| Summary: | In this third session with a young woman with compulsions, the client reveals that she learned several things about herself since the last session. She realized that when she gets a thought in her head, her motivation to act on it is to get it out of her head so she doesn't worry about it anymore, and that her reactions are often a way to avoid the thoughts. Keith S. Dobson points out the client's self-talk patterns of telling herself that she "has to" do something or that she "can't stop" doing something. Since many of the client's compulsions deal with food, Dobson theorizes that if the client does not plan what she is going to eat, she often eats the wrong things (too many carbohydrates, not enough protein) and that eating more of the right things can help her maintain a stable energy level. For the next session, Dobson asks the client to experiment with delaying action on her compulsions, making a purposeful choice to act on (versus not acting on) her compulsions, and thinking about the consequences of acting versus not acting on her compulsions. The client then chooses three specific compulsions to work on.
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