Foundations

Responses Discussions 1.1 and 1.2

Respond to the two discussion posts.

A Prayer Over You

Joy

My perspective on prayer is that - especially nowadays - it's the one, sacred time and space that each of us carves out to be present and in the moment with ourselves and God. My life, and the lives of many, is jam-packed with work, school work, raising children, and spending time with people for whom I love and care. There are few moments of the day that I am actually alone, and alone in intentionality with my God, so the moments that I make this happen are not only special, but required. It is in these moments that I am able to let go of every worry, fear, frustration, angst and just be nothing other than who I am in God. 

At first, I was very awkward when it came to praying, because I grew up in the church and heard and saw many people praying and I never felt like I prayed as well as others. I was insecure about what to say to God, and quite honestly, I felt awkward being alone with God, who I couldn't see or hear. It felt like I was just talking to myself or talking in my head to no one. However, as I continued to practice praying, the process got easier and I was able to let go of the expectations of what I thought I should do while praying and just surrendered. And wouldn't you know - when I finally surrendered all of my expectations, the process for me just flowed and I felt more connected to God than I ever had before. 

In terms of an interview/assessment process, I am more than comfortable with this, with others. In fact, I look forward to interviewing and assessing conversations with others because it allows me the opportunity to learn more about them and their experiences. I'm like a sponge - I love learning and I love meeting and getting to know people who are different from me. I take the stance that there is very little that I know from my own limited perspective and any interaction with others allows me the opportunity to evolve and grow.  

I guess praying with others during the interview process would be dependent on how comfortable I feel with the other person, which is probably counterintuitive because God would want us to put all of our fears aside and just pray with others, regardless. Prayer is such an intimate act for me, and I don't always feel comfortable engaging in this with others - especially if they don't agree with, or actively practice praying. I also never want to push someone to engage in something like prayer, if they aren't comfortable with it, because I also don't want to deter them or make them even more uncomfortable with the process. I can show others love without praying with them, but if I grow closer to that person and form a more trusting relationship with them, then praying with them is definitely not outside of the realm of possibility for me. 

Traditional Psychology Methods in Working with Clients

Joy

As with the evolution of any field, methodology, or technique, there is always a starting point. While we can hypothesize best practice strategies, as they sound good in theory, we don’t know if they will be until they’ve been implemented. The field of Psychology is no exception. Before the birth of Positive Psychology, as a strengths-based discipline, was created in 1998 (Azar, 2011), more traditional methods and techniques were utilized with patients as the gold standard for treatment. These methods focused more on the disease model, whereby mental health professionals identified patients’ deficits and mental illnesses and treated them accordingly (Positive Psychology, n.d.).

           For instance, psychoanalysis was a process whereby practitioners would guide patients to dig deeper to discover hidden motivations or urges for their obscure behaviors, operant conditioning aimed to modify patients’ obscure behaviors through rewards and punishments, classical desensitizing conditioning put patients in the midst of their fears in efforts to help them not be so negatively affected by their fears, and cognitive therapy aimed to help patients pinpoint their dysfunctional, destructive thoughts as the reasons for their dysfunctional, destructive behavior (American Psychological Association, 2009). All these methods are still used today by mental health professionals, in some fashion – oftentimes in combination with one another – with their patients. So, while these methods tend to hone in on the way a person suffers, they still serve a purpose for treatment.

            Psychotherapy allows patients to think more about their thoughts, about the  why. This can be positive because it allows for more critical thinking, as opposed to just accepting that our behaviors have no reasoning behind them but could also be harmful if it keeps patients in a loop of negative thinking. Additionally, patients could also come up with motivators or reasonings for their behavior that aren’t actually reasons for the behavior; their creativity could take them away for the sake of coming up with motivators. Operant conditioning helps patients with motivation – whether that motivation is positively or negatively reinforced. Ideally, we could all be intrinsically motivated, but that isn’t always the case. On the flip side, patients could become reliant on operant conditioning and their intrinsic motivation could potentially lessen. Desensitization sometimes offers some relief through repeated exposure to a perceived negative stimulus, but this could backfire as the patient’s reality is that they are already terrified. This practice could further traumatize an individual. Cognitive behavioral therapy is still widely used by clinicians, and I believe, has been pivotal in the birth of Positive Psychology, as it affords patients the opportunity to identify their negative thoughts and reframe those thoughts to offer them relief and a healthier way to move forward.

References

American Psychological Association. (2009). Different approaches to psychotherapy. American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/topics/psychotherapy/approaches

Azar, B. (2011, April 1). Positive psychology advances, with growing pains. Monitor on Psychology, 42(4). https://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/04/positive-psychology

Positive Psychology (n.d.).  Positive Psychology: Criticisms of Traditional Psychology, Optimism. Zeepedia.com. Retrieved April 11, 2024, from https://www.zeepedia.com/read.php?positive_psychology_criticisms_of_%91traditional_psychology_optimism_organizational_psychology&b=93&c=23

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