Summary of Reality therapy

Reality Therapy

INTRODUCTION

                Reality therapy emphasizes that people are capable of changing their fate if they will live in reality. This therapy is not complicated and easy to understand unlike other therapy. It is simple yet not simplistic. The basis of this theory is on an explanation of brain functioning or control theory which accounts for human behavior. Based in the control theory, we act to an attempt to fulfill our current needs:  belonging, power, pleasure, freedom, and survival. Through the process of reality therapy, clients learn more about effective path to satisfy their needs.

Brief Biography

                William Glasser was born in Cleveland, Ohio on May 11, 1925. Little has been known about Glasser’s childhood but he described it as uneventful and happy. While still a student of Case Institute of technology, he married Naomi Judith Silver. After he graduated, his advisers rejected his dissertation. He gained admission to medical school at Western Reserve University. He began experimenting with the alternative treatment to the traditional psychoanalytic procedures.

View of Human nature

• Reality therapists first establish a warm and trusting relationship with their client. This is done to help clients evaluate choices they make to meet the basic needs that all humans have for belonging, power, freedom, and enjoyment.
• The view of human nature in reality therapy is that all needs are internal and that human beings act on the world purposefully to satisfy their needs and wants.
• An important element of choice theory is the notion that the brain stores need-satisfying images that serve as a guide to behavior. The five basic needs are survival, belonging, power, freedom, and fun.
• The goal of reality therapy is help people define their wants, evaluate their behaviors, and make concrete plans for fulfilling their needs.

MAJOR METHODS AND TECHNIQUES

·         Structuring

Ø  The counselor helps clients to adjust their expectations and gives them a realistic hope for change.

·         Confrontation

Ø   Confronted with present reality and eventually they will need to face the questions for the clients.

·         Contracts

Ø  Agreement signed by both the client and his/her therapist further reinforces a commitment to follow through. Contracts provides concrete evidence of their intention to change their behavior.

·         Instruction

Ø  The therapist should be competent so that they know how to teach or instruct the client in order to meet their goals.

·         Skillful Questioning

Ø  The therapist helps the clients to evaluate their behavior by asking a direct question.

·         Emphasizing Choice

Ø  The therpist help the clients by giving an options where the clients have a freedom to choice to live by their own standards.

·         Role Playing

Ø  Is a technique that presentizes clients’ behavior and allow them to rehearse the events that cause their anxiety. During a role-playing activity, clients learn to prepare for the consequences of their behavior, including their feelings while performing the activity.

·         Support

Ø  Once the clients see that their therapist encourages and supports them that he or she believes in them, their motivation and self-efficacy increases. Inevitably, the therapists trust and support communicates a sense of self-worth, and it is this growing feeling of being worthwhile that give clients more energy to live responsibly.

·         Constructive Debate

Ø  When therapist and clients challenge one another’s ideas and values, it demonstrates that they have values worth defending, that what they have to say is worthwhile and is taken seriously. Through constructive debate, clients learn they can contribute meaningfully to the therapeutic process.

·         Humor

Ø  Knowing that clients can be brought closer to reality through the therapeutic use of humor, the reality therapist occasionally uses humor in a sensitive manner. Used appropriately, humor can help clients gain a healthy ability to laugh at themselves- to become less introspective and more objective.

·         Self-Disclosure

Ø  Reality therapist share personal experiences and struggles and open themselves up to reveal their humanity, even to the point of questioning their own values or uncovering their own weaknesses.

·         Positive Addictions

Ø  Glasser encourages his clients to choose positive addictions that lead to more satisfactory ways living or anything that may help them reach a healthy high.

·         Assessment

Ø  Although the counselor in reality therapy makes little attempt to test, diagnose interpret, or otherwise assess clients, he or she evaluate their progress toward desired goals.

Application

          At the outset aspect of the therapy   it is crucial that the therapist must be involved, that he / she established a caring rapport within the context of a professional helping relationships and that the the therapist remain positive and emphasize the clients strength . client’s behavior is [presumed to be an  attempt at some point of control, a means of satisfying a want or need, the therapist then needs  to persuade them to  own up to what they are doing now. The client’s  not the therapist who must learn to evaluate their behavior to know whether what they are doing is helping their situation. Clients with failure identities are particularly reluctant to commit change. At this point the therapist will brook no excuses. The therapist needs to eliminate punishment, which usually involves another person controlling the clients lives. As we can see in the whole process of the therapist he had this courage to pursue the whole treatment. He never gives up instead his looking forward the possibility of change. The reality therapy is applied to a wide variety of clinical issues. It was used in different kinds of problem of the people. Here the essential issues in the therapy is on Glasser’s approach it has been illustrated in the case of pat a young, wealthy, overindulged satisfactorily married and has two children. As a therapist Glasser invested in Pat and he help her to become responsible for what she really wants., which is the reduction of her weight.          The therapist found hard in dealing with pat for her behavior but after a long run of therapy. This said therapy continuous slowly because Pat is not cooperating at some time. Pat rejected Glasser a number of times but he pursue and take a little effort to get the trust and respect from Pat. Eventuaslly in the process Pat learn to accept that only herself can make her responsible. After almost a yaer Glasser now point out Pat’s behavior that she neede to remove and that is being “irresponsible”. After Pat learn to be responsible she take a little chance to change. Pat felt a keener sense of achievement and she lost 50 pounds. In the therapy the client must understand that she only needs to accept her present situation and be open to changes to finally found acvhievements. The client are not ill they are just weak.

Submitted by BEED III-A:

Michelle Doong

Rachel Fraga

liezel Mundala

Jennifer Murao

Ryan Capucao