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View Dr. Jeanne Griffin's: Bio Curriculum
Vitae
I am a psychologist with a doctoral
degree. Psychologists rely on communication as the basis of
treatment. My approach to treatment might be described as a
conversation between two people. My responsibility in that
conversation is to use my knowledge of psychological
principles in accordance with the requests of the person
consulting me, in order to clarify and enable those
requests.
In accordance with the wisdom behind,
“Be careful what you wish for – you might get it,” part of
the process sometimes involves some study of related changes
that might come along with the wish presented.
Sometimes, behavioral and cognitive
therapy, combined, is a wise choice. Research indicates
that for depression and anxiety, a combination of these two
types of therapy provide the quickest recovery. I prefer to
use an evidence based approach as a first choice, and also
prefer to make this a part of the therapy conversation.
Sometimes, a person will tell me that they have tried
cognitive/behavioral therapy for depression (or anxiety) and
that their symptoms increased instead of diminishing. This
deepens our conversation and points to a need for the
original problem to be revisited. Possibly the problem was
not actually depression and anxiety but some other similar
psychological condition or state.
One of my ‘pet peeves’ is that some
practitioners will take the client’s statement, “I’ve been
depressed,” and convert that directly into a clinical
diagnosis. We all use the term “I’m kind of depressed,” at
times but that is not a basis for treatment. It is a
statement of feeling, a subjective report.
With me, the therapy conversation
deepens at this point, and I am careful to make sure that
the client feels a true sense of teamwork with me and that
we share the task of figuring out the previous treatment
failure and finding a better outcome. There are may
modalities of treatment, and often treatment failures result
from an inappropriate match of problem and treatment type.
If the conversation does not provide
enough clarity, psychological testing is another option.
Here we have a number of tools that provide useful
information. I strongly prefer that psychological testing
happen in a cooperative, supportive context. It can be
unsettling to find out things about one’s personality
function or symptom pattern, or any other finding. Sometimes
even the results of a vocational preference inventory can be
stressful. If testing is something that the client wants in
order to clarify psychological function, our testing program
aims at revealing inner dynamics in an interesting and
useful way.
My personal bias is that psychological
well being is best founded on a true acceptance of self,
including the parts that we may judge as negative or
frightening. The disowned parts of the self do not really go
away if one tries to ignore them or act as if they are not a
part of one’s self. Then, these parts of the self are more
likely to cause trouble in some way, just as neglected
children cause more trouble than the rest. We probably all
need to pay more, rather than less, attention to the
troubled parts of ourselves, as a way to heal. Sometimes,
people just want the depression to go away and I am happy to
enable that goal without preferring that each person examine
the inner self.
Not all depression, or anxiety, is a
cause for treatment, or a sign that the person has some
problem at all. It can be a natural response to some life
circumstance. Sometimes, a life circumstance is the focus of
the therapy conversation. Often the nature of this
conversation involves clarifying the way in which this life
circumstance leads to the feeling of depression, or anxiety.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
This therapy has much in common with taking a class. The
therapist teaches a variety of methods aimed at whatever
symptom the client targets. Unlike a class, the lessons are
tailored to the specific individual. Sometimes, homework is
involved. Cognitive behavioral therapy is effective for
depression, anxiety – including phobias, and many social
problems. Core skills have an effect on more than one
problem. For example, assertive training increases
effectiveness in dealing with difficult people. It also
increases self-esteem and reduces anxiety. This combination
of positive effects may also lead to less depression, even
though depression is usually not a primary target of
assertive training. Unlike medications, cognitive behavioral
methods have positive side effects.
Multimodal Therapy
Arnold Lazarus
introduced this term to describe a type of therapy that
utilizes a wider bandwidth of methods into
cognitive-behavioral therapy. Modalities such as guided
imagery and re-evaluating the quality of relationships
provide extra dimensions of impact on problems.
Therapy aimed at self understanding
This category of therapy
is not aimed at symptom resolution alone, although that may
be the initial reason for self investigation. This sort of
therapy views a symptom as a meaningful statement from the
self about the inner world and the subjective experience of
the outer world. For some people, this sort of work helps
prevent recurrences of depression or other symptoms. One
learns to see how the various aspects of the self may not be
in harmony and create inner conflict. Inner conflict
provides a shaky basis for positive results in the outside
world, as the self often chooses some aspects of the outer
environment to match the factions within the self. People
who notice that they have repeated negative patterns in the
external world, such as similar relationships with negative
aspects, may find that understanding the self is a basis for
better outcomes.
If you experience yourself as a bit
like an unruly group of factions with inner negotiation
taking place frequently, you might enjoy this sort of
therapy.
Dreams and psychological testing
Sometimes writing down dreams can be a way of understanding
the inner self. There are two methods of understanding
dreams that assist with this understanding. Part of the
therapy work in the area of self understanding may include
work with dreams, using either or both of these methods.
Each method has a parallel in one of the two psychological
tests that are most useful in the process of self
understanding, the Rorschach and Myers-Briggs Type
Inventory. Each of these tests can provide a different way
of thinking about the inner self that allow for positive
change and/or self acceptance.