things and it was not congruent of me to go, that's a great idea. What was congruent was for me to say, I am going to be supportive of you and I will help you in any way I can. However, let me be genuine and tell you what my concerns are. Egalitarianism. We want to be on as level of a playing field as possible with our clients. We don't want to be the doctor providing a prescription. We want to be the coach, if you will, encouraging people to make the changes that work best for them. We want to provide unconditional positive regard. Remembering unconditional positive regard. We love the person. We respect the person for who they are. We may not like their choices, we may not agree with their opinions, but we respect them for who they are. And that goes such a long way. Even the semantics as I brought up before, the difference between saying you're a bad boy versus I love you but I really don't like the choice that you made or that behavior was really inappropriate, there's a difference between a bad behavior and a bad child. And we don't want to ingrain the bad child idea into a child because then they grow up going, I am a bad person instead of I am a good person that may make a lot of bad choices. Empathic understanding. Promotion of recovery versus minimizing illness. In person centered theory, we say what's your destination and what are we working towards versus where are you at and how am I going to get you out of there? You know, I want to look forward instead of trying to pull somebody out of a pit. I want to help them move towards their glory, if you will. And we want to emphasize the use of natural community settings. Confidence and validation expressed by the clinician can help clients develop a more accurate self concept. For example, if you have a client who is having a problem and we say, you know, the client says I'm a failure, Okay, I hear that you believe you're a failure. Tell me what led you to that conclusion. Asking open ended questions that can't be answered with one word answers to help you understand that person's. There's that person word again. That person's perspective. What leads that person person to that conclusion? Asking that person, what would it mean to be a success? Okay, you know, my best friend and I have very different ideas about what it means to be successful. And so if I impose my viewpoint on him, we're not going to get anywhere because that's not how he sees success. What's the difference between failing at something versus being a failure as a person and encouraging people to really mull that over? And that's one of those philosophical questions that I usually give people to mull over between sessions. The difference between failing at something or even a lot of things versus being a failure as a person. And then another question you can ask is tell me about some things in your life that you're proud of or that are important to you. So when we're talking about self concept, we want to help pull out some of the positives that are in there that the person doesn't pay attention to. We're not negating the fact that they've made bad choices, we're not negating the fact that they failed at some things. You know that's there. But let's try to balance the other side of the scale a little bit and find out some other things. Order to help the person see that there may be other ways of interpreting it. If they end up looking at all the evidence and still saying, yeah, I'm a failure, okay, how are we going to address that? It's their perspective that we're working from. Another question you can ask. If people believe they're a failure, how would four people you know well describe you? Sometimes they don't know and that can be a homework assignment. If you have them go ask four people. If somebody asked you to describe me, what would you tell them? That can give them a lot of interesting feedback. You can also have them do a success failure worksheet. And I like doing this on the whiteboard. Draw a line down the middle. I have success on one side and failure on the other. Then in family, what does it look like to you to be successful in terms of your family life? What does it take or what does it look like to you to be a failure in terms of family life? What does it look like to be a success in terms of friends, what does it look like to be a failure in terms of friends? And list those things out on the board so the person can see it objectively when words are on the board or in an email or whatever, when they're out there and you're visually seeing them, they don't go away as quickly. So then you can sit there and really mull them over a little bit. And then you can ask the client, after you do that entire worksheet, what about each of those things makes a person a success or a failure? So with job, maybe being successful in your job means being in management and making six fig. Okay, so what about being in management? Making six figures makes the person a success. Obviously they've been promoted, but what makes them a success in your eyes? Who are three people you admire and what have they succeeded and failed at? If you look at any athlete, if you look at any TV star, if you, you know, Oprah, for example, they've succeeded at some things and they've succeeded wonderfully, but they also have failed at some things. And encouraging them, encouraging clients to recognize that people. Every person succeeds and fails at different things. Tell me about your child or best friend. What has he or she succeeded or failed at? Again, helping people recognize that we all have successes and failures and encouraging them to embrace dialectics. Okay, you failed at being able to maintain that marriage and you are a strong person who is determined to, you know, be the best parent you can be or whatever. Encouraging them to embrace that. Now, recognizing, you know, with the marriage example, two takes two to tango. It wasn't just one person, you know, I realize all that. But using clients words, you know, I failed in this marriage. Okay, so I'm hearing you say you failed in that marriage. And you know what, what is coming of that? What other things are there to balance that scale? Clinicians confidence helps people become more aware of their true selves. We can ask people what people and things are important to you for a rich and meaningful life. A lot of times people have never really thought about that. Really have them spend a week, not just answer it off the cuff in five minutes. Spend a week thinking about if I had a rich and meaningful life and things were grand, awesome, wonderful, what is important in my life. And they may realize that having the Maserati and the 10,000 square foot mansion or whatever it is really isn't all that important because of how hard they would have to work and they would never get to enjoy it. Encourage them to look and figure out what's important to them because from there on out, they can start choosing the behaviors that are going to help them get closer to their rich and meaningful life. Encourage them to practice mindfulness, that head, heart and gut honesty. Becoming aware of their true selves means being mindful of when they're doing things that don't feel right for some reason. They may not be able to put their finger on why it doesn't feel right, but it doesn't feel right. Encourage them to do the real self versus ideal self exercise. Real self. You have them identify all the characteristics that describe them right now. And then you have them identify all of the characteristics that identify their ideal self and who they want to be. And then compare the two lists. Going through the two lists and saying, are these things really important? Because sometimes things we think we should be in our ideal self, those are artifacts, those are things that Our society has told us for some reason. So encouraging them to go through the ideal self exercise and figure out exactly what it is that they as a person really want to be. Check for egocentric or polarized thinking or minimization. You can say, you know, I hear that you believe that you're a failure. Did someone in your past tell you that or make you feel that way, or how did you come to that conclusion? Trying to figure out where that's coming from. If somebody told them that they were a failure, they were a bad person when they were little. When kids are egocentric, they take everything personally. They may have internalized that and said, okay, I'm a bad person henceforth and forevermore. And that notion that schema has gone unchecked. Another example is, you know, if a client says, my brother was valedictorian and captain of the football team, I was never good at sports and got average grades in school. So, you know, compared to him, I'm a failure. I'm the black sheep of the family, as they say. And I had a client say that to me once, and, you know, it broke my heart because I could see so much good in this client, and that client had accomplished so many things. It just wasn't in the same way that his family had. His dad was a doctor and, you know, his sister was a scientist and, you know, lots of very academically gifted people. And this client wasn't as academically gifted, but had a lot of other really awesome qualities and traits. Now, me spouting that out to him probably wasn't going to change his mind. You know, you're the therapist, you got to tell me that. But it was important for me to encourage him to start looking at what characteristics he did have and what he did bring to the table instead of what he didn't have to bring to the table. What do you bring to the table? If a client says I'm unlovable? You can say, well, I hear that you believe you're unlovable because your mother left when you were three. Let's look at the bigger picture of the situation. You know, did your mother leave because of you? And obviously you would probably segue into that a little bit more gently. But that's what I want to ultimately get to is helping the person realized that at three years old, you know, he or she didn't do anything to make mom leave. That was mom's choice based on mom's stuff, helping them re examine their, their schemas and beliefs and check them for true or discard. Them as false. And remember to encourage them to differentiate the person who from the behaviors. Instead of saying I'm a moron, say that was a really goofy thing to do. And confidence that we express can also help clients choose to act in ways that are congruent with self actualization, congruent with ways that will help them grow to be the person they want to be in their rich and meaningful life. You are have them define who they are and who they want to be and then say, okay, what do you need to do to become the person you want to be? And let's start making a plan. It's that simple. It's not magic. What things are holding you back and how can you address them? Building on their strengths and their perceptions of the things that are holding them back. And then I always default to that act matrix that we worked with the other week in class to help them see that where they are right now is just a moment in time. It is what it is and they can it feels how it feels. And they can choose behaviors that are going to use their energy to move them towards what's important or use energy and behaviors that drain their energy and get them further away from what's important to them. For example, I saw some of you in the chat room talking about social media sometimes with clients. I will suggest taking a break from social media because being on social media gets them so upset and drains so much energy and it's not helping them get towards what's important in their rich and meaningful life. You know, they can get on messenger, for example, and talk with their three or four good friends, but they don't have to get on Facebook and be inundated by their barrage of negativity. And so they're using their energy instead of reading through all the negativity, they're using their energy to connect with those four people that are more important. Common mistakes not involving the client in the treatment process. We need to make sure that we don't assume we know what's best for the client. We need to share assessment results. Now sometimes our assessment results are garbledygook. So we need to explain this is what the assessment showed. This is, you know, how we came to this conclusion. Do you agree? Do you not agree? Let's talk about it and make sure to take into consideration client preferences. If the client says, I don't need to be in residential, I've got it in outpatient, or if the client says I don't need treatment for trauma right now because trauma is not what's causing my issues. Even if you, the therapist, think it truly is, that's not where the client is right now. So we don't want to dismiss their preferences if they say they don't need trauma work. Okay, let's work on this other stuff right now. And then eventually we might revisit the other thing if it comes up. We want to make sure to foster self reliance instead of dependency. Don't do the treatment plan for them. Teach them how to do a treatment plan. Teach them how to set goals. Don't just throw solutions at them. Ask them what's worked for you in situations like this in the past, or what do you think would help right now? Use Socratic questioning in order to build the person up. 12 tips. Remember that the client is first and foremost a person and a survivor, not a disorder or a victim. And we want to view them this way. We want to view them as courageous people who've gotten here creatively and survived until now. We need to set clear boundaries so the client knows that they're not coming in and we're not going to just fix them. That's a really prominent misconception. I set clear boundaries with my clients, that this is a partnership and I might give you suggestions. And you know what? If you hear those suggestions and you think they're crazy, tell me you think they're crazy. Or if you've tried it and it hasn't worked for you, let me know. There's no sense me getting you to do something again that has clearly failed you in the past. We need to remember that the client knows best and create a shared vision. When we open the methadone clinic at one of the facilities I worked at, it was really hard for a lot of our clinicians to wrap their heads around medication assisted therapy. So creating a shared vision with those clients who were embracing medication assisted therapy was a real challenge for a lot of our clinicians. Conceptualize the treatment plan as a living document. As the person changes, that document is going to change. What was important in October may not be important in December. Act as a sounding board. Reflect back to them. Ask them what their opinion is, or, okay, let's switch roles. And if I came to you and I asked you the same question, what would you tell me? Encourage them to really reflect on what they're saying. Don't be judgmental. Don't make decisions for them. Identify and address obstacles to goal attainment. Instead of viewing them as pathological or resistance, people do what's most rewarding at that time. With the skills and tools that they have. So instead of looking at it as resistance, ask yourself, what am I missing? Why is this behavior that I don't want them to do and that they don't want to do? Why is that behavior more rewarding than this one over here? Why is non compliance with the treatment plan more rewarding than compliance? Focus on the overt and the COVID messages to understand what the client is really trying to communicate. Clients may tell us they came to treatment for this reason, but there are all these underlying reasons that are actually propelling the client. They're just. This is the one they're comfortable talking about right now. Maybe they're comfortable talking about depression and anxiety, but maybe one of the underlying reasons they came is, is that they are homosexual and they haven't come out to anybody yet. And they're trying to figure out how to embrace that identity, be genuine, and accept negative emotions of the client towards themselves. If the client wants to hate on themselves for a moment, you know, we need to not jump in right away. We need to accept when the client gets angry at themselves, we need to accept and then have them separate again their behavior from who they are. Maybe they made a mistake, maybe they failed at something, okay? But separating that from them being a mistake or from them being a failure, Accept negative emotions of the client towards us. There can be transference reactions. And it's important to pay attention to that and accept it and recognize that, okay, you know, this is what's playing out. And I find it helpful to explain to the client my perception of what might be going on most of the time. And we can have negative emotions ourselves towards our clients. We've got countertransference stuff going on. And we need to recognize that sometimes if you have a client, that when they come, you know, every time before their appointment, you're just dreading seeing them, they may evoke that same response in other people. So it's important to use that as a tidbit of clinical information to try to figure out, why is it that I dread seeing this client? And, you know, is that are those behaviors being rewarded or punished in their natural environment? And know yourself and your limitations. Some things you're just not going to be able to work with and be genuine with the client. And that's okay. You know, if there are situations that it is appropriate to refer. Personality and behavior are shaped by conditional and unconditional positive regard or reinforcement from each individual's microsystem, their internal themselves and their family and their mesosystem. Their work, their community, their school. What constitutes a personality disorder is largely culturally prescribed. We do need to remember that Person Centered Theory can help us create effective treatment plans by helping us understand what is important and valid to the client and build on their strengths, needs, abilities and preferences. Person Centered Theory can help us understand people's personality and behaviors by helping us see things through their experiential lens. What is it that they went through? And in the book Restoring Sanctuary, excellent trauma Informed book, she talks about changing the language from why are you doing this? To what happened to you that would prompt you to react in this way. By creating an environment free of judgment, we can encourage individuals to explore their true selves and start choosing behaviors that are congruent with their true selves so they're being who they are. Person Centered Theory validates the perspectives and feelings of the individual while challenging them to explore the facts and the big picture to see if they want to change their mind and if they don't, that's valid. But we do want to make sure that they're getting all of the information so they're making an informed choice. Are there any questions? I agree with you, Megan. It is hard to not be judgmental sometimes because we have that natural, you know, anxiety, fight or flight sort of reaction thing that goes on based on our schemas. What's important is that we can keep those schemas in check and say, okay, you know, what is making me respond this way? And be curious about why we're responding that way and check our judgmentalism as much as possible at the door. The test is in the class. When you go to allceus.com log in, go into the class. All righty everybody. I appreciate all of the interaction that I saw in the chat room today and if there are any other questions or comments, always feel free to email them to supportceus.com and I will get them and can respond in a timely fashion. Have a great day and I'll see you on Thursday. If this podcast helps you help your clients or yourself, please support us by purchasing your CEUs at Allce or getting your agency to sponsor an episode. A direct link to the on demand CEUs for this podcast is@allce.com podcastceus that's allce.com podcastceus to sponsor an episode of Counselor Toolbox and reach over 50,000 clinicians per week, go to allce.com sponsor thank you.