Behavioral therapy definition and types

Behavioral therapy definition and types

Learn about Behavioral therapy definition and types : Only our behaviors can be changed through behavior therapy. How does it function and what does it look like? The methods of behavior treatment will be revealed in this article.

Behavioral therapy definition and types

Behavioral therapy definition and types

Introduction to behavioral therapy

Have you ever taught a dog—or perhaps an other kind of pet—to do a variety of actions on demand? Dogs seem to enjoy discovering the patterns that lead to food rewards. My friends’ dogs have only been fed through training exercises, and those dogs pick things rather quickly. If you’ve ever watched a movie where an animal performs what appears to be an extremely difficult or uncommon behavior, I can assure you that their trainers worked with them for countless hours to perfect every part of their on-screen performance.

Also, you may have found it entertaining to witness a dog use its trained habits in the “wrong” circumstance.

You could believe that this method of behavior analysis is exclusive to animals. But, there is a type of therapy, specifically behavior therapy, that has a similar viewpoint:

much like other animals, humans have largely evolved their behavioral patterns in response to the outcomes of those behaviors. Learn about behavior therapy as a group, including what it is, how it differs from other psychotherapies, and some of its practices. ​

Behavioral therapy definition and types

What Is Behavior Therapy?

Definition : 

A type of psychotherapy known as behavior therapy focuses almost entirely on our habits and how they affect our neural systems over time (Wolpe, 1976). In other words, every action we take makes us feel either better or worse, and over time, we start to link certain actions with certain results. Behavior therapy focuses on altering actions that have become maladaptive, meaning they no longer provide the desired results, despite our conditioning to believe they will (Eysenck, 1965).

It is crucial to state up front that traditional behavior therapy, which focused primarily on behaviors and little on thoughts and feelings because it was believed that problems in our lives were caused by our behaviors, is no longer thought to be as effective as psychotherapies that also focus on behaviors and thoughts and feelings (Carvalho et al., 2017).This is primarily due to the fact that there are several ways for people to learn that have little or nothing to do with their own behaviour. For instance, both non-human animals and humans are capable of what is known as vicarious or observational learning: we can observe someone else perform an action, see what happens, and then attempt to replicate that behavior ourselves (Bandura & Walters, 1977).

Problem with behavior therapy’s methodology

The fact that we occasionally experience emotional suffering from our thinking alone is another another potent illustration that contradicts the behavior therapy method. Even just thinking about it or seeing it might make you feel horrible; you don’t even have to act in a certain way (Ellis, 1980). For instance, several of the individuals I’ve seen in therapy have reported feeling ashamed just thinking about particular actions they perceived as selfish. (In my opinion, engaging in these actions would be considered healthy limits or appropriate self-care.) But I am also susceptible to this cycle; much of my own personal development has occurred not by changing my habits but rather through letting go of guilt and shame whenever certain ideas arise.

However, as I will go into more detail about below, behavior therapy is founded on a strong body of research demonstrating that both humans and animals can acquire and unacquire habits through conditioning, which we can define as whatever response our behavior elicits in ourselves and in the world around us (Eysenck, 1965). A behavior therapist will concentrate on the specific issues at hand, trying to determine how each behavior has been reinforced over time and then changing the behavior or the reinforcements for the behavior, in contrast to other psychotherapies that may view a client’s problems from the perspective of “what is the diagnosis?” (Eysenck, 1965).

Behavior Therapy vs Cognitive Therapy

Understanding the differences between behavior therapy and cognitive therapy can be made easier by taking a look at depression. For instance, a behavior therapist would describe a depressive behavior like refusing to socialize with others as a conditioned reaction to having many situations where the individual sought to socialize but, for various reasons, did not receive positive reinforcement for it (Lewinsohn, 1974). In other words, the person with depression gradually acquired depressive behaviors since healthy activities that ought to have rewarded them did not.

When therapists realized how important it was to talk about and work with a client’s thoughts, cognitive therapy developed in part as a response to behavior therapy (Ellis, 1980). A cognitive therapist might describe depression as developing from negative thought patterns. Without engaging in any physical actions, Beck (1970) observed that a depressed individual might activate what he termed the cognitive triad, which consists of negative self-beliefs, negative thoughts about the outside world, and pessimistic expectations for the future.As an illustration, if I tell myself, “I don’t like the way I look,” I might then believe, “Nobody is going to be attracted to me,” which might then cause me to think, “I’m going to end up all alone.” Nothing was done, and now I’m depressed.

What Distinguishes Behavior Therapy from Psychoanalysis?

Behavior therapy evolved in response to the dominant kind of psychotherapy at the time: psychoanalysis, much like cognitive therapy did in response to behavior therapy (Eysenck, 1965). Simply put, many psychologists and therapists found it challenging to demonstrate that the therapeutic techniques of psychoanalysis, such as dream interpretation and attempting to comprehend a person’s unconscious, were in fact what helped clients feel better.So, this new generation of psychologists moved on the human experiences that could be plainly seen: behaviors, rather than concentrating on things that could not be seen or proven to exist at all. They did so knowing they could rely on numerous experimental investigations involving both people and other animals to demonstrate the effectiveness of their intervention strategies.

History of Behavior Therapy

Behavior therapy was developed at a period when the majority of psychotherapists were using psychodynamic or Freudian theories, as I said before. In fact, in many research studies, clients did not improve more than the control group, and in some cases, they even became worse, making it impossible for researchers to show that people improved as a result of the insights they obtained in Freudian therapy (Eysenck, 1965). At the same time, it was simple to demonstrate that with the correct reinforcements, you could train an animal or a human to do a variety of behaviors, as demonstrated by the work of American psychologists John B. Watson and Bernard F. Skinner and Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov (Lazarus, 1977). In other words, behavior therapy emerged as a result of abundant evidence supporting its efficacy. ​

Behavioral therapy definition and types

Behavior Therapy Types

Nowadays, behavior therapy is rarely employed with adults because it is generally accepted that psychotherapies that combined the concepts of behavior therapy with a focus on thoughts are more successful in assisting people with mental health issues. In the case of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), for instance, the concepts of behavior therapy were combined with those of cognitive therapy (Beck, 1970). (Carvalho et al., 2017).

Yet, there are still some forms of behavior treatment used in child therapy. The terms Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) and Parent Management Training (PMT) refer to the two primary methods of behavior therapy for kids (Baer, 2019). These two types have the benefit of being useful in circumstances when it would be challenging to engage with thoughts and feelings. Applied behavioral analysis, for instance, is largely used to assist caregivers in controlling the conduct of kids with severe behavioral problems and kids with autism spectrum disorder (Baer, 2019). Parent Management Training, on the other hand, is used to assist parents in improving their ability to control their children’s behavior. For instance, parents can learn which of a child’s behaviors to reinforce and which to avoid reinforcing. ​

Behavioral Therapy Techniques

A few of the fundamental methods used in behavior treatment are listed below (Grossberg, 1964):

• Withdrawing positive reinforcement : Until the desired behavior is achieved, one behavioral treatment strategy is to remove something enjoyable. For instance, a parent might ignore their child completely until they exhibit the behavior they desire (such as ceasing to scream and yell and starting to put the toys away).
• Operant conditioning : “You will get a sticker each time you remember to start your homework as soon as we come home from school,” a parent would instruct a youngster. We’ll go out for ice cream as soon as you get three stickers. In time, the youngster will be more likely to start their homework right away because of the rewarding nature of the stickers and ice cream.
• Aversion : A parent may place a child in time out, an unpleasant experience, until they are ready to apologize to their sister after calming down. The unpleasant sensation ceases after that.
• Desensitization : When a youngster finds a scenario challenging, like presenting themselves to a stranger, a therapist and the child can practice it in little steps until the situation becomes less frightening.

Behavior Therapy Goals

Behavior therapy aims to promote a client’s propensity to act in ways that enhance their life and wellbeing (Eysenck, 1965). In order to engage in the behaviors that are most healthy for them, it helps clients to recognize how various behaviors result in various feelings.

Adults may recognize that doing so when their spouse tries to talk to them prevents them from experiencing more shame at the time, but ultimately causes more shame and relationship issues. The client could practice remaining involved in contentious discussions until they have felt the benefits of doing so.

A youngster may learn via behavior therapy that going through with their nighttime ritual would be more rewarding than struggling with it. This can be done by having the parent compliment each step that is successfully finished and by promising a reward of more time for reading before bed if the routine is followed effectively. ​

Behavior Therapy for Anxiety

Although less successful than CBT, behavior therapy has been demonstrated to be beneficial for treating anxiety (Butler et al., 1991). This appears to be due to the fact that some forms or components of anxiety are more amenable to behavior therapy than others. For instance, forcing clients into stressful circumstances while forbidding them from using their typical, unhealthy coping mechanisms can be quite effective at lowering the frequency of those behaviors (Rachman, 2009). (This is one method of treating various facets of obsessive-compulsive disorder.) Yet, it appears that Cognitive Behavior Therapy will be more successful than conventional behavior treatment for the majority of individuals with anxiety (Butler et al., 1991). ​

Behavior Therapy for Kids

As mentioned before, behavior therapy continues to benefit kids (Werry & Wollersheim, 1989). The main objectives of behavior therapy for children are to reduce the frequency of undesirable behaviors (such as pushing a sibling) and to increase the frequency of desired behaviors (such as communicating your anger to your sibling). Over time, they also aim to teach the child to naturally choose the desired behaviors over the undesirable ones (Gelfand & Hartmann, 1968). ​

Does Behavior Therapy Work?

The simplest approach to answer if behavior therapy is effective is to say that it is beneficial for mental health issues that are not strongly connected to complex thoughts or emotions (Carvalho et al., 2017). Giving a child an other, more adaptive behavioral option in this case may be sufficient. For instance, a child who slaps their siblings out of anger is largely acting out of impulsivity and a simple (though intense) emotion. Complex psychotherapy is required for difficulties that are more complicated. ​

Behavioral therapy definition and types

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