Reality Therapy/ Choice Therapy

By: Bea Audine Toledo

Mary Joy Pepa
Syra Fajardo
 William Glasser and Robert Wubbolding

Concepts:

 Emphasized that individuals are responsible for what they

do.

 All people have choices about what they are doing.

 1996 Glasser had revised this theory and renamed it choice

therapy

 Concerned with the phenomenological world of the client.

 •   Stresses the subjective way in which clients perceive and

react to their world from an internal locus of evaluation.

•   Behavior is viewed as our best attempt to get what we want

•   Behavior is purposeful; it is designed to close the gap

between what we want and what we perceive we are getting.

•   Our behaviors come from the inside and thus we choose

our own destiny.

 Philosophy and Basic Assumptions

 Grounded on the basic premises of choice theory, which

asserts that we self-determining beings.
 Because we choose our total behavior, we are responsible
for how we are acting, thinking, feeling and our
physiological states.
 A major premise of choice theory is that all behavior is
aimed at satisfying the needs for survival, love and
belonging, power, freedom and fun.
 Philosophy and Basic Assumptions (cont.)

 Acting and thinking are chosen behaviors, which should be

the focus of therapy. When we change our acting and

thinking, we also indirectly influence how we are feeling as
well as our physiological state.

 Choice theory explains how we attempt to control the world

around us and teaches us ways to satisfy our wants and

needs more effectively.
 Therapeutic Goals

Overall goal:

 To help people find better ways to meet their needs for

survival, love and belonging, power, freedom, and fun.

 Changes in behavior should result in the satisfaction of

basic needs.
 Personal growth improvement, enhanced lifestyle and
better decision making.
Failure identity is created when 2
basic needs of human beings are
not satisfy

- The need to love and be loved

- The need to feel worthwhile
 Therapeutic Goals

 Help clients gain the psychological strength to accept

personal responsibility for their lives and assist them in

learning ways to regain control of their lives and to live
more effectively.

 Clients are challenged to examine what they are doing,

thinking and feeling to figure out there is a better way for

them to function.
 Therapeutic Relationship

The practice of reality therapy can best be conceptualized as

the cycle of counseling, which consists of two major
components:

1. The counseling environment and

2. Specific procedures that lead to change in behavior.

 Therapeutic Relationship (cont.)

These procedures are based on the assumption that: human

beings are motivated to change

1. when they determine that their current behavior is not

getting them what they want and

2. when they believe they can choose other behaviors that

will get them closer to what they want.
Steps of the therapy/ Techniques

- Involvement
- Current behavior
- Evaluation of the current behavior
- Goal setting
- Commitment
- No excuses
- No punishment
- Never give up
 Therapeutic Process

W= wants: exploring wants, needs and perceptions.

D= direction and doing: focusing on what clients are doing
and the direction that this is taking them.
E= evaluation: challenging clients to make an evaluation of
their total behavior.
P= planning and commitment: assisting clients in
formulating realistic plans and making a commitment to
carry them out.
 Limitations

Reality therapy does not give enough emphasis to

feelings, the unconscious, the therapeutic value of
dreams, the place of transference in therapy, the
effect of early childhood trauma and the power of
the past to influence one’s present personality.
 Limitations

There is a tendency for this approach to play the

crucial role of one’s social and cultural
environment in shaping behavior. It may foster a
treatment that is symptom oriented and
discourage an exploration of deeper emotional
issues.