Psychotherapy models mentioned , misc quotes:
Personality Disorder (p91) from the DSM - ten types, in three groups (clusters);
- Cluster A (odd, bizarre, eccentric) don't seek therapy
- Paranoid PD
- Schizoid PD
- Schizotypal PD
- Cluster B (dramatic, erratic) more likely to seek therapy
- Antisocial PD
- Borderline PD
- Histrionc PD
- Narcissistic PD
- Cluster C (anxious, fearful) tend not to seek therapy
- Avoidant PD
- Dependent PD
- Obsessive-Compulsive PD
Notes - borderlines tend to pair with narcissists as seen in couples therapy.
"Personality disorders are ego-syntonic - the behaviors are in sync with the person's self-=concept; as a result, people with these disorders believe that others are creating the problems in their lives. Mood disorders, on the other hand, are ego-dystonic, which means the people suffering from them find them distressing. They don't like being depressed or anxious or needing to flick the lights on and off ten times before leaving the house (OCD). They know something's wrong with them." (p92)
How Humans Change. Per James Prochaska; transtheoretical model of behavior change:
Stage:
1. Pre-contemplation.. before awareness of needing to change, unaware of what should change
2. Contemplation. Initial awareness and thoughtful consideration of what needs to change
3. Preparation. Collecting information on how to change. Research
4. Action. You take action (eg stop drinking, attend AA)
5. Maintenance. Once change has been made, doing what's needed to keep that state active and refrain from backsliding.
Viktor Frankl's Logotherapy:
"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances."
"Between stimulus and response there is a space. IN that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."
Reacting vs. responding = reflexive vs. chosen.
Erik Erikson's eight stages of psychosocial development:
- Infant (hope) -- trust vs. mistrust
- Toddle (will) -- autonomy vs shame
- Preschooler (purpose) -- initiative vs guilt
- School-age child (competence) -- industry vs inferiority
- Adolescent (fidelity) -- identity vs. role confusion
- Young adult (love) -- intimacy vs. isolation
- Older adult (wisdom) -- integrity vs despair
Cherophobia = irrational fear of joy.
"The inability to say no is largely about approval-seeking -- people imagine that if they say no, they won't be loved by others. The inability to say yes, however -- to intimacy, a job opportunity, an alcohol program -- is more about a lack of trust in one-self. Will I mess this up? Will this turn out badly? Isn't it safer to stay where I am?" (p332)
"Just because she sends you guilt doesn't mean you have to accept delivery." (p332)
"Sometimes in their pain, people believe that the agony will last forever. But feelings are actually more like weather systems -- they blow in and they blow out. Just because you feel sad this minute or this hour or this day doesn't mean you'l feel that way in ten minutes or this afternoon or next week. Everything you feel - anxiety, elations, anguish - blows in and out again. (p344)
"In couples therapy, therapists talk about the difference between privacy (spaces in people's psyches that everyone needs in healthy relationships) and secrecy (which stems from shame and tends to be corrosive). Jung called secrets "psychic poison." It feels good to have all the secrets out in the open. (p350).
Defense mechanisms. (p366)
"We all use defense mechanisms to deal with anxiety, frustration, or unacceptable impulses, but what's fascinating about them is that we aren't aware of them in the moment. A familiar example is denial. A smoker might cling to the belief that his shortness of breath is due to the hot weather and not is cigarettes. Another person might use rationalization (justifying something shameful) -- saying after he's rejected for a job that he never really wanted the job in the first place. In reaction formation, unacceptable feelings or impulses are expressed as their opposite, as when a person who likes her neighbor goes out of her way to befriend her or when an evangelical Christian man who's attracted to men makes homophobic slurs.
Some defense mechanisms are considered primitive and others mature. In the latter group is sublimation, when a person turns a potentially harmful impulse into something less harmful (a man with aggressive impulses takes up boxing) or even constructive (a person with the urge to cut people becomes a surgeon to save them.
Displacement (shifting a feeling toward one person onto a safer alternative) is considered a neurotic defense, neither primitive nor mature. A person who was yelled at by her boss but could get fired if she yelled back might come home and yell at her dog. "
Emotional presbyopia: (p369) "As people age, they become farsighted: they have to hold whatever they're reading or looking at farther away in order to see it clearly. But maybe an emotional presbyopia happens around this age too, where people pull back to see the bigger picture: how scared they are to lose what they have, even if they still complain about it."
