Describe and Evaluate Two Approaches to the Treatment of Self-Defeating Behaviour.

The people today are becoming increasingly known of the importance of the counseling needs of individuals whose behavior is self-injurious. The term 'self-injurious' has a deep meaning and "includes any self-destructive or self-defeating behavior used to express or communicate something that is otherwise perceived as unacceptable" (Stone & Sias 2003).

Many people think that self-harm is no big deal. “It’s just for attention,” they say “they’re not really hurting themselves… right?” Wrong. Self-harm is a HUGE deal. In fact, it is 40-100 times more common than suicide. Suicide has been around for ages, while self-harm is a new trend that has been growing since the mid 1990’s, and the numbers are still skyrocketing. Self-harm was three times more common in 2011 than in 2007. Now, tell me that you think that that isn’t a big deal. Statistics show that 1% of the United States self-harms. So imagine you are in a room with 200 other people. It is likely that two of these people hurt themselves. Sometimes it is daily, other times it may just be occasional. Two people may not seem like a lot, but in reality it is.

In this part of the assignment the author will explain the contribution of contrasting psychological theories to the understanding of two specific behaviours

Chrysalis Diploma in Counselling and Psychotherapy -Year Two- How to work with Self-Defeating Behaviours - Module Five 08/2010-10307SC

In this essay I plan to describe and evaluate two approaches to the treatment of self defeating behaviour. I will do this by describing self defeating behaviour, including its origins, causes and maintenance and then I will proceed to describe two treatments that might be offered by a therapist working with this and how it would impact on the behaviour presenting itself.

While the media definitely plays a role in how we view ourselves, anorexia is a way of coping with what’s going on in a teen’s life. Stress, pain, anger, acceptance, confusion and fear can all become triggers for this debilitating eating disorder. The goal is one of trying to make their whole life better.

Self-Destructive Activities- The person often takes part in self-destructive activities often on the basis of impulse thinking. These activities include but are not restricted to, excessive alcohol and substance use, unsafe sex, and reckless driving.

It is proposed that one's behaviour is an involuntary act that is directly linked to the

Self fulfilling prophecies are not obtained as some have assumed because several factors in the real world social interactions work against the behavioral conformation of other expectations. Behavioral conformation may fail to occur because targets engage in behaving in a manner that provides protective feedback to expectations because targets show behavior, behaving in a manner that is opposite to disagreeable expectations.

In this radio interview neurologist Robert Sapolsky speaks on the issue of how well do humans really have control of their own behaviors. “We have very different potentials and sorts of tendencies for behavior lurking in us. And I think some of the most sort of surprising, shocking, appalling, wonderful cases of sort of human behavior is when one side of it suddenly comes out from a person who never ever expected that"-Sapolsky. Sapolsky goes on to say that whether you think you know yourself, your subconscious will always have the final say and will bring out emotions

consequences for high self monitoring individuals. First of all, High self monitoring people has the ability, skills and will to change their own views and hide their

“Now,” said Big Mamma, “What about your tendencies to speak or act in an unpremeditated fashion?” “The theory of Cognitive Psychology can be used to carefully assess this problem.” “You see,” explained Big Mamma, “when you do things impulsively, you are not doing anything wrong. Maybe you are impulsive because your brain processes information faster than some others do and weighs out the positive and negative affects of your potential words or actions, and you automatically express these without further thought because your brain has already processed the information. You already have reinforced your choice in your brain, and the next step is to act on it. “

While we originally entered society precisely to be protected from nature, escape the forces of mutual aggression and self-destruction, the necessity to thwart our aggressive instincts has caused great unhappiness and development of guilt. In addition, Freud supports that the civilization is largely responsible for our misery and we should be much happier if we return the primitive conditions. Because the aggressiveness caused by death instinct is tried to repress by the rule of law, imposition of the authority or ongoing result of these, superego.

practice self-control (Baumeister et al., 2007). The strength model is a popular theory that parallels ego depletion to physical activity, suggesting that self-control requires an energy resource, can be: strained and strengthened, and that the energy resource needs to be restored before optimal and self-control can occur (Baumeister et al., 2007; Muraven & Baumeister, 2000). This theory also intertwines the limited resource model, identifying self-control as a system in which every self-control task consumes the energy reserve and thus ensuing self-control tasks will have a limited supply of the energy resource, therefore negatively impacting the efficiency of the subsequent task (Baumeister et al., 2007; Muraven & Baumeister, 2000; Muraven et al., 1998). In a study outlined by Baumeister et al. (2007) participants were subjected to either of two conditions, whilst watching an emotionally arousing film. The control group freely expressed their emotions whilst the experimental group supressed or heightened emotional responses. Participants in the experimental condition displayed a poorer result in the subsequent self-control task of handgrip than those in the control condition. Hence supporting the hypothesis of the limited resource model. Furthermore, a study conducted by Muraven, Baumeister, and Tice (as cited in Muraven & Baumeister, 2000) supported the claim

Regression is one of the defence mechanisms identified by Freud. According to Freud there are times when people are faced with circumstances that make them feel at such unease and threatened, that they cannot deal with it and they protect themselves, by retreating to an earlier stage of development. Many children who use regression as a defence mechanism, may begin to suck their thumb again.