Meaningful Goal Setting Session 3

1. Meaningful Goal SettingSession 3 November 18, 2011 Maggie Brett, L.C.S.W. mmibrett@gmail.com

2. Agenda • Check-In—questions, comments, thoughts about last session; issues with families; experience with reflection • Cognitive Behavioral Theory and its application to goal setting • Review of theoretical information • Practice! • Reflection

3. CBT: “You are what you think.”

4. Cognitive Behavioral Theory

5. Core ideas • The approach is educational • It’s structured and goal oriented • CBT examines how a person sees herself and her environment, and how that causes her to act in specific ways • Concept: Cognitive restructuring • Concept: Behavioral activation

6. Some CBT techniques • Written assignments • Role playing • Guided imagery • Modeling • Feedback • Reinforcement • positive self-talk • Rehearsal • pros and cons • identifying cognitive errors • thought change records • generating rational alternatives • “worst, best, most realistic”

7. Let’s pull this together:

8. What are some questions we could ask to assess readiness? • On a scale of 1 to 10, how important is this change to you? • Have you tried this in the past? • How did you feel about your attempt? • How did you feel about your successes? • How did you feel when it wasn’t as successful as you wished? • What’s different for you now? • Who else would like to see this change? Do you feel pressure from that person? • Is there any risk to change? • What do you feel might be some obstacles to that change? • Is there any other information you need or skill you need to acquire to make this change?

9. What are some questions that integrate motivational interviewing and SMART goals? • Tell me 3 reasons why this would be a good change and 3 reasons why it would be difficult. • When you bring about this change, how will it look? • If you’ve tried this before, what worked for you? What didn’t work? What do we need to do to overcome the previous obstacles? • What one step, no matter how small, can you accomplish today? • That’s a great goal; let’s think about the steps that you can take to accomplish it. • That’s a great idea; let’s translate that into something we can actually see and measure. • In what time frame do you want to aim to accomplish this?

10. Cognitive Behavioral Techniques to Introduce • Have clients write down the goals for themselves. • Use creative ways to highlight the importance of their goals (e.g., create a refrigerator magnet, a fancy computer generated list, etc.) • Have the clients see you write down the goals on the “official” sheet and have them available on a post-it every time you see them. • Have them chart even small steps (has to be very easy!) • Help them think of something that inspires them (a poem, prayer, song, saying). • Encourage positive self-talk. • If a goal is accomplished before the review date, make a point of checking it off your list when it happens. • If a goal is not met, but still is important to the client, reframe it, don’t repeat it, at review time. • Slow talk/slow walk/slowing down

11. Practice!

12. Capture your Thoughts (York-Barr, et al, 2001)