Tag: behaviorism

Best Quick Tips Ever Volume 2

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Best Quick Tips Ever (Volume 2)

Here are some more super quick, highly accessible techniques that we could be teaching clients! (Remember, don’t use these if the underlying theory isn’t already part of your clinical repertoire, please!) If you haven’t seen Volume 1, see those here. 

 

  • Imagine Yourself on a Hot Air Balloon (or Better Yet, Sitting on a Satellite) – This is an old Stoic notion, “Plato’s View” (more about that here) that current research also suggest can quickly reduce distress. This visualization exercise allows you to change perspective, throwing even the deepest, most overwhelming pains into relief against all the rest of what’s happening in the world.     
  • Half Smile – A DBT classic, this is possible the quickest and most available emotion regulation technique of all! The brain and body work both ways, you know! 
  • Sunlight – 5-15 minutes in the sun is enough to boost serotonin and improve mood. Add to that the fact that you’re probably removing yourself from a less pleasant situation to a more relaxed/pleasant situation by going outside (yay, behaviorism works!) and getting a little nature fix (bonus mood enhancer!), and it’s even better. 
    • Also, as a reminder, regular moderate sun exposure helps prevent depression, and if you do it in the morning, helps to improve sleep! Oh, and cognitive function! And work satisfaction!
  • Jumping Jacks (any kind of intense exercise immediately) – Even five minutes of intense exercise can improve mood in several ways – by “using up” stress hormones if they’re present (yes, that’s a gross oversimplification), by getting you out of a stressful or uncomfortable situation (unless you’re going to bust out some crunches right in the middle of the stressful work meeting), and/or providing an intense enough distraction to act as a distress tolerance skill.
    • And, over time, a really excellent treatment and prevention strategy for depression! (WAY better than antidepressants) 
  • Say the Thing, Out Loud. Even to Yourself. Especially to Yourself. – That icky feeling is more tolerable once it has words that go along with it (especially if it has accurate words that go with it). But, emotional labeling acts as an implicit emotion regulation strategy, and it’s relatively effortless. Plus, the benefits of expressive writing (decreased anxiety, depression, negative rumination, and improved mental and physical health, including enhanced immune functioning) extends to speaking aloud as well!  
  • Drink a Whole Glass of Water – not only does this just give you a tiny break from whatever stressor you’re in, it’s an opportunity to engage in basic self care and possibly to engage in a mindfulness practice. But there’s also research showing that being even a little dehydrated can contribute to fatigue, low alertness, and negative mood. So a simple glass of water might help you feel better, and help you gear up for more active coping! (Also, many of us work in environments where this is something we could even offer clients in session.)

Comment below: Your ideas for super cool, underutilized quick tips? Or have you ever used any of these with clients? 

 

 

 

Avoidance Sucks

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Avoidance Sucks

Here’s what I mean by that: 

  • Avoidance of feared stimuli increases rather than decreases fear. So it perpetuates itself at your expense. This is approximately 35% of all therapy, possibly. 
  • Avoidance is painful by itself. Every time you avoid, you’re having a measure of the pain you would have in confronting. But you avoid it over and over and over… so you have a partial measure of pain over and over and over, which almost always ends up being more painful over time. 
  • Avoidance narrows your options. I mean this in small ways, but also in the very big, existential way – like the “untimely deadness of a too narrow existence” 

Some caveats, in case you’re thinking any of these things:

  • Staying away from genuinely toxic or dangerous things/people/situations isn’t avoidance, it’s wisdom. 
  • If you believe you benefit from a “change of scenery,” you need to give a good think about if it’s escaping/avoidance or something else. A lot of that is how you use that time. If you just get away from stressors and enjoy that, it’s avoidance. If you use the time away to actively work on stuff that will improve your life when you’re back, ok. 

Comment below: How have clients sometimes gotten in trouble by avoiding? How have you?? 

 

 

 

Behaviorism for Parents 3

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Behaviorism for Parents – Moving Up (Lesson 3)

(If you haven’t read the first two installments, find them here and here.) 

You don’t want to reward your kid for every little thing forever.

(1) First, how much does that behavior become intrinsically (or naturally) rewarding, meaning it will maintain itself over time after awhile? For example, exercise might be this way. We have to reward ourselves in the beginning to make it a habit, but once we start feeling better exercise is easier and more pleasant and our bodies feel good, so we don’t have to reward it anymore. Speaking more kindly results in nicer, easier relationships; sometimes even keeping one’s room clean ends up feeling good. If your kid starts doing a behavior with no reminders and no complaining, you can try just reducing the amount or frequency of the reward over time.

(2) You may be able to improve behavior through shaping, as described in the last post.

(3) You may want to use chaining. It’s similar to shaping, but chaining means stringing several desired behaviors together. You probably already did this at least once during potty training, because that’s a multi-behavior process (where each behavior was probably also shaped). When you first started potty training, you probably did all the work – getting to the bathroom, disrobing, setting the kid on the toilet, wiping or helping them wipe (wiping effectively is definitely one of those behaviors that needed shaping!), redressing, flushing, and washing hands. All your kid did was sit there and sometimes pee or poop. And at that time, they probably got praise or the potty song or an m&m, right? But eventually, you didn’t reward them just for peeing, they also had to flush. Then pee, flush, and pull pants up and down. All the way to being able to the whole chained process! (And, depending on how old your kids are, you probably don’t even give them m&m’s anymore -haha!)

(4) You may want to use a token economy. A token economy is especially helpful (and more convenient) when kids get older and so rewards are a little more substantial or when they can handle a little delay in their reward. (Remember, really little kids can’t make the connection even with a few minutes’ delay (this is why you brought the m&ms to the bathroom with you!), but older kids’ and teens can wait till the end of the day, week, or even more.

A token economy means that you use something symbolic (a “token”) to keep track of the rewardable behaviors, and then give the reward once they’ve added up. This could be stickers on a chart, or paper tickets that can be turned in, etc. One way to do this is just for any extra helpful chores, behaviors, etc. – for example, when a kid does a task that helps the family that’s not part of their regular responsibilities, they get a sticker. Once they get 20 stickers, they get $20. (This is more convenient than giving $1 each time.)

But if you’re using the token economy to keep track of regular chores, behaviors, responsibilities, you need to make sure that the child is regularly earning between about 60-80% of their available tokens per day. If they are earning 100% every day, it actually reduces their motivation. You can increase the difficulty of the tasks. If they are earning under 60%, they’ll also lose motivation. That means you need to reduce the difficulty of the behaviors to keep them invested in the program.

 

 

Comment below: What other behaviorism techniques might be useful for parents? 

 

If you can quit biting your nails

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If you can quit biting your nails, you can do anything…

How does someone go about quitting a nail-biting habit? Admittedly, some people seem to just miraculously stop, some people never really got started, some people need a Habit Reversal Training procedure. But nail-biting is still an accessible idea to most people and it’s a common enough and acceptable enough habit that it makes it comfortable to talk about in session. 

Here’s how people think you’re supposed to stop biting your nails. 

(1) You decide you’d like to stop biting your nails. 

(2) You exercise your willpower and stop biting your nails. 

(3) The end. 

And that’s definitely NOT how it goes. 

So, what are the real steps? Something like this…

(1) You decide you’d like to stop biting your nails.

(2) You bite your nails.

(3) You notice after the fact that you bit your nails, and feel a little irritated with yourself. Your therapist explains habit formation (normalizing and depathologizing) and helps you to develop self-compassion. 

(4) You begin to notice you are biting your nails while you are biting your nails. 

(5) You make an attempt to stop, but they’re a little jagged now so you go ahead and finish biting them. 

(6) You begin to notice you are biting your nails when you start to bite your nails. You wish you had a nail file right near you. But you don’t. 

(6a) You repeat step 5. Your therapist repeats step 3. 

(6b) You get up and get a nail file. 

(7) You begin to notice that you are about to bite your nails. You wish you had a nail file right near you. But you still don’t. 

(7a) You repeat step 5. Your therapist repeats step 3. 

(7b) You get up and get a nail file.

(8) You get annoyed with always having to get up to get a nail file. 

(9) You accept that jagged nails are both bothersome and inevitable and now always carry a nail file or clippers in your purse/desk/car/etc.  

(10) You rarely bite your nails because those tools are accessible and you are aware of the need to fix nails early. You occasionally still bite your nails, and you react with self-compassion and simply manage the situation. 

 

Of course, this isn’t the only way change happens!

But this is one great way to talk about it because it emphasizes the importance of awareness, reduces emphasis on willpower (which is almost useless for meaningful, long term change), and makes central the importance of an incompatible behavior and addressing the reinforcer, which is really the foundation of change. It also addresses the impact of meta-emotion regarding the change process (e.g., how self anger, shame, etc. get in the way).

One of my favorite things about this model for explaining change is that when clients “fail” on their first homework attempt (or even later ones), I can tell them honestly that they’re making great progress. And they learn that it’s a process. 

 

Comment below: How do you talk about the change process with clients? 

 

 

 

 

 

Behaviorism for Parents 2

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Behaviorism for Parents – New Behaviors (Lesson 2)

If you haven’t read Behaviorism for Parents – The Basics, start there! 

You want behaviors done differently, or you want more complex behaviors.

(1) First, assume your kids want to behave and troubleshoot with them before assuming they are oppositional.

If your kids aren’t doing what you want them to do, make sure they CAN do it and KNOW that they are supposed to. So many instances of what parents think is “defiance” is actually a child not being capable for one reason or another, because we didn’t train them how (we just assumed they should know), or not knowing or remembering what they’re supposed to do when. Sometimes, they really didn’t hear you because they were focused on Minecraft they same way you don’t always hear your partner when you’re focused on a work email.

Kids are not shorter adults! They don’t have the same capacity for memory, sustained attention, fine motor skills, frustration tolerance, etc. as we do! Asking your kid to do the dishes is not equivalent to you doing the dishes. Kendra doesn’t wipe down the counters because she hates the feeling of crumbs in her hand and doesn’t have great coordination when she has to reach up so high. Marcus finds your “highly efficient” system for managing his multiple homework subjects too difficult to grasp and he’s already overwhelmed from struggling in Algebra 2.

Teach Kendra to hold a plate under the lip of the counter to catch the crumbs instead. Just give Marcus one big folder for homework and let him search through it at the beginning of class.

Be willing to train your kids (remember, that’s one of the main jobs of parents!) – that involves choosing behaviors they are capable of and then modeling, giving explicit instruction, doing it with them, helping while they practice, and then supervising their practice with feedback before they can do a behavior on their own!

Be willing to negotiate, or choose your battles. Is this behavior totally necessary for the family to function or for your kid to be a functioning adult? If they don’t make their bed, is it going to damage anything or just bother you? (Just bothering you isn’t a good enough reason to cause discord and stress in the family system!) If they eventually have a bed partner who wants it made, they can learn it then, can’t they?

(2) Second, you can build new or more complex behaviors through shaping.   

Shaping means starting with where your kid is (or where you are) and the making doable baby-steps toward the thing you ultimately want (successive approximations toward the goal). Sometimes this is pretty easy. If you want Jillian to make her bed, first show her how and then go through the training process (but don’t expect military corners if she’s only 6, please!), including showing, teaching, helping, and supervising. The first time she does it on her own, and it’s hot mess, just comforter pulled up and pillows askew, reward it anyway, however it is. That’s your starting point. The next day, or next week, up the ante a little. Remind her to pull up the inside sheet first – show, teach, help, supervise. Then, only reward a bed making that includes the inside sheet being pulled up. Don’t reward a bed-making if the underneath sheet is down. Just give a gentle reminder. Do the training again if need be. After another week or so, up the ante again. Remind her that all of her pillows and stuffed animals should be on the bed, at the top, facing front. Show, teach, help, supervise. Then, when she does it on her own, only reward a bed that is made with the comforter pulled up, the inner sheet pulled up, and the pillow and animals correct. Voila!  

You’ll also want to use this as your kids age, as an easy way to update their behaviors. For example, when kids are very little, they’ll need the whole training sequence to learn how to put their toys in their toybox. As they get a little older, they won’t need much training to put away toys and books, but they won’t be able to do things like “clean their room.” If you keep on top of how their capacities are increasing, you can increase the scope and complexity of their rule-following behaviors with relative ease.

Sometimes this is very hard, especially if you and your kid have gotten into a deep behavioral hole. If the behavior you have during a conflict is screaming+cursing+storming off, and the behavior you want is listening-quietly-with-a-calm-attitude-and-joining-you-pleasantly-for-dinner… there’s more work to do there than your kid will be able to do in one try, no matter how big the punishment or reward. So, even though you won’t want to do it, you will still need to reward the baby steps. That means that if your kid screams and curses, but doesn’t storm off – that behavior gets rewarded. That’s right. You heard me. After they are reliably not storming off, then you work on the cursing, then on the volume. I know it seems counterintuitive, but let me guess… you’ve already been trying it “your way” and it hasn’t gotten better, right? So, be willing to give it a try!

Note: There’s a Behaviorism for Parents Vol 3 here.

 

 

Comment: What other issues have your parent-clients had with implementing behavioral strategies at home? 

 

Easier, cheaper, better

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Easier, Cheaper, Better

So, I was listening to news radio a few weeks ago (oh, the joys of adulthood!), to a story about electric cars. Without getting into politics or economics, let’s assume for the moment that people driving electric cars might be a good thing. Because the interesting part of this discussion was a question to the interviewee – How could the transition to most or all people driving electric cars happen? And the answer was so beautifully behavioral. In short, to get most people to drive electric cars (sooner, rather than later, when that might be all that’s available), electric cars need to be easier to buy than gas-powered cars, cheaper than gas-powered cars, and better than gas-powered cars, today. The INDUSTRY and the ENVIRONMENT need to change. Not the buyers. 

And so it is with all of our behavior changes. Shame and willpower get us nowhere. Well, that’s not quite true. Unfortunately, shame and willpower get us a tiny distance in the direction we’re headed, and then they collapse on us, leaving us typically worse off than we were before, with more shame, which leads to more undesirable behavior, and so we look more intensely for “more willpower” to get us to our behavior changes. And that system, while it fits nicely with the sort of hyper-American, Protestant-ethic model that likes to believe we can all be anything we want to be with enough will or inner strength or simple desire, is almost entirely useless. 

If we want to really change behavior in the long term, we need to think about how to make the new, desired behavior easier, cheaper, and better immediately. 

Here’s an example: Does a client want to exercise more? Preferably, we need to find a way to make that easier, cheaper, and better than not exercising, right now. 

  • What does easier mean for them? It’s going to be a challenge to make something like physical work seem like less effort than NOT doing physical effort! DO they want to try a gym? Help them find a close one, that’s on the way to or from work. (The farther away the gym is, the less often people go. ) But walking at the nearby park or exercising at home might be easier still. Is part of “easier” training their middle school age kid to do some of the laundry, so that the increase in workout clothes doesn’t feel like a burden? Does it mean getting a trainer so that they can learn to exercise in a way that’s “easier” on their knee joints? Let’s plan this in the “preparation phase” so that the benefit is immediate!
  • What does cheaper mean for them? This one usually means straight “less expensive,” but it might also mean less expensive in terms of other resources, like time spent. Would they be missing out on time with lover or kids? Could they join the exercise effort so that time isn’t missed? Walking is free, which might make it better than the gym, but it’s not cheaper than doing nothing… unless you can help them schedule their exercise at a time they might otherwise be spending money, like out to lunch or online shopping. If exercising in the morning helps them be more productive or in a better mood during the day, or sleep more restfully at night, maybe we could help them monitor that the very first week, to help “see” that additional value right away. 
  • What does better mean for them? Turns out rich folks will totally go to a far away gym as long as it’s SUPER nice! That after-workout-whirlpool is a Day 1 value and they should use it Day 1. Better health, fitness, weight loss, etc…. nice for long term goals but not helpful for that early part of the change process. Is the time-for-self they could get at the gym something that they need and want but would feel guilty about? Can we help reduce that barrier before they start, so that exercise gives them something nice right at the start? 

For long term, positive change – we don’t want to rely on willpower, and we certainly don’t want to get stuck in the shame cycle (that just leads to more Oreos, or self-criticism, or avoidance, or…). We want to change our environments to maximize the chances of following through – make the change as easy, cheap, and desirable as possible right away. If we can make it easier, cheaper, and better than the alternative, our chances are REALLY good. 

Comment below: How have you successfully used something like this model with yourself or clients in the past? Have you had the experience of thinking that a great change plan was in place, but one of these things got in the way? 

 

 

Behaviorism for Parents 1

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Behaviorism for Parents – The Basics (Lesson 1)

I often have to teach parents about basic principles of operant conditioning and such, so I finally just wrote it up. Thought I’d share it with you. 

Thorndike’s Law: If you do something, and something good follows, you’re more likely to do that thing again. If you do something, and something bad follows, you’re less likely to do that thing again. (If this also sounds like we’re training a puppy… yes, very much yes.)

Important note: This is only for increasing or decreasing the occurrence of a behavior that already happens. We will talk about adding new behaviors (or more complex behaviors) later. Go ahead and get clients to identify a single behavior they like and one they don’t like for a single kid to use as examples for this teaching.

There are TWO WAYS for something good to follow a behavior. The first is if something pleasant is given (positive reinforcement, but you might just want to call this “reward”). So, if Jackson makes his bed in the morning, he might receive a dollar, or a sticker, or a gum drop, or extra screen time, or a curfew extension, or praise. Important note: rewards only work if they are valued by the recipient. It is a very common mistake to try to reward kids with things that we think they should care about but they really don’t.

The second way for something good to follow a behavior is for something unpleasant that already exists is taken away (negative reinforcement, but maybe you want to call it something like “reprieve.”) So, if Jackson makes his bed in the morning, he might get out of doing an unpleasant chore like washing the dishes. Same caveat – it has to matter to the kid.

Note that is has to be an overall pleasant experience, so if rewards are given grudgingly, or only after lots of nagging, etc., the overall takeaway won’t be pleasant.

SO: If Jackson likes desserts and hates folding laundry, and he makes his bed each day, and each day he gets ice cream after dinner and at the end of the week Mom hangs up his clothes instead of him, he’s much more likely to make his bed in the future.  

These two strategies – reward and reprieve – are the foundation of behavior change. Rewarding behavior you want is much, much, much more effective than trying to punish behavior you don’t want. (More on this in a moment.)

 There are TWO WAYS for something bad to follow a behavior. The first is if something unpleasant occurs (positive punishment, but you might just call it “punishment”). So, if Cinthia hits her younger sister, she gets spanked, or yelled at, or an additional chore. Important note: Punishments only work under very certain circumstances – they have to matter to the child, they have to be consistent across all settings, they have to be unemotionally delivered, and they have to be of moderate intensity. This is tremendously hard to do, especially with things like spankings. A “moderate intensity” spanking varies widely between kids and changes rapidly as they age. Also, the more often you spank, the more of a tolerance builds, and you will rapidly find yourself in a position where the hardest you are willing to spank them doesn’t matter to them anymore. And because they didn’t want to be spanked, and will resent your tyrannical exercise of control, they will begin to take much more pleasure from defying you than displeasure from being spanked and it simply won’t work anymore. Punishment (of all kinds, but certainly physical) also doesn’t get you anywhere in terms of teaching appropriate behavior. So, you don’t get better trained kids. Occasionally, you get cowed kids who seem to behave but are just waiting until they’re big enough to get away or hit back. You also teach them that aggression is the way to exercise control over other people they are bigger than. The much better choice is to choose an incompatible behavior (like listening quietly rather than shouting, telling a parent rather than hitting a sibling, etc.) and reward that behavior instead.

They second way for something bad to follow a behavior is for something pleasant to be taken away (negative reinforcement, or you may want to call it something like “payment”). If you feel you must have “negative consequences for misbehavior,” this is a much better option than punishment. So, if Cinthia hits her little sister, she has to “pay” in terms of losing allowance, an earlier curfew, losing her car or phone or screen time for a certain amount of time. There are still risks associated with this kind of use of your power – specifically that as your kids get older, they’ll just turn to friends to get the things they want – rides, borrowing phones, sneaking out, etc. – so that they aren’t dependent on you to give them the things they want.

 

Overall, the best solution is to create just a few rules for things that your kids are capable of doing that have good reasons behind them that your kids know, then rewarding those valuable behaviors with things your kids value as well.

 

Behaviorism for Parents Volume 2 and Volume 3 are now available!

 

Comment below: Where do your clients get stuck with understanding behavioral principles?