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Perhaps this is your situation – the child refuses to go to school. He has problems with peers. And you are determined to seek the advice of a psychologist, but would like to understand what kind of help you should expect from a specialist. Representatives of different therapeutic areas agreed to tell how they would work with this case.
There are many schools and directions in modern psychology. How to understand what is close to you? At the Genesis #PROapproach conference, authoritative specialists from various therapeutic areas told how they would work with a given request.
Let’s imagine a situation. Mom comes to a consultation with a psychotherapist alone, without a child. The essence of the request is as follows: her son (daughter), ten or eleven years old, is bad at school. He has no friends, he doesn’t like his classmates, the teachers are “fools”, he doesn’t want to go to school. The child was examined by a neurologist and a psychiatrist and concluded that development and behavior are normal. At the same time, the school is considered good, prestigious (lyceum or gymnasium), it is difficult to get into it. Question: what to do?
How does an Adlerian psychotherapist deal with such a case?
Psychologist Marina Chibisova says
In working with parents, not only the therapeutic, but also the educational component is important for us. We do not set ourselves the task of remaking parents or children. It is important for us to explain to an adult what drives his child and why. Help to understand what purpose it pursues.
One of the key ideas on which our method is based is the concept of lifestyle. This is a system of attitudes (and ideas about the world), which each of us forms in early childhood. Our life style is influenced by different circumstances, family, our innate characteristics. But perhaps the most important factor is our freedom to draw our own conclusions about ourselves and other people.
“Children are excellent observers, but poor interpreters,” said Rudolf Dreikurs, a follower of Alfred Adler.
Children carefully observe others, but do not always draw the right conclusions. Often they create a lot of difficulties for the child. But they can be recognized and moved in a different direction, which makes our work extremely optimistic and productive.
What will I do when dealing with the child’s mother’s request?
First of all, it is important for me to understand what lifestyle settings underlie the child’s behavior. I will ask my mother about the environment in which the child grows up, whether there are other children in the family, what is the age difference between them. It is important for me to understand what values are oriented in this house, what is the family atmosphere.
We will analyze how parents react to certain actions of the child. For example, he comes home from school and says: “No one is friends with me. I’m lonely, I’m sad.” How does mom react? Does she feel sorry for her son (daughter)? Or her these words irritate? Or does she feel resentment for the child? All this is indicative of understanding the goal that the child is pursuing.
The fact is that each of us, according to Adler’s theory, has a social interest. Everyone strives to take their own, special (does not mean the first) place in the group, to feel their belonging to it (first it is a family, then a team in kindergarten and school). If everything goes well and the child feels brave, competent, he always moves towards the group and strives to do something socially useful.
But if, in case of failure or for some other reason, his sense of belonging is infringed, then the interest in cooperation is replaced by a desperate attempt to confirm his social significance. He directs all his attention to this goal. Rudolf Dreikurs identifies four “misguided goals” that a child may pursue:
- To attract attention. A child can decide that he is important only when everyone notices him. And he will do his best to seek attention.
- Fight for supremacy. He thinks: “I am significant only when I am the strongest and no one can command me.” His goal is to be stronger than others in any situation, including adults.
- Revenge. He thinks: “I cannot be loved. And since no one needs me, I will take revenge and hurt others.
- Showing your weakness. When a child thinks: “I am weak and useless, I can do nothing,” his behavior will be aimed at avoiding failure. He tries to convince adults that he is good for nothing, so that less demands are placed on him.
And if we want to help the child return to constructive behavior and social adjustment, we must understand these misguided goals. Working with parents, we teach them to recognize the purpose behind their child’s behavior. In this case, based on the Dreikurs model, I would suggest that the child is pursuing the first or fourth goal – that is, getting attention or avoiding failure.
Depending on which of the goals is confirmed in the first stage, I will tell the parents what motives and incorrect beliefs may be hiding behind his unwillingness to go to school. And then we will re-orient the child’s behavior, we will try to set him moving in the other direction, towards new, socially useful goals. Together with parents, we will develop new strategies for responding to the child’s behavior.
Among them are encouragement (not praise!), involving the child in finding solutions, introducing and following democratic rules, developing a sense of responsibility in the child, and finally involving all family members in discussing problems. It is difficult to master all this from the first time, we train these skills from meeting to meeting.
And gradually, parents themselves learn to recognize what goal the child is pursuing. And also master new ways of behavior, learn to behave differently in familiar situations. This changes the behavior of the child, the feeling of the parents themselves. Everyone is getting better. This is, in fact, the final goal of our work.
How does a Gestalt therapist deal with such a case?
Psychologist Alina Aleksanyants says
Many parents come to the meeting hoping to receive clear, valuable instructions on what to do and how to do it. But the psychologist does not give any advice, much less instructions.
Gestalt therapy is contact therapy. We work with what a person experiences directly here and now. Moreover, it lives on three levels at once: bodily, emotional and intellectual.
In the proposed case, I have an appointment with the mother of a student. How is everything going? The woman came with her pain, fears and worries about her son, and I focus her attention, help my mother notice those moments that cause her the strongest emotional experiences. I appeal to her emotions, thoughts, bodily sensations.
I am interested in how what is happening now in the office is reflected in her real life, how similar it is to what happened in the past, and how it is connected with the future. Trying to figure out what her own purpose is, what unmet need brought her into my office?
After all, even when she talks about the child, she talks about herself. There is no way to know what would be the best solution for her. But as a Gestalt therapist, I help her find my best way to solve at a given time.
In the Gestalt approach, the relationship between the client and the therapist is built as a dialogue of equal people.
Often it turns out that her current anxiety, despair or impotence resonates with the events of her own childhood. For example, her parents were never included in her life, and she really missed their attention. And so now she unconsciously behaves the way she would like her parents to behave towards her.
Or vice versa, parents were too involved in her life and the woman has an attitude that it should be so, that it is right. But in her real relationship, this attitude does not work and causes conflicts with the child. Or it turns out that the mother is overwhelmed with guilt and shame in front of teachers or relatives.
Or he is afraid of how the situation will affect the future of his son, and shifts all responsibility for what is happening to himself. That is, during our work, the mother begins to see the state of affairs in a new way, and this makes it possible to find a way to solve the problem.
In the Gestalt approach, the relationship between the client and the therapist is built as a dialogue of equal people who have life experience, knowledge, complement and enrich each other.
As a result of our work, a mother may come to the conclusion that she first needs to deal with herself and this will help in solving her son’s school problems. Or it will be meaningful to come next time with the child. Or she decides that she can talk to him herself and discuss everything. She will choose what will be relevant in solving problems, what she will be ready for and what she will have enough internal strength for.
How does a cognitive behavioral therapist deal with such a case?
Psychologist and psychiatrist Dmitry Frolov tells
In my work, I use such an area of CBT as rational-emotional-behavioral therapy (REBT). My task is to help the client realize the connection between his thoughts, emotions, events and behavior. And show that he can change any of these variables.
REBT is considered one of the most directive, active, pragmatic, teaching approaches. But still, this mother, who came to see me, I cannot directly tell what to do. First of all, we find out what happened, how she relates to what happened, what emotions she experiences and how she behaves in connection with this.
If her emotions are healthy, functional, then I can only equip her with the skills to solve specific problems. For example, she may lack the communication skills to talk to teachers at school or to her own child. Maybe she is too focused on her thoughts, and then I will teach her the skills of switching attention, distraction and other coping strategies.
But most likely, it can be assumed that she is still experiencing severe anxiety. This is one of those dysfunctional emotions that get in the way of life and that we have to translate into healthy, functional excitement. To do this, you need to find out what irrational beliefs lie behind this emotion.
For example, it may be an absolutist requirement for a child to study only perfectly. Or feeling like a bad mother, or exaggerating the consequences of poor schooling and perceiving them disastrously (“Terrible, he will definitely become a drug addict!”), Or the idea that she will not be able to bear these problems.
We will also talk to this mom about values and goals. After all, she may not even know why and what she wants from a child.
We must help her to challenge her irrational ideas (this is the main task of REBT) and change them to rational ones. In various ways, for example, using Socratic dialogue, I will help her understand that our desires are just desires. That neither we ourselves, nor other people, nor the world are obliged to comply with them.
But fortunately, we can try to influence ourselves, others, and the world to make our desires come true. And in fact, each of us is not generally “bad” or “perfect”.
Everyone has advantages, disadvantages, achievements and failures, the significance and scale of which are subjective and relative. Let me remind you that although there are many very, very bad phenomena in the world, truly terrible events are less common, and we can endure these bad events and find the strength to cope, no matter how scary we are.
We will also talk to this mom about values and goals. After all, she may not even know why and what she wants from the child.
My goal as a therapist is to help this woman change her attitude to the situation and understand that she does not become a bad mother if the child has problems, and that she does everything that depends on her, but she is not in her power to completely control his life. It is important for me that she understands her goals and values and learns to use skills (problem solving, communication, attention management, mindfulness, stress tolerance).
If this woman can describe her experience as functional and understands what she can do and does it, I can consider the task accomplished. In the end, this should help to cope with a difficult situation, improve it, and if this is not possible, then accept the situation as it is.
Read about the principles of work in the methods of systemic family psychotherapy, intermodal therapy with expressive arts and existential analysis here.
The material was prepared following the results of the conference “#PRO approach: different psychological schools in one space”, organized by the Genesis publishing house in October 2019.