Lecture 2 Flashcards
What is the relation between systems and change?
- Systems inherently resist change and seek to maintain a certain predictable order
- Systems are constantly reorganizing and transforming themselves
- Systems love homeostasis
What is cybernetics?
- Systems engage in feedback loops as a way to maintain homeostasis
- Comes from general systems theory
What are the two types of feedback loops?
Positive and negative
What is a negative feedback loop?
When a system experiences a change, negative feedback pulls a system back to homeostasis (how things usually operate)
Non-family examples:
- Your body temperature
- hunger
Family examples:
- Husband loses his job, wife picks up extra work to alleviate the financial stress
- Adolescent seeks independence, parents give them stricter rules to keep them home
What is a positive feedback loop?
Positive feedback amplifies changes, moving a system away from prior homeostasis
Non-family examples: Contractions/childbirth in a pregnant woman
Family examples:
- Family begins to see their son as the “problem child,” leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy
- A couple with marital problems begins to utilize softer communication skills leading to more positive experiences with each other, allowing more opportunities for intimacy, which allows for it to be easier to utilize softer communication
Negative vs. Positive feedback loops
Negative feedback loops
- Dampens
- Buffers
- Corrects
Positive feedback loops
- Enhances
- Amplifies
- Escalates
What is first order change?
Family patterns of interaction or sequences are altered at the behavioral level only
What is second order change?
The family rules or underlying beliefs or premises that govern family members’ behavior or promote specific reactions are altered
What are the stages of change?
- Precontemplation: No intention to take action in the next 6 months
- Contemplation: Intends to take action in the next 6 months
- Preparation: Intends to take action within the next 30 days
- Action: Has changed overt behavior for more than 6 months
- Maintenance: Has changed overt behavior for more than 6 months
What are the stages of step-family development?
- Fantasy - Adults have expectations of instant love in a ready-made family
- Immersion - A sense of discomfort and evidence of tension and conflict
- Awareness - Members getting to know themselves and each other in the new system
- Mobilization - Coping with struggles over differences while maintaining momentum from earlier stages
- Action - Strengthening of the couple’s relationship and greater cohesion among new family members
- Contact - Stepparent-stepchild relationship becomes closer and more authentic and some stability has been achieved
- Resolution - Members experience their step relationships as reliable and nurturing
What is the assessment structure of the first 5 sessions?
- Session 1
- Joining, administrative issues, presenting problem and couple strengths/resources, inventories
- Session 2
- Communication sample, relationship history
- Session 3 and 4
- Individual sessions
- Session 5
- Collaboratively discuss a treatment plan
What are The Eight C’s?
- Communication
- Conflict resolution
- Commitment
- Contract
- Caring and Cohesion
- Character
- Culture
- Children
What are the 4 horsemen of communication?
- Criticism
- Contempt - The most toxic, when the person is disgusted by their partner
- Defensiveness
- Stonewalling - When you can’t access your partner
What is flooding? (in terms of conflict resolution)
- When individuals become physiologically aroused, showing signs such as increased heart rate
- Will perceive things more negatively
What are caring and cohesion?
- Caring - Acts that partners do to show that they care for and love one another
- Cohesion - The sense of closeness that a couple experiences
