The DSM estimates that between two and three percent of the adult population in the United States are compulsive gamblers.  Male compulsive gamblers often begin during adolescence.  However, women tend to start to gamble later in life.  By the time a compulsive gambler seeks help, clients generally have an average debt running from $55,000 to $92,000.

For Factor #2 and #3 go to Pathological Gambling Course

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During our weekly session, Allan stated, “I don’t know what went wrong. I was in my session with Betty, and she was mentioning her new boyfriend, and I just got really in sync with the discrepancies between her verbal and nonverbal communications. So, I brought them up, just like we learned how to do. All of a sudden, she’s hostile and defensive… she just shut down on me!”  Track 6 will outline four ways in which a therapist can respond to a client’s nonverbal behavior using Gestalt therapy.

I stated to Allan, “Well, your perceptions of her behaviors certainly seem accurate.  But there seem to be two factors that contributed to Betty’s being defensive.
— First, you had never responded to her nonverbal behavior in a session before. 
— Second, you didn’t introduce the approach you were using, so Betty did not know what to expect.
In the future, you might want to consider carefully introducing the ideas of Gestalt therapy, and starting by implementing only one or two approaches at a time.  Implementing complicated or multiple approaches early on might overload Betty.”

For Guideline #2, #3 and #4 go to Gestalt Course

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Need #1: Preventing Humiliation
The first concept related to a narcissistic client’s need for power and control is preventing humiliation.  As stated earlier in the track, narcissistic clients often control the emotions of sadness and fear as a prevention against vulnerability.  This desire to remain seemingly powerful and in control often results as a defense mechanism developed in early childhood.  As children, I have found that these clients suffer a severe narcissistic injury or a blow to self-esteem that scars and shapes their personalities.

This injury most often entails humiliation, specifically the experience of being powerless while another person enjoys the exercise of power.  Often, this other person is a parent or guardian who uses physical strength to force the child into submission.  To regain their own sense of power, narcissistic clients will use their inability to feel in order to control others around them.

Holly, age 26, described many repeated instances of feeling powerless in her early childhood and adolescence.  She stated, “My parents were contemplating putting me in a mental hospital without telling me.  This was when I was seventeen.  On another occasion, when I was fourteen and away at camp, they changed my high school without asking me.”

When I asked about her parents, Holly stated, “My father is a bull!  He’s a person who controls people.  He always appears as a nice guy, and most people see him that way, but he causes so much disorder!  In business, he is ruthless.  His only trip is power—power and money.  He is rather handsome, but big and burly.  When he was angry, he was very frightening.”

From her description, I could deduce that Holly’s father was a narcissistic character who valued power and control.  Because of his own need for power, he took the control away from Holly in making decisions for her.  This left her feeling powerless and to regain that power, she suppressed her own feelings of sadness and fear.  Think of your Holly.  How has his or her own need for power affected his or her emotions and feelings?

For Need #2 & #3  and Technique : Rage Control go to Narcissism Course

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# 1 – Violent Language & Presumption of Innocence
One of the first factors that may have prevented children from coming forward is the frequency of violent language and the subsequent presumption of innocence. As you know, violent language, especially among teens, is commonplace, and usually casual.  Sports teams, for example, will refer to a victory as “killing the other team.” There are two aspects of this which are applicable to the shootings we have so far discussed.

The first aspect is summed up by Stacey Hunt, a classmate of Mitchell Johnson. Stacey indicated that she had heard Mitchell referring to violent acts before the event. Stacey stated that Mitchell had talked about having a list, and that, “everybody was going to pay.  But he didn’t say that he was going to go and pull the fire alarm, get everyone outside and shoot them, you know? He was going around bragging like any other kid would when they were mad.” Clearly Stacey, like her classmates, attributed nothing out of the ordinary to such violent threats, rather normalizing them as a common expression of frustration and anger.

A second aspect is that students like Michael and Mitchell were widely known as pranksters, bullies, and prone to acting out. Many attributed these threats to the same behaviors, assuming that the shooters were merely looking for attention. In some cases, shooters may have made so many warnings beforehand that their classmates become convinced that nothing will actually happen. Even instances of a shooter bringing a gun to school may have been interpreted as this bluffing, show-off behavior.

For #2  and #3 Factors of Preventions and 3 Frames School Children Use for Identifying a Threat as Serious go to School Shootings Course

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