3005PSY Module 2 Theory (transcript).pdf

Welcome to our mini lecture on the application of a theory understanding a specific presenting concern. So considering how to start making sense of a client's presenting problem, it's really important to take into account a theory and a theoretical approach. But hopefully by now, before watching thi...

Welcome to our mini lecture on the application of a theory understanding a specific presenting concern. So considering how to start making sense of a client's presenting problem, it's really important to take into account a theory and a theoretical approach. But hopefully by now, before watching this lecture, you've spent some time considering this question in relation to your own hypotheses about what might be some of the factors that will cause someone to regularly withdraw from social situations. And as well, being able to say what some of your classmates have considered too. For me, in the next slide, I'm going to present some potential factors that could contribute to this behavior, but as we'll discuss in later modules, you'll see that that isn't the only way that we can make sense of this concern. It's an example of one particular theory that might apply. So within this particular theory that I'm applying, we can consider that a combination of the following factors and of course, more, would lead someone to withdraw from social situations regularly or as much as they possibly can. And I will go through and explain each one. The first one could be that they have a maternal history of anxiety. And so that can be in relation to seeing their mother being anxious or even taking on some of those genetics in relation to anxiety. Someone may have an intolerance of discomfort, and that means that they find it extremely hard to tolerate feelings of discomfort, particularly if they're emotional feelings. Someone may be introverted within their personality and find that within a social situation, they're particularly overwhelmed not to say that, all people who are introverted are overwhelmed, but this could be a contributing factor within this situation. They may have experienced stressors such as a relationship breakdown, they may be starting a new job and having a lot of uncertainty within that environment, they may have been bullied – that could be at the time that they come to see you. It could be in the background in their history. It could actually be both. The person within themselves may have a fear of negative evaluation, and so that's in relation to worry and anxiety that people have about the fact that others may be perceiving them in a negative way. There may be some negative reinforcement going on. Now we will talk more about behavioral conceptualisation in later weeks, but as a brief explanation, negative reinforcement refers to taking away something that's uncomfortable, that leads to a sense of relief, and that can mean that that behavior is reinforced and continued. And there may also be some beliefs that the person has about themselves, that are negative, irrational, that may be leading them to want to stay out of those social situations. So one extremely common framework that we use to understand a client's concerns is called the Four Ps. This relates to predisposing factors and predisposing factors refer to something that may increase someone's vulnerability to developing a psychological concern. The next are precipitating factors, and they are events that may trigger or that may come right before an exacerbation of someone's concerns or it may be a triggering of someone's concerns. Perpetuating factors, are the factors that keep the concerns going on. It means that they keep going and it's the reason that they don't discontinue. And finally, we have protective factors and they are factors that help the person to face the concerns they may be going through or it may help prevent further deterioration in their mood. So if we come back to these potential factors that I have here with this theory and we keep in mind those four ps, so predisposing what may increase someone's vulnerability of developing concerns, precipitating - what has potentially triggered or come immediately before those concerns, perpetuating - what are the factors that keep those concerns going on? And also, protective. Although as a bit of a tip, most of these generally don't fit within protective, although some of them, I guess you could think about it in the opposite way. So, I'll just give you a little bit of a moment just to think how you categorize these factors into predisposing, precipitating and perpetuating. So the predisposing factors as far as increasing the vulnerability within this specific example can be the maternal history of anxiety and that can be predisposing in relation to a genetic predisposition, and it can also be modeling of that anxiety and the way that the mother may have managed and responded to that anxiety. Intolerance of discomfort, that can be a general feeling that people have. And so that's going to increase their chance of wanting to withdraw from a situation that makes them uncomfortable. And it could be their personality. So we find that certain personality factors can increase someone's risk of developing a concern. And it's certainly not a straight line. It doesn't mean that people with these situations in their background will develop a concern. It's just a consideration of what makes someone vulnerable. The precipitating factors are the events that have happened before, as I mentioned, the triggering of the concerns and/or exacerbation of concerns that were there before. And so that's when we consider the relationship breakdown, starting a new job, being bullied. And perpetuating factors, those factors that keep the concern going. So if someone continues to have fear and have anxiety about potentially being negatively evaluated and when they're in a social situation, they're perceiving or they're worrying that catastrophizing, that someone is evaluating them in a negative way, it's going to make them feel anxious, uncomfortable, and that's where the negative reinforcement can come in as well. So if someone is feeling uncomfortable and anxious in that situation and they avoid it or they come away from it, their anxiety can drop. And that relief of removing the discomfort of the anxiety increases the chance that someone's going to repeat that behavior. It feels good in the short term. And their own beliefs about their self-worth. So if someone has negative self-worth in that social situation, then that's going to increase the chance that they want to stay out of that. Finally, with protective factors, that can be a range of different factors, they can be in relation to the person being physically healthy. It could be that they have resilience there, hope, optimism would be that they have really good social support, or good family, linked in with a really helpful counselor or psychologist. Thank you so much for listening, I hope that this has been informative for you and we will go through the case conceptualisation in more detail in another mini lecture.