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Ap Psychology Case Study Example

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Case Description In this paper, I will be referring to the individual as Bella. She is a 21-year-old junior in college with a major in biology. As for her background, she mainly lives with her mother and younger brother. Bella has experienced intense anxiety throughout her entire life and has recently started seeking professional treatment. She experiences symptoms like persistent worry, panic attacks, loneliness, and trouble sleeping. I will be specifically focusing on Bella’s anxiety and how it relates to the following approaches: behavioral, cognitive, and psychoanalytic. Behaviorist Approach: Bella has been procrastinating her schoolwork for the entire semester. She is reluctant to start her assignments because she feels like it will just …show more content…

This relates to Bandura’s self-efficacy theory. She intensely underestimates her capacity to achieve and has negative thought patterns like learned helplessness and overgeneralization. This could be due to pressure from her family to be highly successful. Her mother could have projected these low levels of self-efficacy onto her daughter by being intensely critical and discouraging. This greatly influences her behavior as she suffers from procrastination and perfectionism. Before she starts to study, she believes that she will get a failing score on the exam. This causes her to procrastinate and become anxious. Another example is Bella being assigned a presentation for her biology class. She needs to prepare for this presentation, but she continues to procrastinate due to anxiety. When Bella tries to study for an exam, despite her procrastination, she is actively influenced by her intense and constant feelings of inadequacy. It can cause her to not be able to focus or retain information, especially when she is studying in an overstimulating environment. This relates to reciprocal determinism, as Bella’s environment, personal factors, and her behavior are all interacting and influencing each …show more content…

Bella may also unconsciously believe that if she does not gain success in her classes, then she will not be worthy of her friends and family. This idea can relate to the defense mechanism, repression. Bella may unconsciously repress her feelings of inadequacy when she does fail academically, which causes her anxiety and panic attacks. Her procrastination could also be caused by her low self-confidence, as she is afraid of failure. Bella may have trouble sleeping due to unconscious and unresolved issues. For example, Bella directly correlating her self-worth with her level of success is unresolved. She is unconsciously anxious about her classes and social life, which disrupts her sleep patterns. If she wants to consciously resolve these issues, then she should not repress or avoid them. Due to Bella’s anxiety, she has lately been feeling inadequate. Through the defense mechanism projection, she projects her insecurities onto her friend instead of acknowledging her feelings. For example, Bella receives a low grade on an exam that she felt like she was going to fail

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