PCN 500 Grand Canyon Entire Course Paper

PCN 500 Grand Canyon Entire Course Paper

PCN500

PCN 500 Week 1 Discussion 1

What are your personal assumptions about: How do people develop the kinds of psychological distress that bring them to counseling? What constitutes “good mental health” or “a good life?” How do people change, grow emotionally, develop better coping mechanisms, or change destructive behaviors?

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION 

How do people develop the kinds of psychological distress that bring them to counseling?

Introduction

As humans, we have an incredible ability to adapt. We can learn new behaviors and develop coping mechanisms as well as build our resilience. However, there are times when these abilities fail us. When that happens, psychological distress can result from an event or series of events that are extremely stressful for the person experiencing them

If a traumatic event occurs early, the person has not had a chance to develop protective responses.

If a traumatic event occurs early, the person has not had a chance to develop protective responses.

• The person may not have learned how to cope with stress and trauma.

• The person may have difficulty recovering from the event. For example, they may be unable to trust other people or form relationships because they feel unsafe in their environment or do not want to put themselves at risk again by having social contact with others who could expose them to danger (elderly people who lived through World War II were often afraid of strangers).

The thought process is distorted.

When we’re in distress, our thinking can become distorted. This is called cognitive distortion. The most common types are:

• Negative self-talk

• Black and white thinking

• Catastrophizing (seeing the worst possible outcome) or all-or-nothing thinking (thinking that one thing is always better than another). Overgeneralization and personalization are also common distortions in thought. These fall into two categories: mind reading—when you think you know what someone else is feeling or thinking based on their actions; fortune telling—when you predict what another person will do next based on your own experience with them

It is unrealistic but the person believes that it is true.

It is unrealistic but the person believes that it is true. The person has a distorted thought process and they believe their thoughts are realistic.

The person does not realize that their thoughts are distorted and may not be true. Their thoughts are often irrational, exaggerated and negative. They have trouble distinguishing between fantasy and reality

Our interpretation of experiences causes psychological distress

We are all unique and have different experiences. We also share many of the same experiences, but we interpret them differently. For example, if you are a woman who has just given birth to your first child and your husband says he doesn’t want any more children because he doesn’t want his work to be disturbed by another baby at home, then this could be very stressful for you because it violates your expectations about how life should go after such an event. This situation might seem like an obvious example but there are many others where people’s interpretations lead them into psychological distress:

• You might feel rejected by your partner if he gets angry when they have sex together (he expects her) while she feels guilty when they do not (she expects him).

• Your boss refuses promotion due to budget cuts but instead gives it away as bonuses; meanwhile employees are laid off due to outsourcing contracts being cut back significantly; therefore morale drops sharply within the organization…

Conclusion

These are the kinds of things we can do in counseling to help people develop better ways of interpreting events, so that they don’t feel so distressed. We have a lot more work to do and there is always room for improvement, but we know that this is what will make the biggest difference.