Psychotherapy Treatment Goals
Examples of Treatment Goals
Section 1
ADD / ADHD
- Reduce impulsive actions while increasing concentration and focus on low-interest activities
- Minimize ADD behavioral interference in daily life
- Accept ADD as a chronic issue and need for continuing medication treatment
- Sustain attention and concentration for consistently longer periods of time
- Achieve a satisfactory level of balance, structure, and intimacy in personal life
Anger Management
- Decrease overall intensity and frequency of angry feelings, and increase ability to recognize and appropriately express angry feelings as they occur
- Develop an awareness of current angry behaviors, clarifying origins of and alternatives to aggressive anger
- Come to an awareness and acceptance of angry feelings while developing better control and more serenity
- Become capable of handling angry feelings in constructive ways that enhance daily functioning
- Demonstrate respect for others and their feelings
Anxiety Therapy
- Reduce overall frequency, intensity, and duration of anxiety so that daily functioning is not impaired
- Stabilize anxiety levels while increasing ability to function on a daily basis
- Resolve the core conflict that is the source of anxiety
- Enhance ability to effectively cope with the full variety of life's anxieties
Section 2
Chemical Dependence - Relapse
- Establish a consistently alcohol or drug-free lifestyle
- Develop an understanding of personal pattern of relapse in order to help sustain long-term recovery
- Develop an increased awareness of relapse triggers and the coping strategies needed to effectively deal with them
- Achieve a quality of life that is substance-free on a continuing basis
Childhood Traumas
- Develop an awareness of how childhood issues have affected and continue to affect one's family life
- Resolve past childhood/family issues, leading to less anger and depression, greater self-esteem, security, and confidence
- Release the emotions associated with past childhood/family issues, resulting in less resentment and more serenity
- Let go of blame and begin to forgive others for pain caused in childhood
Cognitive Deficits
- Develop an understanding and acceptance of the cognitive impairment
- Develop alternative coping strategies to compensate for cognitive limitations
section 3
Dependency
- Develop confidence that he/she is capable of meeting own needs and of tolerating being alone
- Achieve a healthy balance between independence and dependence
- Decrease dependence on relationships while beginning to meet own needs, build confidence, and practice assertiveness
- Establish firm individual self-boundaries and improved self-worth
- Break away permanently from any abusive relationships
- Emancipate self from emotional and economic dependence on parents
Depression Treatment
- Develop healthy cognitive patterns and beliefs about self and the world that lead to alleviation and help prevent the relapse of depression symptoms
- Develop healthy interpersonal relationships that lead to alleviation and help prevent the relapse of depression symptoms
- Appropriately grieve the loss in order to normalize mood and to return to previous adaptive level of functioning
- Alleviate depressed mood and return to previous level of effective functioning.
- Recognize, accept, and cope with feelings of depression
Dissociation
- Reduce the frequency and duration of dissociative episodes
- Resolve the emotional trauma that underlies the dissociative disturbance
- Reduce the level of daily distress caused by dissociative disturbances
- Integrate the various split-off selves
- Regain full memory
Section 4
Family Conflicts
- Resolve fear of rejection, low self-esteem, and/or oppositional defiance by resolving conflicts developed in the family or origin and understanding their connection to current life
- Begin the process of emancipating from parents in a healthy way by making arrangements for independent living
- Decrease the level of present conflict with parents while beginning to let go of or resolving past conflicts with them
- Achieve a reasonable level of family connectedness and harmony where members support, help, and are concerned for each other
- Become a reconstituted/blended family unit that is functional and whose members are bonded to each other
Financial Stress
- Establish a clear income and expense budget that will meet bill payment demands
- Contact creditors to develop a revised repayment plan for outstanding bills
- Gain a new sense of self-worth in which the substance of one's value is not attached to the capacity to do things or own things that cost money
- Understand personal needs, insecurities, and anxieties that make overspending possible
- Achieve an inner strength to control personal impulses, cravings, and desires that directly or indirectly increase debt irresponsible
Grief / Loss Unresolved
- Begin a healthy grieving process around the loss
- Develop an awareness of how the avoidance of grieving has affected life and begin the healing process
- Complete the process of letting go of the lost significant other
- Resolve the loss and begin renewing old relationships and initiating new contacts with others
section 5
Impulse Control
- Reduce the frequency of impulsive behavior and increase the frequency of behavior that is carefully thought out
- Reduce thoughts that trigger impulsive behavior and increase selftalk that controls behavior
- Learn to stop, listen, and think before acting
Low Self-Esteem
- Elevate self-esteem
- Develop a consistent, positive self-image
- Establish an inward sense of self-worth, confidence, and competence
- Demonstrate improved self-esteem through more pride in appearance, more assertiveness, greater eye contact, and identification of positive traits in self-talk messages
Intimate Relationship Conflict
- Develop the necessary skills for effective, open communication, mutually satisfying sexual intimacy, and enjoyable time for companionship within the relationship
- Increase awareness of own role in the relationship conflicts
- Learn to identify escalating behaviors that lead to issues
- Make a commitment to one intimate relationship at a time
- Accept the termination of the relationship
- Rebuild positive self-image after acceptance of the rejection associated with the broken relationship
section 6
Obsessive-Compulsive Behaviors
- Reduce the frequency, intensity, and duration of obsessions
- Reduce time involved with or interference from obsessions and compulsions
- Function daily at a consistent level with minimal interference from obsessions and compulsions
- Resolve key life conflicts and the emotional stress that fuels obsessive-compulsive behavior patterns
- Let go of key thoughts, beliefs, and past life events in order to maximize time free from obsessions and compulsions
Mania / Hypomania
- Reduce psychic energy and return to normal activity levels, good judgment, stable mood, and goal-directed behavior
- Reduce agitation, impulsivity, and pressured speech while achieving sensitivity to the consequences of behavior and having more realistic expectations
- Talk about underlying feelings of low self-esteem or guilt and fears of rejection, dependency, and abandonment
- Achieve controlled behavior, moderated mood, and more deliberative speech and thought process through psychotherapy and possibly medication
Panic / Agoraphobia
- Reduce the frequency, intensity, and duration of panic attacks
- Reduce the fear that panic symptoms will recur without the ability to manage them
- Reduce the fear of triggering panic and eliminate avoidance of activities and environments thought to trigger panic
- Increase comfort in freely leaving home and being in a public environment
Section 7
Phase of Life
- Resolve conflicted feelings and adapt to the new life circumstances
- Reorient life view to recognize the advantages of the current situation
- Find satisfaction in serving, nurturing, and supporting significant others who are dependent and needy
- Balance life activities between consideration of others and development of own interests
Phobias
- Reduce fear of the specific stimulus object or situation that previously provoked phobic anxiety
- Reduce phobic avoidance of the specific object or situation, leading to comfort and independence in moving around in public environment
- Eliminate interference in normal routines and remove distress from feared object or situation
Post Traumatic Stress
- Reduce the negative impact that the traumatic event has had on many aspects of life and return to the pretrauma level of functioning
- Develop and implement effective coping skills to carry out normal responsibilities and participate constructively in relationships
- Recall the traumatic event without becoming overwhelmed with negative thoughts, feelings, or urges
- Terminate the destructive behaviors that serve to maintain escape and denial while implementing behaviors that promote healing, acceptance of the past events, and responsible living
Section 8
Sexual Abuse
- Resolve the issue of being sexually abused with an increased capacity for intimacy in relationships
- Begin the healing process from sexual abuse with resultant enjoyment of appropriate sexual contact
- Work successfully through the issues related to being sexually abused with consequent understanding and control of feelings
- Recognize and accept the sexual abuse without inappropriate sexualization of relationships
- Establish whether sexual abuse occurred
- Begin the process of moving away from being a victim of sexual abuse and toward becoming a survivor of sexual abuse
Sleep Disturbance
- Restore restful sleep pattern
- Feel refreshed and energetic during wakeful hours
- Terminate anxiety-producing dreams that cause awakening
- End abrupt awakening in terror and return to peaceful, restful sleep pattern
- Restore restful sleep with reduction of sleepwalking incidents
Social Discomfort
- Interact socially without undue fear or anxiety
- Participate in social performance requirements without undue fear or anxiety
- Develop the essential social skills that will enhance the quality of relationship life
- Develop the ability to form relationships that will enhance recovery support system
- Reach a personal balance between solitary time and interpersonal interaction with others
section 9
Type A Behavior
- Formulate and implement a new life attitudinal pattern that allows for a more relaxed pattern of living
- Reach a balance between work/competitive and social/noncompetitive time in daily life
- Achieve an overall decrease in pressured, driven behaviors
- Develop social and recreational activities as a routine part of life
- Alleviate sense of time urgency, free-floating anxiety, anger, and self-destructive behaviors
Vocational Stress
- Improve satisfaction and comfort surrounding coworker relationships
- Increase sense of confidence and competence in dealing with work responsibilities
- Be cooperative with and accepting of supervision of direction in the work setting
- Increase sense of self-esteem and elevation of mood in spite of unemployment
- Increase job security as a result of more positive evaluation of performance by a supervisor
- Pursue employment consistency with a reasonably hopeful and positive attitude
- Increase job satisfaction and performance due to implementation of assertiveness and stress management strategies