People and Change

An Introduction To Counseling and Stress Management

Catherine M. Flanagan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317717492
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Clinical Psychology
• Index: Psychology

How to capitalize on change -- as a key feature of modern living - - is the central theme of this work. Incorporating the major theoretical advances psychology has made during the last thirty years, People and Change describes how clinical levels of psychological difficulty can develop and how problems such as phobias, depression, shyness, marital and sexual disharmony, obsessions, and over-indulgence are treated.

Although a psychology text, People and Change offers an unusually broad scope. The text acknowledges the interplay of somatic vulnerabilities, environmental influences, large individual differences, and various other factors that can be involved in the complex stress process that leads to bad habits. The ability of the individual to adapt to change through self-knowledge is stressed throughout this important book.

PART I

HOW PROBLEMS DEVELOP

1

Learning

Why do you spend lots of time doing some things and avoid doing others? Why do you feel at home with certain kinds of people and uncomfortable with others? Why do you do the things you do? How did you become the person you are? To an extent, what we all are can be accounted for in terms of our genetic inheritance; but far more important is learning. Living is learning. Even infants have a capacity to interact with and learn from their environment from the very first days of their lives.

Largely unknown to ourselves, we are learning new things and picking up little pieces of information all the time. We are constantly changing. However, as well as learning new things, we are also gradually becoming more practiced and efficient at the things we do repeatedly. These things, then, become habits. Learning applies to thinking as well as to behaving. We develop habits of thinking and, over time, a unique set of attitudes, beliefs, and values—a personal view of the world, or outlook on life.

BUILDING BLOCKS

For centuries, psychologists have been studying the multifarious aspects of how we learn. Learning is infinitely complex. However, familiarity with a small number of basic principles will explain how problems come about and the rationale of the therapy techniques that are described in later chapters.

There is a large body of rather sterile-sounding terminology relating to the processes involved in learning. This is a pity, because learning is essentially such a dynamic and vital activity and such an integral part of our existence. A minimum of jargon, and two terms in particular, are essential. These are stimulus and response, often referred to as S and R, respectively. A stimulus is anything (sound, sight, touch, thought) that triggers a response (action, behavior, feeling thought, image). The smell or sight of food (S) might make a hungry person salivate (R), and maybe say “Mmmmm” (R). A broken date (S) might make a lonely or depressed person feel even more despondent (R). A slightly soiled tablecloth in a restaurant might make an obsessionally clean person highly anxious about contamination (R) and maybe also trigger a compulsion to wash (R). It is the meaning of the particular stimulus to the particular person at the particular point in time that determines the response. To someone else, a broken date might trigger a mental note not to rely too much on that person again; the soiled tablecloth might spark an assertive request to simply have it replaced. Likewise, food will do little to tickle the salivary glands just after a large meal.

All sorts of things can serve as stimuli, from the most obvious and concrete (e.g., loud noise) to the most subtle and transitory (e.g., a fleeting expression on another’s face). The same can be said of responses. In sum, we are both taking in and responding to our environment all the time and on many different levels. Sometimes, we are very aware of what is affecting our behavior, and we are conscious of our response. For example, you might be aware of a very bright light in a room (S) and conscious of turning away from it (R). In the same way, some people are “louder” and more noticeable than others, and our reactions to such persons also occur on a more conscious level.

At other times, we are much less aware of what is influencing us, or how. In fact, sometimes we only realize in retrospect that we took in details of a situation or a person. Although the information did not consciously register at the time, it was nonetheless processed. In the same way, we are not always aware of our responses, until we realize them—or someone else points them out to us—at a later stage: “Every time you go shopping, you come back in a bad mood.” Really? “Yeah, and now, if I ask you how much you spent you’ll go all quiet.” This decreased level of self-awareness in relation to both stimuli and responses can be due to a number of things: being in a situation where too much is going on, being in a bland situation where nothing really stands out, being very tired or inebriated, or simply having other things on your mind at the time. In other words, stimuli and responses are processed on many different levels under different conditions.

DEVELOPING PATTERNS OF BEHAVIOR

Simple explanations of human behavior are impossible. Nonetheless, a look at how we acquire patterns of behavior over time will fill in the picture a little bit more. Learning takes place in three ways: by association, by consequence, and by observation.

Learning by Association

The first experiments on what is also called classical conditioning were carried out by a Russian psychologist, Pavlov, early in this century (Pavlov, 1927). He found that if he repeatedly paired the sound of a buzzer with the presentation of food to a hungry dog, the dog eventually salivated to the sound of the buzzer alone. In other words, learning by association refers to the fact that when two unrelated things are repeatedly paired together, or consistently occur together, we come to associate the automatic response to one with the other.

A friend’s cat jumps up and meows loudly in anticipation of food whenever a newspaper is rattled, because her food tray is placed on a newspaper at eating times. If you have ever felt anxious in a particular place on a number of occasions, you might find that seeing the people who were there on those occasions makes you feel uncomfortable again, even though there is no longer reason to be.

Learning by Consequence

Learning by consequence, also called operant conditioning, is particularly important in understanding how problem behaviors develop. In the 1960s, B. F. Skinner, the father of modern behaviorism, highlighted the subtle ways in which behavior is determined and maintained by what he called reinforcement contingencies (Skinner, 1969). Simply, if the consequences of doing something are pleasant, or “reinforcing”, people tend to do more of it. If not, they do less. If you were never rewarded, in any way, for your efforts, never paid for your work or praised for your commitment, you would be unlikely to continue with the same enthusiasm. If you were punished, you would certainly think twice about the stakes.

Learning by consequence also helps explain why people avoid certain situations or persons they find upsetting or anxiety-provoking. Avoidance temporarily removes the threat of unpleasantness; and the immediate relief that this brings makes the person more likely to avoid the same and similar situations again. Shy people avoid social situations that trigger anxiety; but this only adds to their isolation, as the response generalizes to more and more situations. Likewise, people who experience “panic attacks” often find themselves going out less and less, and many eventually become housebound. In the same way, people can develop exaggerated fears and phobias—of animals, heights, thunder, flying—that, over time, curtail more and more of their activities. Obsessional people often check or clean excessively to avoid the (irrational) feared consequences of not carrying out their ritual—for example, illness or contamination. The ritual provides temporary relief from anxiety, a feeling of having things under control, but also perpetuates the problem.

Learning by consequence also has a role to play in problems of overindulgence. For example, many people find eating so gratifying that this activity increases out of proportion—along with their figure. The same is true of alcohol consumption, smoking, drug taking, gambling, and spending too much. These problems involve a conflict: whether to succumb to the temptation of immediate enjoyment and pay later, or to exercise restraint and enjoy more significant positive consequences in the long term: “Will I give in and have a cigarette, or enjoy healthier lungs and finances 6 months from now?” Unfortunately, immediate enjoyment is often more compelling.

Learning by Observation

Learning by observation, also called vicarious conditioning or modeling was first systematically studied by another well-known psychologist, Albert Bandura, and his colleagues (Bandura, 1969). In essence, people learn about things and how to do things by watching other people. It is easy to forget or to simply not realize that, without the luxury of language to communicate and ask questions, children spend large amounts of their early years learning by looking. Young children learn by watching and then imitating the people around them—switching on the television, doing household chores, washing, showing affection. They also observe and learn the “feeling tone” with which these activities are carried out—the smiles, the frowns, the sighs, the groans. This is why young children are often, unwittingly, so revealing when they repeat an observed activity along with all the attendant grimaces and moans with which it is usually done by familiar figures. These are simply part of the child’s understanding of how it is done.

By observing others in everyday situations, over many years, children pick up innumerable gems of information and knowledge, which they then practice and perfect. Learning how to “read” and handle the complexities of social interaction clearly illustrates this. Other major sources of vicarious learning are movies, videos, and television. People model themselves on the behavior of those they admire; thus, the power of advertising and the media in general.

Observational learning has a large emotional, as well as informational, impact. Keeping in mind the large amounts of learning that take place before children can even talk, one can only speculate as to the effect of, for example, seeing familiar people in active disagreement or open argument. The child may learn how to handle or avoid such situations, but he may also feel confused, upset, afraid, or even guilty that it was in some way his fault. After all, everyone was frowning at him. Do they not love him any more? Are they going to go away and leave him? Not, as yet, able to understand the dynamics of the disagreement, or perhaps even what was being said, the memory of the unpleasant feelings will remain ingrained long after the incident itself has passed (see Guidano & Liotti, 1983).

In the same way, adults watching television news or, perhaps, a war documentary learn new facts, but also can be left feeling emotionally upset or disturbed. This can be because the program was genuinely sad or possibly because it struck some deeper, personal chord from a long time back—an experience they might not even be able to remember. Similiarly, we sometimes do not know, and cannot explain, why a relatively innocuous event upsets or moves us so much; and this, in itself, can be disturbing. On a day-to-day basis, horror movies generate a lot of adrenalin, whereas “tear jerkers” use up a lot of tissues. Observational learning plays an important role in how we develop our unique emotional reactions, as well as our general outlook on life, our personal beliefs, attitudes, and values.

DEVELOPING PATTERNS OF THINKING

Like learning behaviors and developing habits, our attitudes, beliefs, and values are also built up over a number of years. One of the major vehicles for this developing identity and outlook is language. Language is one of the most significant acquisitions of early childhood. It greatly increases the child’s capacity to learn, as well as the range and depth of potential experiences. Words allow people to think abstractly in concepts, to relate disparate events, to link past and present, and to objectify themselves and their experiences. Words allow us to communicate in a meaningful, reciprocal way with other people.

However, this does not all happen overnight. All through childhood, thinking remains very much tied to the concrete and the visible, to objects and people that are physically present. The child cannot yet think hypothetically, cannot philosophize or ponder altruistically on the human condition or the existential dilemma of modern man and the future of mankind. Nonetheless, his psychological world becomes progressively richer and more complex. New experiences, faces, places, and feelings are gradually incorporated and assimilated into a flexible and accommodating structure. It is not until adolescence that the young person first begins to think in a truly scientific and moral way (Piaget, 1970). Understandably, the onset of these capabilities is frequently accompanied by a search for answers and a search for self—the adolescent “identity crisis.” Languag...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• INTRODUCTION
• PART I: HOW PROBLEMS DEVELOP
• PART II: SPECIFIC PROBLEM AREAS
• APPENDIX I: IDENTIFYING PROBLEMS AND PLANNING CHANGES
• APPENDIX II: MAKING CHANGES IN THE ENVIRONMENT
• APPENDIX III: MAKING CHANGES IN THE BODY
• APPENDIX IV: MAKING CHANGES IN BEHAVIOR
• APPENDIX V: MAKING CHANGES IN THINKING
• APPENDIX VI: MAKING CHANGES IN RELATION TO OTHERS
• REFERENCES
• AUTHOR INDEX
• SUBJECT INDEX