Healthcare Training Institute - Quality Education since 1979
Psychologist, Social Worker, Counselor, & MFT!!

Section 1
Track #1 - Using RET

Question 1 found at the bottom of this page
Answer Booklet | Table of Contents
Get Audio Track: Open a new window with Ctrl N,
Left click audio track to Listen, Right click to "Save..." mp3
Get PRINTABLE format of this page. This may take a few moments.
To print, if you do not have Adobe Reader, it's available via a free download here.

Welcome to the Home Study Course sponsored by the Healthcare Training Institute, homestudycredit.com.  This course is entitled, Coping with Cancer: Interventions for the Family

Our primary intent for this home study course is to provide quality education to foster your professional growth.  The Institute has provided quality education since 1979.
 
We appreciate that you have chosen us as a vehicle for you to earn your Continuing Education Credit.

The purpose of the course is to assist you in increasing your knowledge regarding how to treat patients, clients, etc. dealing with cancer in the family.  As each case study is given, if the concepts seem to be applicable to your situation, I encourage you to turn your CD player off and make a few notes regarding the application of the principle to your setting.  However, these notes are for your purposes only and are not to be sent to the Institute.  Also each track is very content dense.  So feel free to replay the track to review the content either for your own purposes, or if you feel appropriate play the track in an individual or group session for client education.  Also permission is granted to reproduce this CD.  We encourage you to duplicate and give copies of this CD to colleagues, clients, etc. as you deem appropriate. We feel the information on our CD's is valuable.  Thus, we have an interest in distributing CD's in as many ways as possible, to benefit the greatest number of people, who have a need and are receptive to this practical information.

The questions in your Answer Booklet are sequential and deal with the section of content that preceded it.  For this reason, to facilitate the answering of each question, you might read the question from the Answer Booklet prior to listening to that CD track.  By knowing what the question is ahead of time, you will then know the content to listen for that contains the answer.  So just a hint, after you write down the answer to a question in your Answer Booklet, read on to the next question in order to give you a “heads up” to listen for the content that contains the answer to the next question.

Merely write the correct letter on the corresponding blank line in your answer booklet. Each answer is only used once. Keep in mind there is nothing tricky or hard about these questions.  They are merely intended to verify the playing of this CD.

For the purpose of brevity, most generally, I will use the term “therapists” or “mental health professional.”  However, don’t let these terms deter you from applying the concepts to your situations.  When you hear the word “therapists,” if your job title is social worker, psychologist, marriage and family therapist, mental health counselor, professional counselor, resident director, program assistant, etc. merely substitute the appropriate term that is the most meaningful to you. In short, don’t let my use of the term “therapists” cognitively set you off track from hearing the content because your job title is school counselor, for example.  I will also use the term “client” for the purposes of brevity.  However, if you deal with patients, residents, students, consumers, etc., transpose “client” for the term that is the most meaningful to you in your work setting. 

On this CD set we will discuss such topics as:  common reactions to cancer, conversation guidelines, what to do, providing comfort to the caregiver, managing cancer in the workplace, the caregiver’s guide to well being, mastering the dynamics of anger, time management, compartmentalizing cancer thoughts, supporting the children, and techniques for child affect integration. 

So  let’s get started

On the rest of this track we will begin to discuss eleven common reactions that family members or loved ones have to the news that their loved one has cancer.  This track will cover the first three common reactions.  The first three common reactions that we will discuss are shock, anger, and fear.  As you listen to this track, consider your client.  Does someone he or she care for someone who has cancer?  What was the client’s reaction when they heard the new?  Could the techniques on this track benefit your client?

#1  Shock
First, let’s discuss shock.  Ned, age 42, described the impact of his wife’s cancer as an electric shock to his system.  Ned stated, “I just don’t understand how it can happen!  Theresa takes such good care of herself!”  As you know, upon the discovery of cancer some clients, like Ned, feel stunned or frozen as though they cannot move.  I found that the news of his wife’s cancer violated Ned’s beliefs of how the world is supposed to work.  Ned stated, “It’s just not fair.  It’s not right.” 

#2  Anger
In addition to shock, has your client experienced anger as a reaction to the diagnosis of a loved ones cancer?  In some cases, the anger may have existed prior to the diagnosis of cancer.  Even if the cause of that anger seems trivial compared to cancer, the anger may not disappear.  Ned stated, “I’ve been fighting with Theresa over finances for two years.  Now she has cancer, but I can’t just forget how she acted before.  I’m still furious!”  How might you have responded to Ned?  I stated, “Acknowledging anger is good and has positive benefits.  Now that you know you are angry, you can use it as fuel to solve problems, to become assertive, and to get your needs met.  Ignoring your anger, however, can be non productive.  It’s like burying a volcano and hoping it won’t explode.”  Think of your Ned.  How might you help your client understand that anger is not bad, but the behavior accompanying it is often unacceptable?  What cognitive interventions might you implement to help your Ned?  START

Technique:  Rational Emotive Therapy
I used Rational Emotive Therapy in order to help Ned become aware of his anger.  As you may know, Rational Emotive Therapy focuses on disputing irrational thoughts about a situation and replacing them with rational ones.  Rational Emotive Therapy requires thought before action in anger situations.  To practice, I asked Ned to write down a recent example of something which caused him to display negative anger.  As you know, this example was Ned’s activating experience.  Ned wrote his activating experience as his and Theresa’s disagreements regarding finances.  Second, I suggested Ned write his beliefs about the experience.  For example, Ned wrote that Theresa had no right to criticize him for his spending when he makes most of the money.  Ned stated, “I feel like crap writing this stuff.  She’s got cancer for crying out loud.”  I stated, “That’s why we want to help you get rid of that anger.”  Third, I asked Ned to write down the consequences of taking action on those beliefs.  Ned easily saw how his passive aggressive approach to Theresa’s criticism prohibited any positive communication.  The fourth step in the rational emotive therapy process, as you kow, is to have the client dispute their own belief.  Based on the negative consequences of Ned’s proposed action, it was easy for him to see the fallacy in his belief that Theresa had no right to criticize him.  I asked Ned to write a second set of beliefs that may reflect positive consequences.  When he finished, Ned felt like he was able to face Theresa to discuss their issues.  In a later session, Ned stated, “It’s good to put that anger behind me.  Now I can focus on helping Theresa feel better.”  Think of your client.  Could Rational Emotive Therapy benefit your Ned regarding his loved one with cancer?

#3  Fear
A third common reaction to the news of cancer is fear.  For example, even though Theresa had a relatively good prognosis, Ned worried about her survival.  Ned stated, “It’s scary.  And I’m not only facing her mortality, but my own as well.  Other times I feel as if my life were a car swerving in the rain, always about to collide with oncoming traffic.  My heart stops, I readjust, not quite sure what’s going to happen.  Sometimes I panic.”  I responded to Ned by stating, “It is natural to be afraid of the unknown.  The only thing that is certain is that a complex illness has struck and no one can predict the outcome.  This crisis would spark fear in almost everyone.”
On this track we began to discuss other common reactions that family members or loved ones have to the news that their loved one has cancer.  This track covered the first three common reactions.  The first three common reactions that we discussed are shock, anger, and fear. 

On the next track we will continue to discuss insurmountable burdens, loss of control, grief and guilt. 

QUESTION 1
What are three common reactions your client may experience when learning that a loved one has cancer? To select and enter your answer go to Answer Booklet.