Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Born that Way, Temperamental Challenges in Relationships and Therapy
    Born that Way, Temperamental Challenges in Relationships and Therapy
    Born that Way, Temperamental Challenges in Relationships and Therapy
    Ebook154 pages4 hours

    Born that Way, Temperamental Challenges in Relationships and Therapy

    By Ronald Mah

    5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    “Born that Way, Temperamental Challenges in Relationships and Therapy.” Temperament, which is a non-experiential characteristic from genetic inheritance interacts with environmental experiences such as family and culture. Therapists will see how in-born temperament influence childhood attachment and later adult intimacy and relationships. Temperamental evaluation provides another perspective- an important non-pathologizing perspective to clinical work beyond children, but also with adult individuals, couples, and families. Evaluation and assessment from non-temperamental perspectives is contrasted to using temperamental theory to determine therapeutic strategies, interventions, and goals. Temperamental traits are shown to have bi-directional mutual influences with a number of impactful developmental factors: attachment, learning disabilities, gender, culture, substance use or abuse, and anxiety and depression along with other psychopathology. Therapists will be charged to identify personal, individual, and systemic gender and cultural values in particular that encourage or discourage specific temperamental traits. Easy to difficult temperamental profiles mitigate or exacerbate any problematic dynamics, including within the family-of-origin or a current adult system such as a marriage. Different profiles can inherently make certain tasks, situations, or occupations more or less difficult.

    Temperament is a powerfully empowering alternative perspective to the Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder diagnosis that therapists can use to direct affirmative intervention rather than initiate labeling leading to psychopharmacological treatment. Individuals with difficult temperaments have predictable problems with environmental and relationship stresses- in particular starting with peers in childhood and leading to eventual intimate relationships in couples and in the family. These traits can be anticipated for challenges and can be successfully addressed and supported by knowledgeable therapists, teachers, partners, parents, and colleagues/peers. Therapists are directed to evaluate and advocate positive fit between important intimates and challenged individuals. Partners, parents, and other concerned individuals are educated and coached by temperament-savvy therapists. The more powerful or authoritative person such as the parent, teacher, or therapist, or the more aware and understanding individual is often required to monitor and regulate the difficult temperament of the other person. This is clearly required developmentally of the therapist, parent, or teacher for the young child, but may also be relevant for the individual in an intimate relationship with another. Such invested people facilitate conscious development of the other person's abilities to self-monitor and subsequently, self-regulate with appropriate and successful choices and behaviors.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRonald Mah
    Release dateDec 21, 2013
    ISBN9781311141385
    Born that Way, Temperamental Challenges in Relationships and Therapy
    Author

    Ronald Mah

    Therapist, educator, author and consultant combine concepts, principles, and philosophy with practical techniques and guidelines for effective and productive results. A Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist (licensed 1994), his experiences include:Psychotherapist: individual, child and teen, couples, and family therapy in private practice in San Leandro, California- specialties include challenging couples, difficult teenagers, Aspergers Syndrome, Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder, learning disabilities, cross and multi-cultural issues, foster children, child development, parenting, and personality disorders;Author: twenty-one project/books on couples therapy for a doctoral program, including substantial work on major complications in couples and couples therapy (including depression, anxiety, domestic violence, personality disorders, addiction, and affairs); articles for the Journal of the California Association of Marriage & Family Therapist (CAMFT) on working with teenagers, elder care issues affecting family dynamics, and assessing dangerous clients, online courses for the National Association of Social Workers- California chapter (NASW-CA) on child abuse prevention, legal and ethical vulnerabilities for professionals, and difficult children, “Difficult Behavior in Early Childhood, Positive Discipline for PreK-3 Classrooms and Beyond” (Corwin Press, 2006), “The One-Minute Temper Tantrum Solution” (Corwin Press, 2008), and “Getting Beyond Bullying and Exclusion, PreK-5, Empowering Children in Inclusive Classrooms,” (Corwin Press, 2009); Asian Pacific Islander Parent Education Support (APIPES) curriculum for the City of San Francisco Department of Human Services (1996), 4th-6th Grade Social Science Reader, Asian-American History, Berkeley Unified School District, Berkeley, CA, (1977), and trainer/speaker of 20 dvds on child development and behavior for Fixed Earth Films, and in another time and career three arts and crafts books for children: two with Symbiosis Press (1985 &1987) and one with Price, Sloan, and Stern (1986);Consultant and trainer: for social services programs working with youth and young adults, Asian-American community mental health, Severe Emotional Disturbance (SED) school programs, therapeutic, social support, and vocational programs for at risk youth, welfare to work programs, Head Start organizations, early childhood education programs and conferences, public, private, and parochial schools and organizations,Clinical supervisor: for therapists in Severe Emotional Disturbance (SED) school programs, child and family therapists in a community counseling agency, Veteran Affairs in-patient clinician working with PTSD and dual diagnoses, foster care services manager for a school district, manager/supervisor for the Trevor Project-San Francisco, and therapists in a high school mental health clinic;Educator: credentialed elementary and secondary teacher, Masters of Psychology instructor for Licensed Marriage & Family Therapy (LMFT) and Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor (LPCC) track students, 16 years in early childhood education, including owning and running a child development center for 11 years, elementary & secondary teaching credentials, community college instructor, and trainer/speaker for staff development and conferences for social services organizations including early childhood development, education, social work, and psychotherapy.Other professional roles: member Ethics Committee for six years and at-large member Board of Directors for four years for the California Association of Marriage & Family Therapist (CAMFT), and member Board of Directors of the California Kindergarten Association (CKA) for two three-year terms.Personal: married since 1981 after dating since 1972 to girlfriend/wife/life partner with two wonderful strong adult daughters, and fourth of five American-born children from immigrant parents- the older of the "second set" of children.

    Read more from Ronald Mah

    Related to Born that Way, Temperamental Challenges in Relationships and Therapy

    Titles in the series (11)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Psychology For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      10 Things Men Need To Know

      Apr 23, 2021

      10 Things Men Need To Know
      3 min read

    • Article

      Kind Of Blue

      Jul 4, 2021

      Kind Of Blue
      10 min read

    • Article

      Modeling Empathy

      Sep 2, 2020

      Modeling Empathy
      2 min read

    • Article

      Time To Feel, Heal And Grow

      Aug 11, 2020

      WE HAVE LEARNED a lot about our relationships during lockdown, both with our loved ones and ourselves. I have had highs and lows in equal measure, but now that some normality has returned, I have started to realise that the enforced pause was good fo

      1 min read

    • Article

      WHAT IS “Trauma”?

      Feb 19, 2019

      Among psychiatrists, what constitutes “trauma” is controversial. Some define trauma based on the nature of the event: Psychiatry’s diagnostic manual, for instance, says a traumatic experience must be outside the range of what humans normally encounte

      1 min read

    • Article

      Beyond Bitterness: Letting Go Of Resentment

      Jun 17, 2019

      It’s been said that holding onto bitterness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. The person who suffers most is the one clinging onto the past – and this can result in permanent damage not only to your present relationship,

      1 min read

    • Article

      Standing Up To Bullies

      Sep 1, 2019

      Standing Up To Bullies
      2 min read

    • Article

      How To Stay In Love During Quarantine

      Apr 10, 2020

      How To Stay In Love During Quarantine
      2 min read

    • Article

      Bipolar Disorder Has Many Causes, Not 1

      Dec 18, 2017

      No single genetic change, chemical imbalance, or life event lies at the heart of every case of bipolar disorder, once known as manic depression, researchers report. “There are many routes to this disease and many routes through it…” Rather, each pati

      2 min read

    • Article

      How To Ask For Help

      Aug 14, 2019

      How To Ask For Help
      7 min read

    • Article

      Ambiverts Stand Up!

      Aug 19, 2019

      Ambiverts Stand Up!
      3 min read

    • Article

      Tell No One

      Aug 27, 2019

      Tell No One
      6 min read

    • Article

      It’s Behind You

      Jan 17, 2021

      As a psychodynamically trained psychotherapist, Philippa Perry’s base belief is that, as a subheading in the opening chapter of her book says, “The past comes back to bite us (and our children)”. Our attitudes to parenting are formed by our own child

      2 min read

    • Article

      Ready Or Not?

      Sep 1, 2022

      Ready Or Not?
      9 min read

    • Article

      Harnessing Empathy

      Mar 3, 2021

      Harnessing Empathy
      8 min read

    • Article

      Adam Kay

      Dec 4, 2023

      Adam Kay
      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Born that Way, Temperamental Challenges in Relationships and Therapy

    5/5

    1 rating0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Born that Way, Temperamental Challenges in Relationships and Therapy - Ronald Mah

      Born that Way

      Temperamental Challenges in Relationships and Therapy

      Published by Ronald Mah at Smashwords

      Copyright 2013 Ronald Mah

      Ronald Mah's website- www.ronaldmah.com

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      ****

      Abstract:

      Temperament, which is a non-experiential characteristic from genetic inheritance interacts with environmental experiences such as family and culture. Therapists will see how in-born temperament influence childhood attachment and later adult intimacy and relationships. Temperamental evaluation provides another perspective- an important non-pathologizing perspective to clinical work beyond children, but also with adult individuals, couples, and families. Evaluation and assessment from non-temperamental perspectives is contrasted to using temperamental theory to determine therapeutic strategies, interventions, and goals. Temperamental traits are shown to have bi-directional mutual influences with a number of impactful developmental factors: attachment, learning disabilities, gender, culture, substance use or abuse, and anxiety and depression along with other psychopathology. Therapists will be charged to identify personal, individual, and systemic gender and cultural values in particular that encourage or discourage specific temperamental traits. Easy to difficult temperamental profiles mitigate or exacerbate any problematic dynamics, including within the family-of-origin or a current adult system such as a marriage. Different profiles can inherently make certain tasks, situations, or occupations more or less difficult.

      Temperament is a powerfully empowering alternative perspective to the Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder diagnosis that therapists can use to direct affirmative intervention rather than initiate labeling leading to psychopharmacological treatment. Individuals with difficult temperaments have predictable problems with environmental and relationship stresses- in particular starting with peers in childhood and leading to eventual intimate relationships in couples and in the family. These traits can be anticipated for challenges and can be successfully addressed and supported by knowledgeable therapists, teachers, partners, parents, and colleagues/peers. Therapists are directed to evaluate and advocate positive fit between important intimates and challenged individuals. Partners, parents, and other concerned individuals are educated and coached by temperament-savvy therapists. The more powerful or authoritative person such as the parent, teacher, or therapist, or the more aware and understanding individual is often required to monitor and regulate the difficult temperament of the other person. This is clearly required developmentally of the therapist, parent, or teacher for the young child, but may also be relevant for the individual in an intimate relationship with another. Such invested people facilitate conscious development of the other person's abilities to self-monitor and subsequently, self-regulate with appropriate and successful choices and behaviors.

      ****

      Linked Table of Contents

      Abstract

      INTRODUCTION: BORN THAT WAY

      Chapter 1: TEMPERAMENTAL TRAITS

      Chapter 2: INTAKE W/O TEMPERAMENT FOCUS

      Chapter 3: EVALUATION & ASSESSMENT

      Chapter 4: CONTEXT AMPLIFIES AND MITIGATES TEMPERAMENT

      Chapter 5: TEMPERAMENT & ANXIETY

      Chapter 6: ATTACHMENT & TEMPERAMENT

      Chapter 7: LEARNING DISABILITIES AND TEMPERAMENT

      Chapter 8: PERSONALITY & PSYCHOPATHOLOGY & COUPLES

      Chapter 9: GENDER CHARACTERISTICS

      Chapter 10: CULTURAL CHALLENGES OF SPECIFIC TEMPERAMENTAL TRAITS

      Chapter 11: SUCCESSFUL TEMPERAMENT/PERSONALITY FOR INDIVIDUALS

      Chapter 12: TEMPERAMENTAL PROFILES

      Chapter 13: POSITIVE CHARACTERISTICS

      Chapter 14: NEGATIVE CHARACTERISTICS

      Chapter 15: GOODNESS OF FIT- MUTUAL MATCH

      Chapter 16: ASSESSMENT USING TEMPERAMENT & GOODNESS OF FIT THEORY

      Chapter 17: THERAPY –ADAPTING FOR MISMATCH

      CONCLUSION

      Bibliography

      Books by Ronald Mah

      Biographic Information

      ****

      **Author's Note: Other than public figures or people identified in the media, all other persons in this book are either composites of individuals the author has worked with and/or have been given different names and had their personal identifying information altered to protect and respect their confidentiality.

      INTRODUCTION: BORN THAT WAY

      Shay came out mellow- a calm cool collected baby. Shortly after birth, the little baby girl took a nap. Mom and dad gazed at the wonderful little thing that had entered their life. Pregnancy had been challenging during the first trimester with significant morning sickness, but after that had passed the baby would quietly stir about inside mom. Shay gazed calmly at the nurse who changed her first diaper. The nurse exclaimed, What a sweetie you have here! Of course thought both parents simultaneously, She's my baby after all! Thinking that they made such great babies, the parents decided to make another one. The first one Shay had been what others would call an easy baby. Not too many fussy episodes, a relatively mild cry when uncomfortable and needing some care, but easily soothed with nurturing attention and mild cooing and gentle rocking. About two and one-half years later, the second baby girl was born. Unlike her older sister, Teri had been much more active prior to birth. She was up evenings when mom and dad wanted to sleep and once in a while, it felt like she was tumbling like a Circus du Soleil acrobat. But the morning sickness did not last a long, and the parents thought she would pretty much be like her sister when she arrived. Birth was challenging as always but not complicated. Teri came out faster than her sister. Maybe she was in a bit of a rush! Another beautiful baby girl. A bit later, she gazed up as the nurse changing her first diaper, and… Teri screamed like a banshee! Oh my goodness, thought both parents accusingly looking at each other, She's like you! Whatever was up, it had to be genetic or inherited. The dad declared later, Teri was born that way. We didn't even have a chance to ruin her! Mom asserted Teri was that way inside of me! She was way more active prenatally than Shay."

      Robin Marantz Henig (2009) in a New York Times article titled Understanding the Anxious Mind wrote about Jerome Kagan, professor of psychology and his Aha! moment in 1989 early in his longitudinal study on temperament and its effects. Due to the complexity of temperament, he had been looking at only one dimension. Specifically, he was studying whether babies were easily upset when exposed to new things. No high-reactors among the first 18. They gazed calmly at things that were unfamiliar. But the 19th baby was different. She was distressed by novelty — new sounds, new voices, new toys, and new smells— and showed it by flailing her legs, arching her back and crying. Here was what Kagan was looking for but was not sure he would find: a baby who essentially fell apart when exposed to anything new. Baby 19 grew up true to her temperament. This past summer, Kagan showed me a video of her from 2004, when she was 15. We sat in a screening room in Harvard's William James Hall — a building named, coincidentally, for the 19th-century psychologist who described his own struggles with anxiety as 'a horrible dread at the pit of my stomach ... a sense of the insecurity of life.' Kagan is elfin and spry, balding and bespectacled. He neither looks nor acts his age, which is 80. He is one of the most influential developmental psychologists of the 20th century.

      On the monitor, Baby 19 is a plain-looking teenager, hiding behind her long, dark hair. The interview, the same one given to all 15-year-olds in the longitudinal study, begins with questions about school. She has very few extracurricular activities, she says in a small voice, but she does like writing and playing the violin. She fidgets almost constantly as she speaks, twirling her hair, touching her ear, jiggling her knee. 'This is the overflow of her high-reactive nature,' Kagan told me, standing near the monitor so he could fast-forward to the good parts. Here was a good part: The interviewer asks Baby 19 what she worries about. 'I don't know,' Baby 19 says after a long pause, twirling her hair faster, touching her face, her knee. She smiles a little, shrugs. Another pause. And then the list of troubles spills out: 'When I don't quite know what to do and it's really frustrating and I feel really uncomfortable, especially if other people around me know what they're doing. I'm always thinking, Should I go here? Should I go there? Am I in someone's way? ... I worry about things like getting projects done... I think, Will I get it done? How am I going to do it? ... If I'm going to be in a big crowd, it makes me nervous about what I'm going to do and say and what other people are going to do and say.' Baby 19 is wringing her hands now. 'How I'm going to deal with the world when I'm grown. Or if I'm going to sort of do anything that really means anything.' Her voice trails off. She wants to make a difference, she says, and worries about whether she will. 'I can't stop thinking about that.' Watching this video again makes Kagan fairly vibrate with the thrill of rediscovery: here on camera is the young girl who, as an infant, first embodied for him what it meant to be wired to worry. He went on to find many more such children, and would watch a big chunk of them run into trouble with anxiety or other problems as they grew up.

      Temperament can be seen as a relatively simple or basic, global, and nonspecific form of emotional and social behavior that a baby shows at a very young age. The individual may be in fact, born with his or her temperament. Kagan and his assistants coded infants in their study between low-reactive and high-reactive. 40% were low-reactive babies who were classic easy babies. They dealt easily with unfamiliarity. 20% were high-reactive babies, including Baby 19 who thrashed and whimpered to the same unfamiliar things. They were more difficult to comfort. Kagan brought back most of the infants for testing at 1 and 2 years old. Primarily low and high reactive individuals, about half of the original group was brought back for additional tests at 4, 7, 11, and 14 years old. A collaborator, Carl Schwartz, tested some of the individuals at 18 or 21. "By the earliest assessments, certain patterns had already emerged. At age 4, children who had been high-reactive were four times as likely to be behaviorally inhibited as those who had been low-reactive. By age 7, almost half

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1