Behavioral Therapy
This blog is part of the series for my reflections on studying different therapy theories. For any citing or quotation, please email nicoyu.w@gmail.com
“Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take anyone at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select — doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.” (Watson, J.B., 1930) This famous quote says a lot of the fundamental belief of Behavioral Theory: the environment shapes individuals; different personalities, characteristics, and even preferences are results of learning. Learning happens in forms: classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and social observations. From this concept, behavioral therapy sees the nature of human suffering as a series of maladaptive beliefs or behaviors from experiences, and they can be corrected or unconditioned. The most famous example of classical conditioning is Pavlov’s dog; the dog salivated when it heard the bell rang after the repeated association of the sound and the present of food. Applying the concept of learning, a person who suffers from social anxiety can be due to multiple social distress or be laughed at in the family at a young age; this individual associate giving opinion in public or talking to stranger with the feeling of inferior, the worry of providing wrong answers, and hence the anxious feeling.
Because the objectivity in the view of all personal issue or sufferings is due to the maladaptive behavior or thinking, there are many empirical support techniques for supporting Behavioural Therapy, including mindfulness, desensitization, flooding, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and Dialectic Behavioural Therapy (DBT). Most of the technique can be groups into two categories: the first category introduces the mindfulness and relaxation skill to the client, and then gradually place the source of anxiety in the plate, and the client would apply the relaxation or mindfulness technique to stay calm while the cause of stress is at present. The other group of methods, such as DBT and ACT, help people become aware of thoughts or feelings and accept them instead of being self-critical or self-punitive.
As a beginning therapist, I can see the massive benefit of applying behavioral therapy techniques: it provides immediate resolutions for clients to improve the quality of life. However, the biggest critique of Behavioral therapy is that this approach works as a bandaid — it covers the wound and helps the skin to heal, but the infections deep down are not touched nor treated. Changing a maladaptive behavior or thought might improve the immediate problem, such as be able to remain calm in a social setting or identify suicidal thoughts and stop it. However, without knowing the actual reason why this person is suffering, more issues would surface in the same or different form in the future. Take the same social anxiety example mentioned earlier, teaching this person how to relax in the social setting or how to communicate with friends and family, might solve the immediate problem, which is to improve the communication with other people; however, this anxiety might come back when the individual’s family accidentally reject his idea again. As a beginning therapist, I would apply behavioral techniques with humanistic theory. With the person-centered and Gestalt therapeutic approach, I can see how clients and I can work together to explore the problems and to understand the underlying reasons why he or she is suffering. However, it will be a very long process, and I have concerns to leave a client hanging there while we open his or her wound, but the current therapy session has finished. Adding some techniques from behavioral therapy, I can provide easy access tools, like mindfulness skill and DBT, for the client to practice outside the therapy session, and to provide psychoeducation to clients and their family. With the behavioral interventions, I can feel assured that clients would able to deal with everyday anxiety or depression, while we spend more time on digging the deeper issue.
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References
Corey, G. (2017). /Theory and Practice of Counseling and Psychotherapy: Student Manual (10th edition)./ Boston: Cengage Learning
