Re:A few thoughts about dealing with an

I think your suggestion to do thought reports, guided discovery to find underlying fears and beliefs excellant. This is how I use schema therapy to find underlying schema leading to attachment difficulties. I have some additional suggestion.

After the client finds the underlying beliefs and core beliefs, then she should develop alternative, healthy beliefs. She can put these on a flash card to practice them or use visualization to practice using the alternatives in high risk situations (situations where you've found that she has the difficulties from your thought reports). For example: She imagines herself in a situation where the therapist is telling her he will be going on vacation--She visualizes herself telling herself "You will be okay. You have the tools to help yourself, etc." This is Maultsby's Rational Emotive Imagery which I find very helpful.

Hugging I agree is a no, no (impossible when you work with correctional clients.) I teach inner child imagery so that the client learns how to use her own adult self to nurture her inner child (and also counter the child's maladaptive schema). In the imagery, the adult self can voice the alternative, healthy beliefs e.g. "You're lovable." Research has shown this imagery effective with PTSD clients (Smucker and Dancu, 1999) and I use it a lot with all kinds of maladaptive schema or core beliefs.

Using the idea of core beliefs or schemas, we can transform attachment (a psychoanalytical concept) into a cognitive model, teach the client to identify her own maladaptive schema and teach her skills to identify and strengthen belief alternatives.

Replies:

There are no replies to this message.

| Behavior OnLine Home Page | Disclaimer |

Copyright © 1996-2004 Behavior OnLine, Inc. All rights reserved.