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Theory of Change
People are the sum total of what they think. Change
occurs only when they think differently.
What is cognitive behavior
management all about?
All clinical services operated by the Assessment &
Clinical Services division use cognitive behavior technology. This
technology is based on social learning theory and helps the child/family
identify the Thinking, Feeling, Behaving pattern which is leading
to the child's problems in living, and to address the feelings and
behavior through a process of examining the core thoughts.
Thinking ------------->
Feeling ----------------->
Behavior
When you experience an event, you have an immediate
judgmental thought about the experience followed by feelings which
are appropriate to the judgment. The judgment is made on the basis
of experiences of the past and the judgments you made about these
experiences. We are constantly appraising the world about us and
talking internally about what we see. We see a driver on the road
and think "S/he's hogging the road!" and this thought
may cause us to feel angry. The anger may result in an action or
behavior which later you would consider unwise. However, we will
often continue to carry the notion that it was the other driver
that caused the problem when actually it was the thought and resultant
feelings which caused the anger. If, for example, your thought was
'that poor woman is confused and doesn't know what to do', you
may feel compassion and give him/her a lot of room to make mistakes.
While you have been delayed in both situations, by the same event,
you feel and therefore will probably act differently.
Since each person is an individual, with his/her own
experiences, each person sees the world through his/her own personal
frame of reference. This creates little problem, unless your frame
of reference leads to thoughts which are unrealistic and/or cause
you to behave in ways that are self defeating [e.g., cause problems
in living]. This may happen, for example, if you generalize from
limited experience. If you have two teacher who treat you in a way
that you believe is unfair, you might generalize that all teacher
are unfair, or all teachers don't like you. If this happens, you
might tend to feel angry or mistreated, and are likely to act in
ways that actually causes teachers to think you donÕt like them.
Given that the teacher is also operating on thoughts and feelings,
it is easy to see how a vicious circle of negative behavior starts
which is not helpful to either person in meeting their own personal
goals. The moral of this story is well articulated by Dr. Farkas
when he states, "Don't believe everything you think!"
There are in fact, several specific cognitive [thinking]
errors which show up in people with problems in living and limit
their thinking. These are not unusual errors that are caused by
intellectual deficits or anything like that - they are, in fact,
the same kinds of errors that are made by philosophers. They are
human errors which exaggerate very common rules of logic to a level
that is unhelpful and need to be addressed. View the Eight Limited Thinking Patterns.
What is the process of cognitive
change?
There are essentially three intervention concepts
of cognitive behavior management:
Cultural restructuring: a process of seeding or
priming the environment with thoughts, rituals and icons which
lead the individual members of the culture to think differently
about an experience.
Skill Building:
a process of teaching a specific skill [mental or physical] which
is needed to carry out a behavior.
Cognitive restructuring: a process of training an
individual become aware of, attend to, analyze, seek alternatives
to, and adapt their thoughts if they so desire.
From these three modes of intervention an infinite
number of intervention techniques can be developed. In each case,
however, there is first a need to first make sure that the subject
understands the language and concepts. Once these are clear, the
subject becomes the master of the situation, directing the helper
toward what s/he wants to change and then learning how to change.
Thus, the process is based on the personal goals of
the subject. In this context, goals can be defined as subject defined
need - which is often quite different than the need defined by the
experts on the outside. Questions of resistance and compliance become
moot.
The actual process, after language and concepts, includes
these five steps: Click here to view the five steps.
Summary
Obviously, none of this is mystical or difficult to
learn. While it may take a well trained practitioner to help someone
with highly valued negative thoughts, a person can very well do
the process themselves for many situations. Many of the techniques
developed from this basic process can be used by parents, teachers
and others who manage people. Business leaders are as much concerned
with the behavior of their staff as teachers are of their students
and parents are of their children. The same principles apply.
View the INDEX of Clinical Services offered by the CCIU.
