Inferiority is a common psychological phenomenon in human society.
Adler once pointed out that everyone has a certain degree of inferiority complex , because everyone hopes that their environment will be better. Appropriate low self-esteem can promote individual progress, but low self-esteem may also become a negative factor, causing people psychological distress and causing psychological and behavioral problems.
College students are in an important transition period. If they cannot adapt to college life well and lack self-regulation methods, they are prone to various psychological problems. Among them, inferiority complex is a psychological problem that is more prominent among college students and has a greater impact on them.
Inferiority mentality may make college students negative and pessimistic, stop making progress, and be unable to devote themselves to study and life. It also seriously affects students' values and outlook on life. In severe cases, it may also lead to depression and suicidal ideation and behavior.
In recent years, the high incidence of depression among college students has also alerted us to pay attention to inferiority complex so as to better prevent depression. With the rapid development of society, people are under increasing pressure, and people are paying more and more attention to their mental health. Psychological counseling is widely used as an effective method to solve psychological distress and psychological disorders. The
study attempted to use cognitive behavioral therapy to conduct psychological counseling intervention on two cases of college students with inferiority complex. On the basis of achieving positive counseling effects, they reflected on the two counseling cases and summarized the counseling and treatment ideas for college students' inferiority complex to provide case reference for novice counselors.
1. Effective factors affecting case resolution
Establishing a good consultation relationship
Visitor Xiao X said that during the consultation, he felt the warmth of life and the meaning of light. Little
And when the inner thoughts are expressed, allowed and accepted, a lot of healing occurs. Xiao Y said that during the consultation, he felt warmth and unconditional love, which gave him a lot of confidence and support.
The effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy
The direct factor that causes college students to develop inferiority complex is their unreasonable understanding and evaluation of themselves.
Cognitive behavioral therapy improves the client's unreasonable understanding of themselves, that is, core beliefs, so that the client can use well-functioning thinking to view himself comprehensively, objectively, reasonably, and positively, thereby alleviating his negative emotions and maladaptive behaviors caused by low self-esteem.
Both clients, Little X and Little Y, have unreasonable automatic thoughts and beliefs. After identifying the client's automatic thoughts and beliefs, use "evidence" questions, "other explanation" questions, "de-catastrophizing" questions, behavioral experiments, etc. to evaluate automatic thoughts.
uses core belief worksheets, reconstruction of early experiences, cognitive continuum, debate and other techniques to correct the core beliefs of the two clients, allowing the clients to reshape their understanding and evaluation of themselves, reduce negative core beliefs, and alleviate inferiority complex.
Effectiveness of Counseling Homework
Homework is a required but not optional part of cognitive behavioral therapy, and patients who do homework progress better in treatment than those who do not. Each consultation is assigned assignments based on key issues surrounding the client.
By completing each assignment after consultation, visitors can sort out and digest the content in the consultation, thereby consolidating what they learned during the consultation and strengthening the visitor's confidence in the consultation and themselves. Both clients believed that the homework was very helpful in consolidating the results of the consultation. The assignments that were considered more helpful during the consultation are as follows, which can be used as a reference for peers.
1. What I like about myself. Because college students with an inferiority complex tend to see their own bad qualities and filter out their good qualities. Consultation work can be used to repeatedly consolidate the client's focus on his or her own shining points.
2. Find 3 close friends to write down your own strengths.When visitors cannot see their own strengths, they can find out more about their shining points by asking their friends around them.
3. Before going to bed every day, record the things you are competent at during the day (any small thing). Through recording, visitors can realize that they can do many things and have confidence in themselves.
4. Conduct behavioral experiments and record the feelings of behavioral experiments. Through detailed descriptions, visitors can strengthen their feelings about the behavioral experiment and help enhance their confidence.
5. Summarize consultation and understanding. This assignment is the most direct and effective assignment. It allows the client to recall, think, and summarize the consultation content after each consultation, which helps the client internalize the consultation content.
Actively pay attention to visitors
When they encounter visitors who are disappointed with themselves, their scope of consciousness often becomes narrow, and they easily see their own shortcomings and lose hope.
The therapist's positive attention at this time will broaden their horizons and help them get a good start at opening the door to hope. During the consultation, constantly pay attention to what the client has done well, so that the client with an inferiority complex can see his own strengths and believe in himself more.
2. Psychological treatment ideas for college students’ inferiority complex
Based on the case studies of two clients, this paper proposes treatment ideas for college students’ inferiority complex for reference by novice counselors.
Listen to the client's story
In the early stages of consultation, you must first listen carefully to what happened in the client's past. On the one hand, it is to collect information to provide help for subsequent consultations; on the other hand, it allows visitors to sort out and output their own experiences.
Many clients with low self-esteem are unwilling to tell the people around them about their traumatic experiences, so they hide them for a long time, which is very detrimental to their physical and mental health. However, in consultation, when clients express their experiences and secrets in words, it is a healing for themselves.
Guide visitors to have a positive sense of inferiority
Most people think that inferiority complex is a very negative and bad word. Because in life we are often encouraged to be a confident person, and people with low self-esteem are unlikely to succeed and so on. As a result, the client cannot easily accept his or her situation, but blindly rejects his or her inferiority complex, leading to the idea of "I feel inferior, I am not good", and is often immersed in negative emotions. By discussing the impact of low self-esteem with the client,
enables the client to realize the duality and universality of low self-esteem, allowing the client to better accept his or her own state. Secondly, by discussing the reasons for the client's inferiority complex, the client can gain an understanding of the inferiority complex and thus formally face the inferiority complex.
Reshape the client's self-perception and develop adaptive behavior
At the beginning of the consultation process, the theory of cognitive behavioral therapy can be explained first, so that the client has a certain understanding and learning of the consultation technology. Then, each aspect will be discussed in detail by looking for each aspect of the client's inferiority complex.
In the specific discussion, we will first find out the visitor's automatic thinking in this aspect and in a certain situation, and use Socrates questions, dialectics and other techniques to make the visitor aware of his irrational thinking and give up his previous thoughts and behaviors.
then uses in-depth questioning to find out the client's unreasonable core beliefs about themselves, and then corrects them through techniques such as core technology worksheets, and then corrects them into reasonable and well-functioning core beliefs, so that they can view themselves more holistically, objectively, and reasonably.
mainly works on the client's unreasonable self-perception thinking, so that the client can learn to discover his own strengths, not exaggerate his shortcomings, and not view himself in a dichotomous way. Although he is not the best, he is not the worst either. Don’t give yourself generalized labels, and realize that people are developing, changing, and holistic.
Guide the client to learn to make reasonable use of comparison and set appropriate goals for himself.
First, find out a comparison situation in the client's life and discover the unreasonable thinking patterns produced by the client during comparison.This enables the client to learn to make reasonable use of comparison and see himself completely through upward and downward comparisons. And encourage visitors to learn to compare with their past selves and see their progress. By discussing future plans with the client,
enables the client to understand the gap between the real self and the ideal self, how much effort is needed to narrow this gap, and how to set reasonable and specific goals. Ultimately, the client feels more confident about the future.
Summarize the consultation and prevent recurrence
In the final stage, let the client summarize the gains and experiences during the consultation process. The counselor gives affirmation and encourages the client to apply the results of the consultation in future study and life. Finally, we explore together the resources we have in facing the future life, so that the visitors can be confident in themselves and the future.
Suggestions for college students
First of all, college students must learn to view inferiority complex positively and recognize the two sides of inferiority complex. Secondly, we must gradually understand ourselves as we grow and learn to evaluate ourselves overall and objectively. Don't just focus on your shortcomings, but also see your strengths. If you can't find it yourself, you can ask your classmates and friends around you.
Look at yourself from a developmental perspective. People change. You don’t label yourself and others. You don’t think of yourself based on the success or failure of one thing. Have reasonable and realistic requirements for yourself. There is no perfect person in this world. Accept your own shortcomings. Accept that you are imperfect, but it does not affect your loveliness and charm.
Learn to make reasonable use of comparison. When you are proud and complacent, you can learn to learn from the strengths of others through upward comparison. When you feel inferior and give up, you must also learn to compare downward and see that you are not so bad.
In addition, you must learn to compare yourself with your past self and see your own growth and progress. Set a life goal that suits you and make it concrete. You can choose to write it down and what you want to do every day.
Everyone is unique, and everyone is the biggest beneficiary of their own life, so focus on yourself. Cultivate more interests and hobbies, exercise more, make more friends, and see more of the colorful world.
Finally, if you cannot relieve your inferiority complex on your own, it may be a good choice to go to the school psychological center to seek help from a counselor.
