CHOICE THEORY
REALITY THERAPY
in SCHOOL
Reality
• We live in a world we can See, Hear, Touch,
Taste, Smell.
• We call it the real world or reality
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No two people perceive the world the same
Parent ……. child
Optimist …… pessimist
Sane ……… insane
• We all live in the same world, but each
person sees it differently.
CHOICE THEORY & REALITY THERAPY
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Choice
Control
Behavior
Reality
My Personal World
Taking Responsibility
Choice
Taking
Responsibility
Control
YOU
My Quality
World
Behavior
Reality
Behavior
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You control every behavior.
You have a choice to behave or not.
Every behavior has a purpose.
Even doing nothing is a choice.
We cannot make anyone do anything
he/she doesn’t want to do.
• Individuals choose behaviors!
Choice
• The only behavior we can control is our own.
• When choices are made, people discover the
result attained is desirable or undesirable.
• Choice is not caused by outside forces.
• Choice Worksheet
– List five choices you made at home and school
– Good choice (+); Bad choice (-)
– How many good choices? How many bad choices?
– What did you learn?
– Complete the sentences.
My Personal Picture Album
• My personal world – Wants
• Group of pictures
– Create and recreate.
– Contains pictures that are most important to you.
• We organize these pictures into three
categories:
– The people we most want to be with.
– The things we most want to own or experience.
– The ideas of beliefs that control our behavior.
How it works
• Personal world – How Does it Work worksheet
• Remember the last holiday or your birthday and a
gift you wanted and write on the first blank.
• Did you get the gift?
• How did you feel?
• Anytime we feel good - we are choosing to behave
so someone, something or some belief in the real
world comes close to matching a picture of our
personal world.
• Anytime we succeed at satisfying a picture – we feel
good.
• Anytime we fail - we feel pain.
First Step
• What are the pictures in your child/student’s personal
world?
• School – achievements, behavior, attendance
• Family/friends – relationships
• Hobbies/extracurricular activities
• We order, rank, make decisions based on those
pictures.
• Parents/Teachers need to understand the pictures in
their child/student’s world.
• Parents/Teachers must:
– Know their child/student’s personal reality
– Listen and don’t judge
– Link child/student’s personal world to goals and wants in the
home or school is important
Personal World
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My Personal World
What are the pictures in your personal picture album?
Personal World Worksheet
When I think of _____ I see…
Describe the pictures in one area?
– School
– A class
– This school year
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Be specific
Be honest
Your pictures guide your behavior
Share with your parents
Quality World
• Pictures are removable, changeable, adjustable
and replaceable.
• Some pictures are realistic; others are
unrealistic.
• Pictures exist in priority.
• Pictures can be in conflict.
• Good relationships are built by sharing common
pictures.
• The pictures of an individual make sense to that
individual.
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Take responsibility
Change behavior
Get what I want
Be happy and successful
WDEP
• Teaching tool useful for understanding and
teaching:
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Responsibility
Control
Choice
Self-evaluation
W - wants
D – Do and Direction
E – Evaluation
P – Plan
W - Wants
• Asking the student what does he/she wants?
• Exploration
• What do you want for?
– School
– Yourself
– Career
• How hard do you want to work at solving the
problem? (commitment)
• What are you trying to avoid? (fear)
• How do you perceive your control of the
problem? (perception)
Level of Commitment
• “I don’t want to be here. Leave me alone.”
No commitment
• “I want the outcome, but I don’t want to make
the effort.”
More of a wish than intense desire
• “I’ll try” or “Maybe”
Middle level of commitment – willing to make a change.
“To try” allows room for excuses and failure.
Level of Commitment
• “I will do my best.”
Higher level of commitment and the beginning of
action planning, yet it still contains an escape hatch
for failure.
• “I will do whatever it takes.”
Highest level of commitment; person is willing to
make choices and produce the desired results.
W – Want
• What do you want?
• Students
– What do you want for school?
• Write your answers on
My Achievement Plan sheet
D –Direction and Doing
• Asking the student, “Are you headed in the
direction you want to be?”
• Goal is to help students understand they are
choosing their path.
• Asking the student, “What are you doing?”
– What – specifically (time, amount, etc.)
– Are – current or resent behaviors
– You – controllables – the student behavior
• No one changes behavior unless a judgment is
first made that current behaviors are not
helpful.
D- Direction and Doing
• Students will explore:
• D – Direction and doing
– What are you doing?
– What direction are you going?
• List behaviors
– Be specific
– How often
• Write the behaviors on second line (long line).
E- Self-Evaluation
• Help the students make judgments about their
behavior.
• Is the behavior, choices, beliefs, feelings:
– Helpful or hurtful
– Useful or useless
– Significant or meaningless
– Effective of ineffective
– Acceptable or unacceptable
• Evaluate the want:
– Obtainable or unobtainable
– Beneficial or harmful
– Highly desirable or mere wishes
E- Self-Evaluation
• Students do not change until they decide what
they are doing doesn’t help them accomplish what
they want.
• Is the behavior adding to or subtracting from
what the student wants?
• Self-Evaluation
• Students make judgments on what they are doing.
• Is this helping or hurting?
• Put a plus sign (+) if the behavior is helping or minus
sign (-) beside the behavior if it is hurting.
P - Plan
• What is your plan for change?
• Effective plans
– Best plan: initiated by student.
– Second best plan: initiated by student and school
counselor/parent.
– Third best plan: initiated by parent/school
counselor
– Only works if students accept that their current
behavior is not working.
Plans
• What if the student fails to follow through on the
plan?
• Student has not judged that their current behavior is
ineffective.
• “If you don’t follow through, will anything
change?
• Ask the student to experiment with the plan and try it
for a week.
• Try to do something for a limited amount of time.
“Try it for 30 minutes.”
• Focus on temporary change, and then determine
if it is worth the effort to continue.
Put it all together
• With your school counselor you will review:
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What you want,
What you are doing,
How is it working for you, and
Create a plan.
Use the Protection Plan worksheet to help you
determine if you have a good plan.
SCHOOL COUNSELING
ACTIVITIES IN
REALITY THERAPY
Total Behavior
Our Best Attempt to Satisfy Our Needs
• DOING – active behaviors
• THINKING – thoughts, self-statements
• FEELINGS – anger, joy, pain, anxiety
• PHYSIOLOGY – bodily reactions
CASE SCENARIO – BEHAVORIAL CAR
• Casey – 12th Grader
• Casey is sent to your office because she has been unable to
take her high school graduation test (after attempting to do
so since 11th grade). Her last time to take it in order to
graduate with her class is quickly approaching.
• She shared with her school counselor that she has anxiety or
panic attacks every time she has to take the test.
• After describing what happens each time she has attempted
to take the test, her school counselor decides to use Glasser’s
behavioral care to help her understand her anxiety attack
and how to overcome it.
GLASSER’S BEHAVIORAL CAR
Feeling
Acting
Physiology
Thinking
The 4 wheels on the car describe a person’s total
behavior. In order for the car to move, the four
wheels have to move together. It is the same for a
person to display any behavior, all four components
are present and work simultaneously.
CASE SCENARIO – BEHAVORIAL CAR
• The Explanation of Test Anxiety using Glasser’s BC:
• Casey knows (thinking) that it is time to take out the pencil
to begin the test, so she starts to feel a quiver in her stomach
(physiology); this makes her afraid (feeling) that she might
be sick all over the desk and her test papers, so she runs out
of the classroom to the bathroom (acting).
• When followed by a friend (sent by the teacher), she states
that she is having a test anxiety attach and she will not take
the test today (total behavior).
CASE SCENARIO – CLIENT ACTIVITY CHART
Family/Friends
(belonging)
Academics
(power/worth)
Extracurricular
(fun, freedom,
physiology)
The circle drawn shows the client’s perception of the amount of time he
spends participating in the various activities. This particular student
shows that he is spending equal time in all areas and therefore is feeling
satisfied that his basic needs (quality world) are being met. The circle’s
placement of equal portion in each activity is the desired goal or
behaviors of counseling.
CASE SCENARIO – CLIENT ACTIVITY CHART
• Ty – 8th Grader
• Ty was flagged as a potential repeater so you have
asked him to meet with you to discuss his study
habits and his first term grades.
• He failed most of his subjects including language
arts, mathematics, and science.
• Ty is popular and one of the star basketball players.
• You have him complete a client activity chart in
using reality therapy to work with him.
CASE SCENARIO – CLIENT ACTIVITY CHART
Family/Friends
(belonging
Academics
(power/worth)
Extracurricular
(fun, freedom, physiology)
Describe the counseling issue for this client. How might
you help him with Reality Therapy?
CASE SCENARIO – CLIENT ACTIVITY CHART
• His circle indicates that he perceives himself as not
having much worth or power in academics because
of the failing grades but having a large sense of
belonging (he knows that he is loved by his family
and he also has many friends), with lots of variety
(fun, freedom, physiology) activities in his life (he is
actively involved in extracurricular activities that
are sports and non-sports related).
CASE SCENARIO – USING A PATHOGRAM
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2
1
Belonging/
Love
Achievement/
Worth
FUN
Freedom
Physiology
CASE SCENARIO – USING A PATHOGRAM
A student in counseling will draw a
vertical line in each column indicating on
a 1-10 scale his/her perception of the level
of each need being met satisfactorily.
A number 1 indicates a low level of
satisfaction (dissatisfaction) and a 10
being very satisfied (happy).
CASE SCENARIO – USING A PATHOGRAM
10
9
8
7
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5
4
3
2_______________
1
________________
________________
Belonging/
Love
Achievement/
Worth
FUN
________________
________________
Freedom
Physiology
Jeremy – 4th grader
Jeremy would need to see the school counselor. Why?
CASE SCENARIO – USING A PATHOGRAM
Jeremy – 4th grader
Jeremy indicates that he sees himself as being very
low on feeling a sense of belonging or love (the 2
represents his mother’s love);
He sees himself even lower in self-worth or having a
sense of achievement (he has repeated a grade and has
been placed in a higher grade because of his age);
Jeremy has no friends so there is no fun in his life
(“life is boring”);
CASE SCENARIO – USING A PATHOGRAM
Jeremy – 4th grader
Jeremy feels like he has a lot of freedom because his
mother allows him to do whatever he wants and
comes home when ever he wants to;
Since “life is so boring” he believes that his physiology
is fairly low because there is not much to do other
than play video games whether he is at home or
hanging out with friends.
He describes his life as doing the “the same ole same
ole.”
How would you proceed with Jeremy in counseling?
Glasser's Reality Therapy
• Two Assumptions:
– A. Need to love and be loved
– B. To be worthwhile as a person
• Three Approaches:
– A. Involvement
– B. Rejection of unrealistic behavior
– C. Relearning realistic or new behaviors
• How might you work with a student who wants to
get out of gang/delinquent behaviors?
“People change when they evaluate
their own behavior and
develop and implement specific plans.”
(adapted from Wubbolding, 2000)