Theories of Choice, Essay Example

The primary choices of theories are the Cognitive Therapy and Family System Approaches.  Cognitive Therapy, which in the counseling therapy industry also known as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. The Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is therapy solution that focuses on engaging and arming the patient with different personal tools and strategies to untangle their struggles. The primary goal is the help the patient breakdown their barriers into smaller components that they can mentally managed while building a foundation to address all the dysfunctional issues. Theoretically speaking, when counseling children and adolescents my choice of theories is too t provide children and adolescents with a good foundation of talk therapy and gives them the necessary tools and strategies to cope with their struggles.

As a professional counselor or a scholarly-practitioner that believes in positive social change can use these instrument of counseling to help others effective dealing with their personal family struggles through effective counseling methods. The counseling theories all help promote positive social change by applying therapeutic solutions for children and adolescents that help them with improve self-esteem and development of self-worth in our society.  Through the use of theories, as an effective counselor, our job is to empower the client and help them see and understand that a new normal is possible through change.  To succeed in this, the use of “positive reinforcement will enable the client to take responsibility for their own growth, change, and eventual problem solution” (Capuzzi & Gross, 2011, p7.).  The individual and family can benefit from cognitive therapy, and the family system approach because the therapy focuses on who the person is today and how they want to improve that person for tomorrow. The counseling is just a tool to help the family find a platform to address their emotional problems but the cognitive therapy allows them how to change their negative though patterns that are disruptive.

Core Theoretical Concepts

One of the core principles is cognitive therapy which is an important elements of counseling that helps find ways of changing thought patterns, developing a positive therapeutic relationship and ensuring the individual is focusing on what they can do change their lives right now.  The primary reasons this method would be utilize is because these principles of cognitive therapy work well with individual and families in conjunction with the levels of cognition.  The level of cognition is important because this is the center of change for individuals that must come from breaking down these cognitive barriers.  The levels of cognition are “classified according to four levels: automatic thoughts, intermediate beliefs, core beliefs and schemas” (Seligman & Reichenberg, 2014). The automatic thoughts are positive and negative things that run constantly in our minds without stopping.  The intermediate beliefs provide an outline of all our automatic thoughts.  The individuals core beliefs are the same as our personal intermediate beliefs system that houses our core beliefs.  In counseling the therapy must reach those levels of cognition that are a complicated belief system to make changes. The organize patterns of thought called schemas affect the individual perceptions and how we view things, people and events even though that perception may be incorrect. It is important for the counselor to understand that our schemas are what dictates our behavior. According to Seligmann & Reicheberg, the schemas has some specific rules that control the information we process and our behavior. The schemas can negative or positively impact our perception of ourselves and how we think and how we act.  At the core of effective counseling approaches is the assumption that families and their patterns of communication and interaction profoundly affect human beings. The structural family therapy helps the therapist become involved with the therapeutic counseling that using a variety of techniques such as role playing, self-assessment and personal discovery sessions.

 The Family System Approaches

The “Family System Approaches” comprise three different therapies which emphasize the family’s background. Those approaches are (1) Adlerian Family Therapy (2) Multigenerational Family Therapy and (3) Structural Family Therapy. The family systems theory is focused on the dealing with dysfunction or problems in the now concerning the family solution, which is why it connects with cognitive therapy so well. The cognitive therapy directly focuses on the family’s behavior and emotions and how they work with those three components. It is through the principles of cognition, in which the professional therapist counsel’s individuals while establishing new healthier trains thought while learning to adjust to a new life. The cognitive therapy is effective in help families assimilate and adjust to a new way of living, thinking and learning.

In family systems approaches, the three forms of treatment work with the family members, in the same way that cognitive treatment does the individual in identifying a simple solution. The family systems approaches focuses on family members relevant problems and concerns together with addresses them by using Adlerian Family Therapy, Multigenerational Family Therapy and Structural Family Therapy. Adlerian Family Therapy examines an individuals and families birth order, social interests and brother or sister communication, along with additional factors. It concentrates on the family constellation as a means of dealing with the problems and challenges that the family is currently encountering. Multigenerational Family Therapy focuses on the psychological relationship system within the family, while Structural Family Therapy looks at the family member’s subsystems and how they function as a family unit.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

The emotional and self-esteem issues that are left untreated can cause an individual or family to spiral out of control. The best approach for this type of intervention would be the cognitive behavioral therapy because its core theoretical concepts involve addressing destructive thought patterns, transforming inaccurate perceptions, and strengthen one’s self-esteem.  This phenomena of cognitive distortion will not be resolved in one session because the individual has spent a life time building these negative self-images.  Seligman & Reichenberg (2014) states there are many psychological factors which are contributors to the long-term development of dysfunctional cognitions which include a person’s biology, genetics and their life experiences.  The cognitive behavioral method concentrates on the total make of the person and how these factors influence that individual’s thoughts and patters of beliefs. The cognitive therapy works because it examines the individual’s family social behavior and emotional reactions and to what degree does these reactions affect the ability to overcome negative behavior. The cognitive therapy offers a well-defined approach to safeguard an individual’s overall well-being.  This form of therapy examines the way people learn and think about making changes in their lives and which tools they access to make that change.  “Cognitive therapy premise is uses an educational learning model which believes that people learn the wrong way of dealing with their lives which requires them learning new ways of learning and thinking” (Capuzzi & Gross, 2011). The utilization of an educational model includes working with and exploring some of the main approaches to Cognitive Therapy.  According to Brownback & Mason (2015), the Principles of Cognitive Therapy include:

• Focusing on changing patterns of thoughts, feelings and acting
• Forming a therapeutic relationship
• Short term therapy
• Structured approach
• Assessment & treatment
• Multiple types of strategies and interventions
• Inductive reasoning and Socratic questioning
• Promotes overall well-being (emotional health)
• Client homework & feedback

The main principles above under the principles of cognitive therapy states the most important elements are actively finding ways of changing thought patterns, developing a positive therapeutic relationship and ensuring the individual is focusing on what they can do change their lives right now.  The primary reasons this method would be utilize is because these principles of cognitive therapy work well with individual and families in conjunction with the levels of cognition.  The focusing on the changing patterns helps the family get in touch with feeling they have been avoiding on the surface. The forming of a healthy therapeutic relationship helps the individual open up to new ways of thinking while building a strong trust foundation.  The overall benefits from these cognitive theories is the individual or family learns new coping skills now and providing them with tools to continue personal development at home.

Counseling Minority Children & Adolescents

The “Adlerian Family Therapy” is the best approach for counseling minority children and adolescent’s because this theory is effective working with diverse populations. The success of the Adlerian Family Therapy has a track record since 1934, which Alfred Alder was the first psychiatrist of that era to master family therapy(Bitter,2014). The Adlerian counseling method is one the theories that is a good practical approach to counseling children and families concerning dysfunctional personal problems and encourage them to make a positive change. The emphasis is addressing the personality of the individual that has been molded by the family unit. The teaching and educating the family about their interpersonal issues is the primary objective to using the Adlerian therapy theories. The Adlerian Family Therapy should be used in family situations that become entangled into cyclical negative behavior because of misconceived perceptions of other family members. These negative interactions among the family reflect dysfunction that must be addressed in family therapy. Consequently, the Adlerian counseling style is an educational model that considers the social heritage that may be some of the causes of the dysfunction.

A basic theory in Adlerian family therapy is the assumption that children and the family must constantly purse trying to stop the pattern of destructive emotional thoughts that dominate the cognitive thought process.  Consequently, these negative interactions are a challenge for the counselor to help redirect those negative thoughts into positive thought patterns. In most cases, the problems are better addressed using the Adlerian approach because the model takes into consideration social, ethic, heritage and family factors to design the proper family therapies. In addition, the Adlerian family therapy can be used in an educational model for public schools and community family education centers. The Adlerian approach is an excellent model to use as an assessment tool because the counselor can measure the impact of the negative interactions while developing a healing plan for the family.

Human Nature

It is human nature to seek personal enlightenment at different stages of their life. That is why I believe it’s important to the counseling treatment to considered the evolving stages of human growth and development of children and adolescents.  These stages are critical to understand because they are the crossroads of personal development by the parents and learned by the adolescent.  The children and adolescents will be faced with life changing stages are immersed in the family interactions emotionally, psychologically and cognitively.  It is human nature for adolescents to make decisions about who they are and what part of lessons learned from parents they want to keep in their minds. The counselor has to be prepared to address those rejection of lessons learned from parents and separate them from the adolescent so they can make good decisions in the future. The adolescent goes through difficult times during a growth stage of maturity and during this period of their lives, individuals “being making decisions about their future” (Vernon, 2010).  This stage also shows the importance of friendships and the integral part they play in their lives. The counselor can use the therapeutic environment to reach the adolescent during the natural process of learning self and the wanting to development new relationships.

Conclusion

In closing, my beliefs are firm that my theories of choice blend with my perceptions and beliefs on how I see change occur in individual and families.  A successful counselor must possess many qualities which some are natural affinity to help people but the teaching and learning must be done at the academic level as well.  In order to be a successful counselor and be effective with our clients, we must have a firm understanding of all theories and be able to integrate them in our daily interactions with clients (Dillion & Media, 2015). The application of these theories help professional counselors grow and learn from these applied theories while giving our best to help others with life changing breakthroughs. It is imperative that I become knowledgeable in all theories will allow me to effectively decide which theory is best for the client, which will be the one that he/she will benefit most from.  As I am armed with different knowledge on theories will provide a guide to becoming an effective counselor.

That client’s environment also plays a major role in how successful counseling will be with the client.  As counselors, we must “go outside the boundaries of traditional counseling” (Capuzzi & Gross, 2011, p47).  Understanding diversity is a must.   While I have not worked in the professional counseling realm, I am very passionate about working with individuals and families dealing not only with trauma and crisis, but everyday situations that are overwhelming to that person and that, that situation is breaking havoc on that person’s well-being.  One aspect that draws me to this, is the fact that what one person sees as traumatic, another might not.  It can be anything from a car accident, to being a survivor of a violent crime or a natural disaster.  Working in a diverse culture, multiculturalism is also very much of everyday counseling and something that all counselors must be sensitive too.  People’s upbringing, beliefs and culture itself, can either hinder or promote positive social change.  As an effective scholar-practitioner, I plan to promote social justice through advocacy.

References

BrownBack Mason & Associates. (2015).10 Principles of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy(CBT). Retrieved from http://brownbackmason.com/articles/10-principles-of-cognitive-behavioral-therapy-cbt

Bitter,R.(2014). Theory and practice of family therapy and counseling, second edition. Belmont: CA, Brooks/Cole Cengage

Capuzzi, D., & Gross, D. R. (2011). Counseling and Psychotherapy: Theories and Interventions (5th ed.). Alexandria, VA: American Counseling Association.

Dillon’s. & Demand, M. (2015). A list of skills needed to become an effective counselor. Retrieved from http://work.chron.com/list-skills-needed-become-effective-counselor-5100.html

Seligman, L., & Reichenberg, L. W. (2014). Theories of Counseling and Psychotherapy: Systems, Strategies, and Skills (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, United States of America: Pearson.