Coping with Anxiety

Kathrina is a 20-something professional with dilemmas that disrupt her from being productive in her career. It also gives her inconsistent sleeping habits, which results from an uneasy feeling from the anxiety that she feels. Furthermore, she feels that her way of coping with such is not improving at all. Such predicaments hamper her career as a real estate agent, which she finds a big deterrent in producing sales. Kathrina’s biggest dilemma is that her parents expect a lot from her.

She doesn’t want to leave home yet she already feels uneasy about her situation at home. With this in mind, she resorts to me, a behavioral psychiatrist. Kathrina opts to undergo a series of sessions that will give her the opportunity to deal with anxiety and stress. 1) As a behavioral therapist how would you proceed in therapy in the case of Kathrina? First, I would like the patient to describe her environment while she was growing up. This would help me ascertain what is it like to live in her environment during her childhood.

It will allow me to determine how she generates feedbacks and how she behaves in this type of environment. As a behavioral therapist, I have to make her understand that her environment is responsible for her apparent behavior. The environment she thrives in conditions her to be behaving in such way. The environment includes all the people around her and the behavior of this people. She has to understand that her behavior does not deliberately stems from her. In behavioral psychology, it is suggested that behaviors are attained through the environment’s conditioning (Wagner, 2008).
As the individual interacts with her environment more, the more she is conditioned to act accordingly to her environment’s standards. As the individual accommodates this conditioning into her system, the more she is influenced by her environment’s conditioning. As I proceed with the subject’s current situation, I learn that she really accommodates and tolerates the behavioral standards of her situation. She does not have a hand in her apparent behavior at all. The stress from her work is not responsible as well.
The environment which is her home is the primary stimulus that affects her behavior, and causes her numerous dilemmas. In a branch of behaviorism, classic conditioning is used to condition a subject to respond to a certain stimulus. Classic conditioning is a type of conditioning in behaviorism, which conditions a subject by instigating a stimulus in order to generate a favorable response (Van Wagner, 2008). In Kathrina’s case, her parents conditioned her in the most effective manner. This leads us to the speculation that Kathrina might not have received classical conditioning at all.
Another type of conditioning, Operant conditioning can be suggested as the possible culprit for the apparent behavior of Kathrina. Operant conditioning takes place whenever the subject is conditioned through punishment and reward reinforcements. In Kathrina’s case, she might have received more reward reinforcements than punishment reinforcements. Yet this brings to us the notion that she might have been conditioned by reward reinforcements even if her parents are wrong in giving her reward reinforcements.
With this in mind, Kathrina’s case will remain unsolved, and I will suggest further therapy sessions for her to be able to cope up with stress and chronic anxiety. 2) How does behavioral therapy fit, or not fit, with your own personal style? The behavioral approach to therapy is not proper at all. It is very subjective and not objective at all. It is one-dimensional because it simply analyzes the environmental factors that contribute to the individual’s behavior. Both operant and classical conditioning are subjective in approach, and analyzes a subject’s behavior in a bias manner.
In Kathrina’s case, her behavior is not really caused by her environment alone. She has also a hand in contributing to her mental tortures. With this in mind, she must shrug her dilemmas aside. Apt therapy can also aid her in this situation she faces. References Van Wagner,K. (2008). Behaviorism. Retrieved March 22, 2008, from http://psychology. about. com/od/behavioralpsychology/f/behaviorism. htm Watson,J. Behaviorism Explained. General Psychology. Published Diestro Ltd. 2000.