Another balance

Balance and behavior

The ECOpsy© psychological practice approaches the treatment of psychological troubles on the basis of an expanded concept of behavior:

The behavior of an organism is the set of endogenous and interactive regulation processes which, at various levels of complexity, maintain the dynamic balance that insures survival and reproduction.

In more simple terms, behavior is the set of means that we implement in order to adapt to our internal constraints and to the constraints of our environment.

Internal constraints are in the first place our physiological, emotional, relational and intellectual needs. They may be also health problems, neurological disorders, an unusual emotional reactivity, some problematic traits of personality, etc. They include also behaviors that we have learned and memorized, mostly unconsciously, during our course of life and which are no longer adapted to present situations.

External constraints can be difficult conditions of life, an overload of work, environmental pollution, problems of relationship at work or at school, the influence of the media, the commercial pressure …

Psychological difficulties

Fortunately, we own resources: our own organism (our competences, intuition, intelligence, physical strength …) and those that are available in our environment, either human (parents, friends, professionals, …) or material (all the things that we can buy).

But those resources are limited and sometimes insufficient or unattainable. And the constraints may be so heavy that our nervous system will not be able to overcome them anymore.

We consider psychological difficulties from this perspective of a dysfunction of regulation of the behavior, generated by an unbalance of constraints and resources.

An ecological solution

In this perspective, the role of the therapist will be to help his client optimize the current processes of regulation of his behavior while integrating previous learnings, including dysfunctional behaviors.This approach takes a maximum of factors of influence into account by processing in parallel seven fundamental dimensions of the behaviour and their related elements of context. It integrates the contributions of several methods of psychotherapy which are compatible with a scientific approach of psychology, with no concession to dogmatism or charlatanry.

It is an ecological approach in the sense that it always considers an individual in interaction with the environment and tends to mobilize natural resources in order to achieve the objectives (hence the ECO initials). A reasonnable use of technological resources also allows to optimize the diagnosis and the treatment.

Of course, this approach has its own limitations, depending on the degree of unbalance between constraints and resources. More extensive treatments may be necessary, for instance for severe depressions or heavy addictions. Collaboration with a psychiatrist may be necessary in some cases.

Changing an unsatisfactory balance of behavior, established under the pressure of circumstances, into another balance, chosen deliberately, implies the development of powerful skills. In addition to solving current problems, they will become a new internal resource, a set of tools for continuous personal growth.