Melissa is a 17-year-old female in her senior year of high school who initially presented to Community Impact for services per the insistence and requirement from her parents due to her actions over summer 2016. Over the summer, she had been drinking alcohol excessively and coming home to her parent’s highly intoxicated on multiple occasions. On the referral form filled out by her parents, they reported that they wanted their daughter to have someone to “talk to” about what’s going on with her, as she was remaining distant from them. Prior to seeking services, she has had no history of mental health issues, and on the surface, presents with a seemingly-normative childhood and adolescent development, with no major red flags identified in our
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She grew up seemingly independent of them; they provided for her and protected her from harm, but did not go any further. As such, Melissa was left at a young age to instill her own order of thinking and processing, as well as what she did and did not find acceptable. She academically excelled early on in life, and believed that this was “the norm”, with minimal-to-no errors ever occurring. She developed the core belief that perfection was standard, and anything below was unacceptable. Her core belief can be labeled as the cognitive distortion “all or nothing” or “black and white” thinking (Burns, 1999). For Melissa, there was no gray area or middle ground; if she wasn’t perfect, she was a …show more content…
Sommers-Flanagan and Sommers-Flanagan also explain that “the maladaptive lifestyle and its associated interpersonal dysfunctions cause the client to experience disappointments, feelings of inferiority, and eventually discouragement” (2012, p. 92). When Melissa’s self-ideal became farther away from her self-concept, previously-dormant feelings of inferiority became repeatedly conscious thoughts. The life tasks of school and social relationships became too overwhelming for Melissa’s consciousness to attempt to process and handle. These feelings of inferiority evolved into a complex, which led to anxiety, depression, and depersonalization. The behavioral manifestation of these problems, the depersonalization, is Melissa’s safeguarding
She grew up seemingly independent of them; they provided for her and protected her from harm, but did not go any further. As such, Melissa was left at a young age to instill her own order of thinking and processing, as well as what she did and did not find acceptable. She academically excelled early on in life, and believed that this was “the norm”, with minimal-to-no errors ever occurring. She developed the core belief that perfection was standard, and anything below was unacceptable. Her core belief can be labeled as the cognitive distortion “all or nothing” or “black and white” thinking (Burns, 1999). For Melissa, there was no gray area or middle ground; if she wasn’t perfect, she was a …show more content…
Sommers-Flanagan and Sommers-Flanagan also explain that “the maladaptive lifestyle and its associated interpersonal dysfunctions cause the client to experience disappointments, feelings of inferiority, and eventually discouragement” (2012, p. 92). When Melissa’s self-ideal became farther away from her self-concept, previously-dormant feelings of inferiority became repeatedly conscious thoughts. The life tasks of school and social relationships became too overwhelming for Melissa’s consciousness to attempt to process and handle. These feelings of inferiority evolved into a complex, which led to anxiety, depression, and depersonalization. The behavioral manifestation of these problems, the depersonalization, is Melissa’s safeguarding