Introduction
Reality therapy is a significantly radical approach that helps people exhibiting psychological issues realize their role in the matter. Unlike other psychological models, reality theory maintains that people choose specific behaviors that often put them in distress. That way, the philosophy seeks to help individuals with mental issues recognize their lack of control and the need to re-establish it for their healthy operation.
According to the theory, people have five fundamental needs necessary for psychological balance. The requirements include power, belonging, freedom, fun, and survival, all of which must be met for mental stability. However, meeting the needs holistically is impossible for all humans, often leading to organized behaviors as a reaction to unmet basic needs. Reality theory posits that persons choosing to change their behaviors, rather than trying to amend others’, better attain personal objectives and wishes, thus achieving psychological stability. Moreover, those struggling with mental issues can heal by working with a professional therapist who helps them understand and change their unmet psychological needs and the resultant coded behaviors.
Using Reality Therapy with the Client
Jon’s Situation
Jon is a typical young adult struggling with relationship issues and who chooses a degenerative behavior to manage the condition. He is a first-year university learner studying architecture, a subject he continuously dislikes. Jon’s original plan was to meet his family’s desire to become a doctor. His parents and close relatives are all in the medical discipline, making them prominent individuals in the community.
Despite the family’s wish, Jon fails to secure a chance in medical school, leading his parents to select an architecture course for him. However, the teenager accepts the specialization not because he loves it but because he never wants to hurt his parents. Jon confesses to preferring horticulture to the course he is undertaking now.
The dissatisfaction makes it hard for him to concentrate in class, causing notable academic struggles that put more pressure on him. He fears that failing to secure a medical tutelage position and failing to excel in the other course will make him a failure to his parents. The youngster compares his life to a late friend who experienced a similar encounter, leading to suicide.
Failing to become a doctor pushes Jon away from his extended family and old high school friends who are already pursuing medicine. Thus, he lacks love from the family, making him a psychologically deficient fellow. Furthermore, Jon lacks freedom because of his inability to realize autonomy and maintain personal space (Supeni & Jusoh, 2021). Lack of independence further denies teenagers enjoyment or a sense of pleasure, commonly termed fun by Glasser (Emmelkamp & Meyerbröker, 2021). Lastly, Jon enjoys assured survival currently as his parents provide all the basic needs, including food and shelter, things he stands to enjoy in life, being the only child of two professional parents, and a member of a stable extended family.
Self-Evaluation Using the WDE System
Reality therapy can substantially intervene in Jon’s case based on the various underlying factors. The client primarily struggles with relationship issues and lacks four of the five basic psychological needs described by the theory. Jon needs to understand his present reality in order to change his behavior.
Self-evaluation is the first stage in taking the client through this mission. Using the WDEP scheme, Jon’s current wants and needs are realizable. Consequently, the teenager’s primary needs include love, understanding, and a sense of belonging. He also wants to concentrate in class and give his current course the best chance to succeed.
Jon is not intellectually weak, based on his ability to achieve a grade that qualifies him to apply for medicine. The teenager can cope with architecture, but needs to feel loved and appreciated to do it. Struggling with the primary needs drains the youngster’s ability to focus on his studies. Instead of persevering and working hard, Jon wants to commit suicide to leave his parents, whom he feels will be better without him.
The client believes that becoming a doctor and meeting the family’s professional expectations constitute a quality of life that guarantees healthy relationships with relatives and friends. Moreover, after failing to become a doctor, the family wants Jon to specialize in a rewarding profession. Jon wishes to regain confidence, experience love, realize his achievements, and decide independently.
The fellow is trying hard to grasp the architecture concepts to regain his parents’ approval and love, often waking up early and sleeping late while studying. He also avoids family meetings, friends, and architecture classes that remind him of his failure. Furthermore, he feels like a loser and thinks of following his friend’s decision to commit suicide. He believes that he does not live according to his family’s expectations and does not deserve to belong there. Avoiding classes results from the thought that the course is challenging and he will never complete it as expected by his parents. The idea of his struggles causes him excessive emotional pain, resulting in crying and suicidal ideation.
Jon undertakes multiple actions due to his lack of essential psychological needs. Examples of such deeds include avoiding classes, submitting assignments late, avoiding family meetings, and keeping away from old friends already in the medical discipline. Thinking about suicide and crying when the emotions become overwhelming are some of Jon’s other behaviors. All these actions do not help him access what he wants. For instance, his busy parents and extended family think he has school commitments that prevent him from attending social gatherings.
Similarly, none of his deeds are taking him closer to the love, independence, and relationship he needs, making his behavioral decisions dangerous. Nonetheless, Jon’s wishes are achievable, including accessing genuine listening peers, establishing a reliable connection with the family, and realizing a sense of victory and control in life. Fortunately, he is prepared to collaborate with the therapist to regain stability, while his commitment level seems high.
Action Planning and Behavior Rehearsal
The action plan stage involves establishing new actions that serve Jon’s needs better. The earlier described doings and evaluation phases show the client’s inability to realize his intended goals with the present actions. Replacing the negative mentality with a positive one, making the therapist a confidant, and taking a walk whenever emotions become overwhelming are examples of the plans targeted for Jon. Other than viewing his failure to join medicine as proof of failing, Jon should appreciate his exceptional grades that diversify his professional potential.
Equally, Jon must consider his architecture course a unique gift to the family. He will be the only person in the gathering with special skills, with all the family members investing in real estate consulting him. Linking Jon with a successful architect to learn the profession’s uniqueness is the last action to help him love and commit to the new course, thus developing a positive attitude and behavior. Jon’s planned behaviour rehearsals during therapy include attending classes, family meetings, and linking with peers and professors weekly to polish challenging class concepts.
The Rationale for Using Reality Therapy to Work with Jon
In Jon’s situation, reality therapy is a highly functional mental health management approach. The choice theory seems to appropriately align with the patient’s situation, making its utilization justifiable. Though not stated in the case, Jon appears to have had a healthy relationship with his family until he missed the opportunity to attend medical school. Most of his relatives are in this field and earn a good income, which makes the family influential.
Therefore, Jon expects his life to follow a similar trajectory, guaranteeing him parental love and appreciation, a sense of belonging, socioeconomic independence, and fun. All these relationship elements seem gone due to losing the opportunity to become a doctor, forcing Jon to adopt the hurtful behavior of trying to quit life because he cannot control things outside of himself. Listening to Jon’s fears, encouraging him, linking the teenager with a successful architect, and showing him how to partner with peers and professional coursework support teams can adequately help him correct his behavior.
The Appropriateness of Using Reality Therapy and the Limitations
Jon is a youth experiencing relationship issues, but lacks adequate support to overcome them. His parents’ commitments and the family’s structural mentality regarding the best profession equally affect the teenager significantly. The boy’s symptoms are manageable using the choice theory and the reality therapy philosophy. The ability to help Jon acquire a healthy relationship, a life coach, a professional listener, intrinsic motivation, and control of his personal life makes the therapy’s application sound.
Jon’s primary problem is maintaining the relationship with his parents. He never liked becoming a doctor initially, but values horticulture. However, the family cherishes the medical discipline and expects all its members to join it. The situation pressures the children, who often view their parents’ love as conditional. Jon is a victim of this facet and makes wrong choices that nurture the hurting behavior.
Moreover, the parents seem to suffer from a common thing, looking at Jon and Ken’s condition. Giving more preference to work relative to family and children hurts communities substantially, as noted by Hoffmann et al. (2022). Thus, reality therapy allows Jon to partner with a professional therapist who establishes a working relationship before the real questioning starts (Fiana, 2020).
The psychotherapist is patient enough to give the client adequate time to heal without conditions. Unlike other psychiatry models, reality therapy stands out because it allows the professional to bond and get involved in the victim’s life to form a working connection (Freitas et al., 2021). The established functional link even allows the counsellor to cause change by challenging the client and applying some pressure, especially concerning adopting the developed plans (Gorowska et al., 2022). The closeness realized during the therapy makes the counsellor a life coach, with the client-mentor efficient relationship flowing to the family members, healing the ill person.
Jon receives a professional listener and a challenger courtesy of the therapy, with the systematic self-searching approach causing an intrinsic, permanent, positive change, proving the approach’s appropriateness in the case. Lastly, reality therapy stands to help Jon complete his current course and become a successful person in the community. The aspect reveals the philosophy’s ability to repair all the deficient basic psychological necessities troubling the client.
The counsellor should embrace empathy and sometimes strike Jon, especially after developing rapport, to force him to transform his behaviour. For example, collecting Jon’s wishes and actions through the Reality Therapy process allows the therapist to dare him to take the proper steps (Salehi et al., 2020). However, being a teenager may limit Jon’s ability to reveal issues, particularly about himself, as required by the model, thus showing a significant weakness. Consequently, the room to provoke one to change his behavior while helping the client to transform, only available in Reality Therapy, is principal in Jon’s situation and works effectively.
Addressing Jon’s Statement
Jon’s deficiency in primary psychological needs is at severe levels. Struggling to get attention without accessing it for a long time makes the teenager negligent (Twenge, 2020). His parents focus more on their profession, while the other family members care less about others leading different lives. Therefore, Jon lacks love, belonging, freedom to make personal choices about his life, fun, and a sense of self-worth.
He wants to kill himself because no one seems to care, including people he expects to be there for him (Emmelkamp et al., 2020). That way, Jon needs to get a caring guardian in the counsellor. He may not be comfortable with his parents or relatives getting involved in the therapy, and as the therapist, one should not do it without first addressing it with the students. Jon’s subconscious trust that medicine is the best profession, and losing it makes him worthless, should be terminated to cease the feeling of insignificance.
As the counsellor, one should help the student connect with successful architects to appreciate their value socially and socioeconomically. Furthermore, the psychotherapist should encourage Jon to communicate with peers at the college to make revision and assignment management easy. Revealing some of the architecture’s uniqueness, including the ability to lead life-changing projects and ensuring structures meet the necessary quality to protect life, is key for Jon to change his traditional hurting mentality.
Lastly, asking Jon whether he would wish to have a family and children when the time comes is crucial in driving away the view that his parents would be better without him. Supposing the teenager responds to the inquiry positively, the counsellor would then guide him to experience the agony of losing the only child as a parent for whatever reason. Consequently, the experience will change Jon’s attitude toward taking his life, thus completely transforming his choices and behavior.
Applying the CPR Model to Assess the Likelihood of Jon Hurting Himself
Jon is bitter with himself for failing to meet his family’s and subconscious self-expectations. He comes from a line of doctors, with his parents being registered and serving doctors. Joining the profession grants one some conspicuous abilities and traits, including social respect, financial stability, and high self-esteem and concept.
Moreover, in Jon’s case, becoming a doctor means complying with parents’ and family’s expectations, thus feeling like a faithful member and conqueror. Jon is the only child of his parents and thus bears notable expectations from his mother and father. Having money means that the parents gave Jon the best life possible, causing a sense of anticipation on his part.
One such condition for Jon to prove loyalty, based on him, was to pass his exam and follow the family lineage’s career path. However, reality never allowed that to happen, as Jon’s application to the medicine course failed, causing absolute agony to the teenager. Instead of talking to their son, the parents searched for an alternative specialization for Jon without involving him. Consequently, the child is hurt by the parents’ actions that brand him as a failure.
Jon is a teenager and may not readily open up regarding his condition. The client seems conclusive and resolute about his parents’ discomfort with him, and failing to become a doctor automatically disqualifies him from the family. Anything threatening such a status quo pushes him to make the hard decisions that influence his behavior.
Jon is stubborn and may not respond appropriately to the psychotherapist’s questions (Kim & Roberson, 2022). The situation requires the professional to adopt practical triggers to force the student to collaborate. The Confronting Prejudiced Responses (CPR) Scheme is a highly reliable tool.
According to Torrez et al. (2023), the CPR framework is a form of interpersonal clash that forces individuals to react by revealing personal information they otherwise would not provide. A counsellor using this approach must utilize a comment or event that perturbs the target because they identify it as biased. Thus, the technique provokes the victim to respond, creating a chat environment that leads to further exchanges during therapy.
The CPR scheme follows a specific strategy, involving the client’s initial provocation and recognition of the vexation. For example, telling Jon that even killing himself will not help bridge his desires with actions would trigger him to confess his plans, making it possible for the psychotherapist to learn the client’s potential to harm himself. The strategy makes Jon develop a personal responsibility to intervene, which involves responding to deep questions.
The pressure further pushes Jon to comply with the therapist throughout the ‘course of action‘ phase, where the professional develops a fitting schedule of events that will reverse the erroneous behavior. The last stage is when the client acts to realize healing (Hebl et al., 2020). Therefore, CPR constitutes a fundamental companion to Reality Therapy. The scheme forces clients to vent their emotions and plans, allowing the therapist to design a comprehensive and fitting intervention.
Conclusion
In conclusion, reality therapy is a highly effective intervention for psychological issues affecting varied groups of people. A principal strength of the model is its general applicability to all situations and cases. Linking mental issues to choices and behaviors provides a rather simplistic way of handling highly complex cases.
The therapy is effective in Jon’s position due to the client’s matching elements. The lack of relationship and the potential risk of losing the status quo make Jon lose hope after failing to control external factors. Reality therapy pinpoints to him that the only thing he can control is himself, with the psychotherapist using the CPR model to push the student to reveal all his plans. Taking Jon through the process will show him the essence of diversity in the family’s career line and the possibility of managing the current course, leading to a change in behavior and adopting an upbeat personality.
References
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