David Case Study Draft v3.0
David Case Study Draft v3.0
Introduction
David came for personal counseling with me and being trained and comfortable in
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, following is the approach that was taken. All the responses in this
assignment are framed around the questions provided in the said assignment.
In Summary, David is a 26 years old divorced male has been instructed by a judge to seek
professional help as David is found guilty of driving under the influence of alcohol. David is
currently employed in the construction industry but has the ambition to become a counselor.
Currently David is living alone and not in a relationship. David is the third of four children in his
family, and throughout his childhood days, David felt unloved and unwanted in the family
because his parents used to make a comparison between him and his older siblings who are
academically brilliant whereas his younger brother was pampered. Despite being married before,
David admits that he is afraid of strong attractive women. David claims that his mother
dominated his father and treated him similarly to how she treated his father. David stated that his
marriage was brief and that his wife had left him because of his sexual impotence issues.
Philosophical Assumptions
As discussed in the introduction, the approach utilized in personal counseling for David is
Cognitive Behavior Therapy. The philosophical assumption underlying this approach is that the
cognitions are key to understanding and applying therapeutic interventions for clients.
The theoretical background of the therapy is based on the idea that the learning processes
determine behavior and consolidation of beliefs and view of the world. CBT assumes linkage
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Assignment 1 – David Case Study
between the client’s thoughts about self, the future, the world, and their emotions, behavior, and
physiology. The client’s work in between therapy sessions consists of observation of their
thoughts, behaviors, and emotions, and the introduction of changes within the scope of their
will be beneficial and helpful to find meaning and purpose in his life as this approach emphasizes
the role of social interest in determining psychological health. The basic hypothesis from this
approach is that our emotions stem mainly from our belief, evaluations, interpretations, and
reactions to our life situations. Through the cognitive behavioral therapy, clients acquire the skill
that gives them tools to identify and debate irrational beliefs that have been self-constructed
within and learn how to replace such ineffective ways of thinking with effective and rational
CBT discusses that human beings are largely “cognitive” beings. The cognitions form the
base of what it means to be human as per Cognitive Behavior Therapy. Hence in summary CBT
is conveying that human beings operates largely through their world of thinking, remembering,
Regarding human nature, no one theory can totally explain the linkage between CBT and
human nature, but human’s psychological nature is influenced by individual beliefs, values, and
experiences, and it solely depends on the individual belief from the power of the mind to either
empower or hold back. In my experience, the past is crucially important in shaping who we are
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Assignment 1 – David Case Study
today but not necessarily the only factor. Hence, in our daily lives, as humans, we can change
CBT main goals is moving towards better thinking in the therapeutic alliance between
counselor and client with CBT Approach. Hence client heal better, faster and think better when
The first few sessions would be spent building rapport with David as well as gathering
information on his experiences. During the sessions, David must identify the areas that he wants
to work on so specific attention would be paid to these areas and his past experiences that may
have contributed to his current behavior. David would be educated on the importance of
examining his automatic self-talk as well as assisted in discovering some basic cognition that
influence his self-talk, feelings, and actions. Once David is able to identify his automatic self-
talk and understand its effect on him, we would move onto helping him monitor and evaluate
Role play and assertiveness training can be used to assist David to overcome his fear of
women. The change in his self-talk would help David to improve his self-confidence. Role play
when used could help to view how David interacts with women and at the same time provide
David the opportunity to practice identifying and changing any negative thoughts and anxiety
by letting him know of his desire to become a counselor is a good option. This would be done by
assisting David to develop insight into how these faulty assumptions affect his behavior and
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Assignment 1 – David Case Study
assist him to develop alternate ways of thinking, feeling, behaving and then translate these into
David would also be challenged to view his mistakes as learning experiences that could
assist him in becoming a better counselor particularly in assisting persons with similar
experiences. David would be challenged to make a list of positives in his life and a list of ten
things that he likes about himself. This would be aimed at helping him focus on the positives
about his life so that he would start to have a different frame of reference to view his life.
Positive aspects of his life that could be highlighted includes his ability to leave some of his past
behind, he was in college, the support of his youth camp supervisor and his job.
Along with the changes in David’s cognition, it’s important to share with David on how
he was balancing between his work and study, as it could affect his ability to do well in school
and cause a setback in progress. With this, David would be encouraged to see that although there
were many challenges that he encountered but he could easily overcome by not moving into the
CBT counselor functions as a helper who is using psycho-education to teach the client to
utilize more empowering thinking to bring about healing or growth in their lives. The counselor
is seen as an expert in CBT technique, someone who actively coaches the client about automatic
thoughts, core beliefs, and ways to restructure thinking, as well as someone who gives
homework. The CBT counselor style is transparent where both client and counselor work
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together to decide goals for the sessions and develop a plan to address the problems that client
decides to solve.
The relationship between counselor and client is non-judgemental and equal in CBT
approach as the client is actively involved in the sessions and this help client be more open and
communicate about things that are difficult or personal to the client. The counselor would assist
to seek client views and reactions based on their experiences to move towards the way therapy
should be conducted.
Expectations the Counselor has of the client and how the relationship is viewed
CBT requires a collaborative therapeutic relationship between the counselors and the
client. As a CBT counselor, my expectations are that the client would complete their homework
during the sessions. In a CBT approach, the relationship is viewed not merely as a helper-client
aspect but more in a teacher-student focused relationship. Through this relationship, the client’s
maladaptive thoughts or beliefs, faulty assumptions, and mistaken goals are identified.
The identification of the thought brings awareness of the thought process and the
outcome based on the impact of behavior. These thoughts are then challenged with the aim of
having the client restructure their thought process so that the client has a positive view of life.
Furthermore, when the client reveals the lack of mastering the basic life tasks and improper way
of developing superiority, hence the client is educated and coached to develop self-confidence