Dysfunctional Behavioral Therapy: A Case Study

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Goals The main goal of ST is to help the patients change their dysfunctional patterns of behaviour and enable them to satisfy their core needs through the change of schemas and modes within which they are operating on a daily basis (Farrell, Reiss, Shaw, 2014). As emphasized earlier, schemas develop and are reinforced through the lifetime. Thus, it is hard to change the schemas because this is often the only thing that gives the patients sense of safety and stability, schemas are the only things they know about themselves. Schemas are the core of their identity and cognitive consistency. Although the schemas cannot be completely healed, ST aims to reduce frequency of their activation or severity of their persistence. They would not disappear, …show more content…

This is common to most of the therapies. What distinguishes ST from CBT and psychodynamic therapies (PDT) is the application of experiential emotion-focused techniques and imagery, and active confrontation of dysfunctional behaviour (Boterhoven De Heen, Lee, 2014). Also the attitude of the therapist is more neutral, as the ST therapist is self-disclosing and presents high responsiveness to the patient's questions and uncertainties. Unlike in other therapeutic approaches, ST therapist educates the patients on his core issues and defence mechanisms being a subject of their collaborative …show more content…

In ST, however, the therapist will involve the client in explicit communication of the change process. This enables them to see the actual progress, and adapt the therapeutic programme and techniques to increase its effectiveness. ST therapists also use exploration of the past events, but unlike in PDT, they do not focus on finding hidden meanings and going through all the details, they rather use this information to conceptualize the problem patients are facing. Case formulation enables them to further educate the patients regarding their core issues and defence mechanisms they are using. This serves a purpose of cognitive restructuring, experiential learning and behavioural pattern breaking (Boterhoven De Haan, Lee,

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