Adlerian approachThe Adlerian approach is based on individual psychology i.e. it emphasizes on holistic nature
and takes into consideration both nature and nurture of a person. Adlerian perspective focuses
on developing a healthy style of living. Since most of the client's problems are because of faulty
lifestyle Adlerian therapy can help MS with her problems.
The main role of the counselor is to act as a guide and mentor and help the client to provide
insight into the problem and suggest techniques to overcome it. It involves understanding the
client's background, family constellation, and beliefs about herself. After the primary evaluation,
it therapist's role to make the client understand the faulty lifestyle by developing social interest.
The therapist has to build a strong relationship and make a plan to help the client overcome her
faulty behaviors.
GoalMy goal would be to develop a trustworthy relationship with MS as she lacks trust in the
counseling process. Once a relationship is developed, some collaborative goals that I would
work on with the client involves would be having a positive self-image and self-esteem, to deal
with thoughts that make her think she is inferior to others. The next goal would be to make her
understand her faulty coping mechanism and negative perception of the family as she feels life
has been unfair to a more positive outlook to life in which she knows techniques in which can
solve her problems in an effective way. The long-term goal would be to change her avoidant
personality towards life problems to someone who can solve her problem and are motivated by
social interest i.e. to change MS’s lifestyles of avoiding problems to taking charge of it and not
blaming others.
View of Human natureFrom an Adlerian perspective, her problems can be attributed to her birth order. Since she is a
middle child, she feels that parents have been less attentive to her needs and feels squeezed
out between her elder sister and younger brother. She feels that no one pays attention to her
needs and hence is extremely sensitive and hence life appears unfair to her. Even though she
finally felt that her grandmother was giving attention; she lost her and making it difficult to cope
with her death. Her insecurity is one of the reasons why she is in constant fights with her
boyfriend. According to Adler’s theory, we all strive for perfection and hence MS is constantly
comparing herself with others in her workplace and hence has developed an inferiority complex
as she keeps feeling ‘that she is not not good enough’. Since her early recollections of life, she
feels unwanted and has a negative perception of her family and hence, she has developed a
faulty style of life. She has started avoiding her life problems. She doesn’t make any effort to
resolve her problems rather she tries to keep herself busy when she is emotionally
overwhelmed. She doesn’t want to take charge of her thoughts and beliefs; because she thinks
no one in her family will notice her achievement and hence is unable to find solution to deal with
her grandmother's death. She is also feels unhappy as she has to live with her family and hence
doesn’t make any effort to contribute to social interests. She lacks courage to take charge of her
problems and hence always blames it on the family.
And hence her problems can be solved by changing perceptions about her family and
developing a healthy coping style.
TechniquesIn the first phase of the therapeutic process, it is very important to develop a warm, supportive
and empathetic relationship with the client as she has little faith in the counseling process. The
next step would be to understand client's perspective of her problems. The next step would be
to involve ‘asking the question’ so that I understand MS’s priorities and what she expects from
life and to understand what is her idea of perfect life. Some of goals we would work on is having
a good routine and spending some quality time with partner; we would use ‘task setting’ to set
up short term goals as well as long term objectives. Short term goals would involve having a
healthy sleep, so if she says she wakes up by 9, we would change the time to 8:30 for a week
and then reduce it further. Similarly for food, we would start by having one healthy meal on a
fixed time in a day and move from further. During the sessions, ‘encouragement’ would be
used whenever client feels that she is unable to achieve a goal. Because she is unable to focus
currently at her work, I would like to ask her if she can take break as she is overworked, if she
denies that option I would ask her to ‘act as if’ she is as productive as she wants to be at her
workplace and set very short term goals and tick of the bucket list. The same technique would
be used when she is having fights with her boyfriend, so I would ask MS to list down certain
behaviour that she could think of as a list of doable behaviours to reduce the fights with her
boyfriend. If she answers that she would try to listen to him and would like to calm herself down
and could do some activities they used to enjoy doing together. Then she would be asked which
activity is the most doable and plan goals accordingly.
The long term goal would be to change her perceptions about her family. For this I would like to
use ‘confrontation’. I would ask her why do you think that she is unwanted in her family and if
she doesn’t make an effort how will things change.
I will make her develop ‘push-buttons for ,when she feels she is not good enough so that she
can always push a button and remember when she successfully completed task and same
when she misses grandmother she can button how she made her feel.
Catching self anf feelings of inferiority
REBTRational behavior emotive behavior therapy helpful to identify irrational beliefs and negative
thoughts that is leading to emotional and behavioral issues. MS views herself negatively and
hence she has a number of irrational thoughts causing her a lot of emotional and behavioral
problems. And hence we can use REBT to solve her problems.
Role
The main role of a REBT therapist is to teach the client to identify their irrational beliefs and
change them into functional beliefs. And hence, a counselor needs to be an active listener to
identify irrational beliefs and thought patterns. The therapy process would also challenge client's
beliefs which are dysfunctional. MS might be reluctant to do so as she developed beliefs when
she was young and hence persistence and empathy is also required.
Goals of the counselorMS has a lot of irrational beliefs and thoughts about herself. She is also in grief and is unable to
cope with emotions and hence is unable to understand her feelings and emotions. The goal of
the counseling is to teach her to differentiate between her rational and irrational beliefs about
herself. The next goal is to help her come to terms with the loss of her grandmother. Since she
is finding it difficult to deal with the loss, it has led to self-defeating behavior and hence the goal
would involve teaching her techniques that are healthy ways to deal with the problems and
make them consistent over time.
View of human natureRebt believes that humans can act either rationally or Irrationally. Most of the problems are
caused due to her irrational thoughts and beliefs about herself and her surroundings. She
believes she is not good enough at work and all her troubles are because of her parents. These
irrational beliefs lead to unhealthy coping mechanisms. MS is always avoiding situations and
whenever her thoughts trouble her. She is hurt because her grandmother who provided with
attention and love she always craved for left her and other members of her don’t care about her
and hence she is sulking about life situations rather than addressing the problems. According to
REBT, children are more likely to develop these beliefs and since MS had a difficult childhood
are beliefs have to become too rigid and extreme. According to the approach, people have the
means to control their feelings, but it is important what they tell themselves about the problem.
And since MS mostly believes that all the problems in her life are due to neglect of her parents,
she feels her problems are out of her control.
technique
Counselling technique and A-B-C-D-E model would be applied to understand the cause of the
behavior and to do behavior modification. Since she is facing grief I would start with
understanding her thoughts connected to death and then rephrase it to reduce the extremity of
the emotions. For example- when I asked why she is upset about her grandmother’s death; she
said she was the only one who loved me, I would ask her- is she the only one with whom you
share everything and then we changed the thought to i lost someone with whom I could share
everything. This would be followed by changing negative beliefs about herself. Cognitive
disputation would also be used for the same to point to the irrationality of her thoughts. This
would help her change her unhealthy negative emotions to healthy negative emotions and
hence it would be easier to deal with emotions.
A
(activating
event)
Death of
grandmother
Unable to focus
on work
B
(belief)
C
(consequence
)
D
(disputation)
E
(effect)
I lost someone who I
used to share
everything.
Sad
I don’t have anyone to
talk to.
Lonely
It is painful and unfair.
Anxious, Hurt
It is painful I will not
see them again
Sad,
Acceptance
Anxious
I am not able to
complete everything in
my to-do list
concern
I am not good enough
I would rational-emotive imagery which is a form of imaginal disputation to help her with
negative thoughts at her workplace which is unable to overcome. For this, I would ask her to
imagine the worst possible situation at the workplace and she starts by telling me that she is
unable to focus on her, work and is absent-minded in her meeting, and has forgotten to takes
ReflectionI feel that since I am an elder sister and I may try to justify her behavior. I am very close to
grandmother and hence my insecurities about she leaving can be make it difficult for me to
empathize with her grief. My biggest challenge to help her resolve with her family because she
might I am siding with one member of my family.
notes. She feels that she won’t be able to manage the task given to her. After which I will slowly
ask to change imagine that she is trying to concentrate but still she has missed some parts, so
she asked her colleagues for the parts she has missed. Then she divided the work into small
tasks and focused on completing at a time. She also asked her coworkers to review her after
completion of she each. And hence with help of the technique she was able able to reduce her
anxiety.
Since she craved for better feeling with her mother and feeling, I ‘confronted’ her that she
would require effort from her side. So I would use ‘behavioral disputation’ and give her
homework to talk to each member of the family for 5 minutes and as the weeks progressed I
would increase time. I would also use role play to make her realize her assumptions about
family. I would ask her to describe a fight with her boyfriend and confront her where she is
wrong. Since MS, is constantly thinking negatively about herself I would ask her to ‘catch
herself’ and would provide her reinforcement for every time she corrects distortions of 10
thoughts or is able to do her homework.
I would always encourage her throughout the process to make changes.