The Activating Ashoke Case Study Summary

Gogol experiences all or nothing thinking which interferes with his relationship with his parents. He does not believe that he could incorporate both his Bengali culture and values into his American identity. This can also be seen with his name. Gogol demonstrates mental filters in this realm and sees it as a negative event and dwells on this form of inconvenience for most of his life. The ABC model can be used as an intervention in this case. Being named Gogol is the activating event, as he grows, he thinks it is a ridiculous name, which leads him to act out and eventually change his name. When his father passed away, he felt like he should follow traditions since he was not involved with his family when father was alive. The activating

Because of the train wreck he experienced, he shows great anxiety before boarding a train, or simply thinking about them. This anxiety has made him believe that this will happen again if he rides a train. This ties into emotional reasoning; because of his train wreck, he has justification that trains are a bad way of transportation. This leads to negative automatic thoughts when he is at a train station or is considering this mode of transportation. The train wreck is his activating event, the thought is that he is going to be in a wreck again is the intermediate thought, and the consequence of this is anxiety and avoidance of going to train

As previously mentioned, Gogol and Ahsima/Ashoke have different levels of boundaries. This can cause conflict since they both bring in their own values to the family. It would be important to emphasize for the family that the conflict expected between immigrant parents and their first-generation American children is normal. This could tie into role playing and reversals. To understand each other’s perceptions and values the parental subsystem, Ashoke and Ashima and the children, Gogol and his sister, could state to the other parties their values through each other’s lens. For example, since the parent subsystem has lived in India most of their lives, they can state why following tradition is so important, specifically stating some of the values that they have seen the parents enforce. As far as the children’s perspectives, they can show how they feel they must assimilate to compete with their American peers and to not be judged. They may also state that they enjoy the freedom of being independent. Since there is a blend of cultures and values, this may lead to modifications of certain family rules to incorporate both values. This may include additional training in communication skills to show make the boundaries clear as the parental structure have diffused boundaries and the children have rigid boundaries. Since the family is separated between subsystems tasks to spend time together. It would