Hello and welcome back to my series - Finding the best treatment for your worst anxiety.
Last article I talked with you about "Cognitive Psychology" and the keyword for this article will be Behaviorism, "Behavioral Psychology" and "Behavioral Therapy" or which is an application of this kind of psychology. As I previously say, the purpose is not to teach you psychology, but to help you find your way. The description is therefore deliberately over simplified.
The essence of Behavioral Psychology is that behavior r is a result of learning process. Here are some schemes that shape the behavior through the learning process as I will soon show you with. Now, if the behavior is a result of learning process, then changing a behavior requires re-learning, or decaying some behavior and replace it with another, more wanted behavior.
Here are some of the patterns in the relation between individual and the environment where he live that act to shape our behavior, according to behavioral psychology:
- Classical conditioning: Learning to react automatically to some stimulus due to proximity between this stimulus and some reinforcement.
- Positive reinforcement: If a behavior receive positive reinforcement from the environment, then it more likely this behavior will return itself.
- Negative reinforcement: A behavior is strengthened by the removal of something considered unpleasant
- Punishment: unpleasant response of the environment to some behavior that is intend to extinct this behavior.
- Extinction: stopping a reinforcement to some behavior we would like to stop.
- Shaping: Learning by reinforcing small parts of the overall behavior.
What does it actually mean?
It means that a program to cure anxiety for example, is using the exposed behavior, strip it into patterns of action and reaction, try to map those patterns that trigger the unwanted reaction and then use some technique replace the old unwanted "learned" behavior with a new one that is considered as the required behavior.
For example, you may find the term imaginary exposure which act upon the "negative reinforcement". Lets say you seat in your home and imagine some reality that usually trigger the anxiety, however, nothing happen since you are in your home. You learn to react differently to the situation, and replace the anxiety with something more pleasant.
Here is another example, which can easily understand. If you have small children then most probably you take, naturally, no one tell you to do that, some approach, similar to what behavioral psychology do. For example, you may punish your child for unwanted behavior, or give him some positive reinforcement when he do something you like.
We are all natural behaviorist. That's what makes approaches based upon behavioral psychology, easy to understand and easy to accept by many people. The difference between curing anxiety and learning small kids, is that as an adult it requires (not always!) much creativity, and much sophistication to re-shape a behavior. Especially, when this behavior is so rooted, such as in the case of anxiety, that it may requires much more then action-reaction patterns to be explained and to be reshape.
The bottom line - We are robots but very sophisticated ones. I stop my self from saying that we are irrational robots, because when dealing with behavioral restructuring, the assumptions that we can measure and quantify our behavior, and empirically investigate it, and explain it based on simple facts, if we just can find those facts, are the dominant values.
Behavioral approaches are very popular do to simple facts:
- Easy to understand and accept as explained above.
- Suitable for self-help: like cognitive approach, behavioral therapy can be delivered over books and electronic media. Using various techniques, you can instruct some person to use rational thinking to find action-reaction patterns on her behavior and workout to reshape it.
- And of course cultural reasons: Behavioral therapy is based upon the assumption that we instrumentally use our environment. Therefor our behavior is instrumentally shaped. This approach is so rooted in so many cultures of the modern world that makes behavioral therapy, sound like the natural choice.
Is this approach good for you?
As I always say, you are the only one to find the answer. But, I will try to help you.
...If you embraces simplicity as one of the most important values, also when concerning your mental life...
...If you embraces efficiency as one of the most important values, also when concerning your mental life...
...If you prefer a mechanic approach to handle your anxiety rather then verbal approach...
...If you truly believe that no one else beside you can help you to solve your anxiety...
...If you are willing to play with your imagination a little bit and try to use it to reshape your behavior...
...If the term "reshaping behavior" does not makes you shiver...
...If your attitude to life makes broad use of dichotomies: good Vs Bad, Wrong Vs Right, Possible Vs Impossible, Black and White, no gray zone...
...If you believe that no one can show you with some "hidden" true about yourself. Everything can be discovered and anything can empirically tested...
If you give a positive reinforcement for these categories,then you may find programs that uses behavioral therapy techniques very suitable for you.
About this Author
Check my reviews for various programs. I already helped you finding some of the keywords.
I hope you find this article very "efficient" so maybe you find your direction. If we don't want to look deep, If we don't believe there is such thing deep psychology, then behavioral therapy gives us powerful tools to work in the level of the symptom of anxiety, without searching for deeper roots. This makes this approach a candidate for programs that intend to supply relatively fast solution. May this be your choice?
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