Class 8 Flashcards
Is personality disorder complex
- yes
- >its treatment for personality disorder tends to be targeted and specialized to diagnosis
What is the definition of a personality disorder
- persistent and pervasive dysfunction in processing and interpersonal strategizing
- > impacts various life domains
- > it is a developmental disorder with late adolescence onset
What is crucial to treating personality dysfunction
- it is done through relationships
- experiencing safety, epistemic trust, perspective-taking and psychological flexibility
What are traditional CBT’s
-comes from Beck, Ellis and Meichenbaum
- cognitive restructuring is key here
- > so therapy is involved in correcting errors and thinking/appraisal(identify cognitive distortions)
What is CBT appropriate for personality dysfunction
- contextual cognitive behavioral therapies
- > eg; dialectical behavioural therapy, mindfulness cognitive therapy, compassion-focused therapy, emotion efficacy therapy and acceptance/commitment therapy
- these therapies are focusing on the process of how we come to perceive and make sense
- > how do we arrive at thinking and the process of thinking
- > all of these approaches here are emphasizing mindfulness, acceptance, perspective-taking and valued action
What is therapy
- therapy is a present moment process
- > assessment and intervention happens in the here-now of therapy
-assessment is the ability to formulate a working hypothesis based off what you observe and what the client self reports
- intervention is what you do in response to the hypothesis
- > it is what you say next
Describe the acceptance and commitment therapy
- it is rooted in traditional behavioural analysis
- > it is also recognized as a robust evidence based approach
- > works to promote psychological flexibility(doesn’t just focus on the elimination of symptoms)
- > a functional analytic approach(how a behavior works in a context, not what the behavior is)
- > it is experiential not conceptual. really works on skill development
-ACT really explores a client’s experience of doing, assessing mental functions and addressing perfformance skills
What are the six components of the psychological flexibility model
1) Present Moment Awareness
- >is client attentive
2) Values
- >look at the client’s motivation
3) Committed Action
- >look at client’s overt behavior
4) Self-as-context
- >what is the client’s conceptualized self
5) Cognitive defusion
- >look at client cognition
6) Acceptance
- >what is the affect of the client
What is psychological flexibility
- it is all about describing behaviours
- it is also describing the skills involved in doing something really challenging
- > doing something where we are confronted with pain, discomfort or limitation
How do we promote psychological flexibility when it comes to the ACT approach
- through
- > ourselves(modelling psychological flexibility)
- > language(experiential inquiry, metaphors)
- > play(activities, exercise)
- as a therapist, approach a client situation with an attitude of discovery
- > not knowing what is going to happen
- > be willing to let the exercise flop
What does ACT indicate of signs that flexibility is occurring
- noticing aspects of their experience
- a sense of wonder and awe
- > wow look at what we are doing here
- willingness to feel what was previously avoided
- spontaneous realization
- expressing emotions
- increased verbal fluency
- start using non-evaluative language
- being able to verbalize values
- identifying workable toward moved
What is the point of psychological flexibility according to ACT
- you become intimate and non-attached to the conscious experience
- handle information as information; as it is, not what it says is
- > I notice my system telling me failure is not true. I am just facing difficulties
-live a life worth living
What is a relational frame theory
- language is the learned behavior of attributing meaning to stimuli
- this process of framing influences our perceptions and behavior
- > it is called the transformation of stimulus function
- > the way we perceive stimuli influences the way we behave
- what is crucial is that language enables us to frame relationships between stimuli which we might never directly encounter with our 5-senses experience
- > language produces imagination
- > words enables us to imagine stuff
What is perspective-taking? Is personality dysfunction related to perspective-taking defecits?
- the ability to attribute mental states to oneself
- understand that others have beliefs, desires, intentions and perspectives differing from one’s own
- personality dysfunction is related to perspective-taking deficits
- > sense of self disturbances, affect dysregulation and interpersonal difficulties
Does psychological flexibility skills promote perspective-taking skills and vice versa
-yes
Does the health of our social and cultural contexts exert a powerful influence on our sense of self
- yes
- it causes
- > certain ideals
- > inaccurate rules regarding our psychology
- > assign and encourage labels
- > organizes roles to which we conform
What is tacting and describe the process of tacting
Tacting is verbally discriminating experience
- done through
1) notice(can they orient and attend to what is there)
2) name(can they name and describe what’s there using non-evaluative language)
3) let go(can they speak about what’s there from different angles)
4) soften(can they hold what’s there lightly and express some kindness and care)
5) Expand(can they connect to what matters in presence of what’s there)
-the last three steps are really perspective taking and the first two are tacting
How does your brain make sense of stimulation
- it relies on sensory stimulation from meaningful information about our context
- > information is the perception of difference
- > if your brain cannot make sense of stimulation, then it does not exist(it goes unnoticed and is noise)
- > when we are able to perceive differences, then we are able to differentiate information
What is exteroception
-sight, taste, touch, pressure, hearing, smell, temperature
What is introception
- detecting signals from our “internal milieu”
- >kinesthesia, proprioceptive, viscerosomatic cues(feelings like butterflies in your tummy), interoceptors
