Happiness Isn’t Brain Surgery:
Behavior Modification Basics/Part 1
Presented by: Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes
Executive Director, AllCEUs
Host: Counselor Toolbox
Continuing Education (CE) credits for addiction and mental health counselors, social workers and marriage and family therapists can be earned for this presentation at
https://allceus.com/member/cart/index/product/id/575/c/
Objectives
– Define behavior modification
– Explore how behavior modification can be useful in practice
– Learn basic behavior modification terms:
– Unconditioned stimulus and response
– Conditioned stimulus and response
– Discriminitive stimuli
– Learned helplessness
Why Do I Care
– Change means doing something different or modifying a response
– That response can be a neurochemical one (stress response) or an overt behavioral one (smoking)
– Behavior modification principles will help you understand some of the reasons people act/react the way they do
– By understanding what rewards(causes and motivates) people’s behavior we can better address their issues
– The focus on observable, measurable conditions to the exclusion of cognitive interpretation underscores the mind-body connection
Definition
– Behavior modification in its truest form is concerned only with observable, measurable behaviors, stimuli and reinforcement
– Emotions, interpretations and mental processes have no bearing
How can this be useful in practice
– Traditional (strict) behavior modification can be quite useful in simplifying stimulus/reaction
– Integrating the cognitive interpretations (labels) can help people in identifying and addressing what is causing their “distress” (Behaviorists would refer to excitatory response)
– Understanding what causes feelings can also give people a greater sense of empowerment.
Example
– Puppies learn appropriate behavior through reinforcement and correction
– Puppy 1 tackles puppy 2 / threat
– Puppy 2 responds by tackling puppy 1 / counter threat
– Both puppies get a surge of adrenaline
– The puppy that dominates receives a dopamine surge that reinforces the prior behaviors — do that again.
– If Puppy 1 plays too rough, then puppy 2 will either become more aggressive or leave.
– Either way, puppy 1s behavior is punished.
Example 2
– Humans have learned to label certain internal experiences with feeling words (angry, scared, happy)
– Sally goes to a pet store
– A puppy comes out, sits in her lap and puts is head on her leg
– This contact (we know from studies) usually causes the release of dopamine and oxytocin –both reward chemicals
– Sally calls this “happy”
– If Sally had previously had a threatening experience with a dog, when she saw it, her body would likely respond by secreting adrenaline, kicking off the fight or flight reaction. Sally would label this as “fear”
Points
– The brain receives signals and, based on prior learning (conditioning), responds with either:
– Fight/Anger or Flee/Fear (adrenaline/norepinepherine)
– No reaction/neutral
– Pleasure/Happy/Do this again (Dopamine/norepinephrine/Serotonin/GABA/Oxytocin?)
– Humans label these different chemical responses with feeling words.
– The same response can be labeled differently by two different people (fear vs. exhilaration)
Points
– People with anxiety, anger or resultant depression may need to:
– Recondition X is not actually a threat (anymore)
– Relabel
– Excited vs. terrified
– Stressed vs. hungry
– Helpless/anxious vs. fat
– ACT approach– X is causing me to have the feeling that…
– In American culture we often use nonfeeling words to describe emotional states.
– Part of recovery is identifying the physiological response to the stimulus and labeling it with a feeling word
Basic Terms
– Unconditioned stimulus and response
– Something that evokes an unconditioned/automatic response in an infant and adult
– Loud noises
– Pain
– Excessive cold/heat
– Contact
Basic Terms
– Conditioned Stimulus
– Something that in itself has no meaning to the person (yellow light)
– Conditioned Response
– The person’s reaction to the stimulus (slow down or floor it)
– Conditioned stimuli and responses can be traced back to survival Fight-Flee-Forget-Repeat
Basic Terms
– Discriminitive stimulus
– All things being equal, the stimulus which triggers the reaction. (Includes vulnerabilities)
– Going to work
– Good day
– Bad day
– Learned Helplessness
– A response which occurs when people have tried and failed to either fight or flee. Giving up.
Measurable Responses / Basic Feelings
– Excitatory (Adrenaline, norepinephrine, Glutamate)
– Fight / Anger, rage, resentment, jealousy, envy, regret, stress
– Flee / Fear, anxious, nervous, apprehensive, timid
– Neutral
– Learned Helplessness / Depression
– Inhibitory (Serotonin, GABA, Dopamine)
– Repeat / Happy, elated, victorious, successful, competent
Fight or Flee
– Stimuli that present a threat of pain or death can trigger the excitatory fight or flight response
– Through experiences (conditioning) people learn what threats
– They can defeat (fight/anger)
– Will defeat them (flee/anxiety)
– A useful intervention is to identify
– The threat
– Why is was labeled fight/anger/controllable or flee/fear/uncontrollable
– Break down parts of the situation into controllable and uncontrollable
A Note About Threats
– Fight or Flee (survival)
– Basic Fears
– Loss of Control
– Underscores most fears
– Fighting or fleeing provides control
– Isolation & rejection
– Primitive: Death/inability to procreate
– Can be examined and counter conditioned
– Is this really going to kill you?
– Examine the exceptions
– Examine alternate explanations
A Note About Threats
– Fight or Flee (survival)
– Basic Fears
– The unknown
– Primitive: Death/pain
– Can be examined or counter conditioned
– What is the probability this will end in death or pain?
– How many other times have you confronted an unknown and the outcome was positive or neutral?
A Note About Threats
– Fight or Flee (survival)
– Basic Fears
– Failure
– Primitive: Death/pain
– Can be examined or counter conditioned
– What is the probability that if I fail it will result in death or pain?
– If I fail, is that pain related to fear of rejection and/or loss of control?
– How many other times have you tried and failed and the outcome was at least neutral?
– How can you make failure into a positive or neutral (Hint: Learning experience)
Forget
– Some stimuli elicit little or no response and are often ignored
– MindLESSness can cause people to fail to identify
– Positive stimuli / dopamine / “happy”
– Negative stimuli / adrenaline / fight or flee
– Little things build up and lead to a big reaction. (Water and the dam)
– Negative stimuli can be reconditioned as neutral
– Find the positive (snowy day)
– Not worth the energy (rainy day)
Repeat
– Adding and noticing positive stimuli in the environment is vital
– Grouchy day
– Happy day
– Positive stimuli in the environment can include
– Smells (pumpkin spice…lol)
– Sights (wildlife, my kids)
– Sounds (babbling brook)
– Feel (crisp autumn breeze)
Putting It Together
– Humans label physiological reactions with feeling words.
– What do you experience when you are scared?
– What do you experience when you are angry?
– How do you differentiate? (Hint: Prior experience)
– What do you experience when you are happy?
Putting it Together
– How can you use discriminative stimuli to
– Increase happy responses
– Increase a feeling of control and “self-efficacy”
– Loss of control
– The Unknown
– Increase “self-esteem”
– Rejection
– Isolation
– Increase feelings of “competence”
– Failure
Putting it Together
– How can you use discriminative stimuli to:
– Decrease angry responses
– Decrease anxious/fearful responses
– Decrease learned helplessness
Summary
– Behavior modification is concerned with the stimuli in the environment that evoke a response
– Unconditioned stimuli evoke a response based upon survival needs
– Conditioned stimuli have no meaning to the person, but, through experience, become associated with pleasure or pain/threat
– The excitatory responses, anger and fear serve to protect the person from what they have in the past experienced as producing pain/being threatening.
Summary
– Stimuli can be reconditioned in order to change the biochemical response (feeling)
– People with a logical/experimental mindset often respond well to behavior modification techniques
– It is imperative to include alternate responses.
– In the next segment we will discuss
– Reinforcement
– Punishment