Psychosocial terms Flashcards
5 Stages of Grief
●Denial ●Anger ●Depression ●Bargaining ●Acceptance
Psychological ABCs
●Appearance/Affect
●Behavior
●Cognitive processing/Coping
Transference
●Redirection of feelings from a past situation/relationship to the current relationship
●The patient’s feelings toward the counselor
Countertransference
●The counselor’s feelings toward the patient
●Often a reaction to transference
Regression
●Reversion to an earlier state of development in the face of troubling or difficult to deal with news
●Ex. Refusing to leave the bed/house, wanting partner or parent to do things for you
Denial
●Refusal to accept what has happened, acting as though the event did not occur
Repression
Unconscious blocking of unwanted feelings or information
Reaction Formation
Defense mechanism
●Expressing the opposite emotion from what is actually felt
●Ex. Laughing when sad, saying something is funny when it’s scary/sad
Example: A father who is very angry at the genetic counselor after hearing that his balanced translocation led to his child’s multiple congenital anomalies is overly courteous and pleasant toward the genetic counselor.
Intellectualization
●Dealing with difficult emotions by trying to gather or process large amounts of information
●Ex. Demanding to know the positive and negative detection rates after a positive result
Projection
●Putting the feelings you have onto others instead of facing them
●Ex. Believing someone hates you because you hate them
Sublimation
Defense mechanism
●Expressing feelings of sadness or anger in “socially acceptable” ways
●Ex. Using a punching bag to channel anger
Example: A mother is angry and pained after learning about her son’s diagnosis of Duchenne muscular dystrophy. She channels these feelings into becoming a committed and thoughtful worker for a parent support group.
Rationalization
●Distortion of the truth to make an event/feelings less scary or overwhelming
Displacement
●Redirection of emotions/feelings to an object that is less threatening
●Ex. “The test results aren’t right because that lab is incompetent”
Discuss how compartmentalization or hierarchical relationships or can impact a client’s view of “meaning.”
Clients often search for the meaning of the adverse event or circumstance that has brought them to genetic counseling
Draw on their orientation toward understanding the world, including a scientific understanding or other beliefs and belief systems
Non-scientific beliefs may be held in addition to scientific explanations
- compartmentalized
- hierarchical relationship
Compartmentalization example: A father may rationally accept the autosomal recessive explanation for his child’s cystic fibrosis while feeling very strongly that it is due to his adolescent use of recreational drugs.
Hierarchical example: A mother may understand trisomy 21 as the mechanistic explanation for her child’s Down syndrome, but draw emotional support and comfort from her firmly held belief that it is God’s will.
Identify and define 3 mimics of denial
Disbelief
- -Information is heard but not accepted as it appears to be nonsense
- –Addressed by prioritizing and promoting treatments or interventions, allowing time for the information and implications to be understood
Deferral
- –Information is accepted but the implications are not
- –Addressed by empathically acknowledging that the information is scary or difficult while helping a client use social or psychological resources for coping
Dismissal
- –Devaluing or attacking the legitimacy of the professional or the profession from which bad news is received
- —Addressed by acknowledging the anger and emphasizing aspects of diagnosis that the client does not accept while being nonjudgmental
