Tamer’s success story
The beneficiary 16-year-old Tamer, one of the cases who were transferred to Aisha association, He lives in a family, suffering from bad economic status because of the unemployment of his sick father with chronic and persistent depression. His father was transferred to psychological treatment sessions. Tamer, accompanied with his mother, hardly responded to the questions regarding his complaints. His mother delivered most of the responses. He was extremely sad, desperate, shy and with bowed head. He was avoiding eye contact and his voice is hardly can be heard. When the mother was asked what Tamer was suffering from, she said “ My son wants to leave the school and join the industry profession although he desires to continue in his school education. However, he is afraid to re-experience studying, especially after his failure in the tenth grade. What increases his fright even more is his sister’s failure in Tawjihi. He said to his mother, “My sister failed despite her big efforts, so certainly I will fail exactly like her.” Experiencing failure made him an unconfident and introverted isolated person. He became shy, unable to confront people and absent minded. He became sick with depression, especially because of his health history. Since his childhood, he has suffered from health diseases, some birth defects and his exposure to many surgeries. These surgeries led to his absence in school, leading to his low performance in school and then failure in the tenth grade. What increases his depression is the family history since his father was suffering from chronic depression for a long time and the same goes for his siblings. Through evaluation, taking the complaints and observing symptoms, it was found that he suffers from frustration and despair. He, also, has fears about his illness, especially that he was exposed to 11 operations, including two on the face and in the tonsils and appendix and seven operations due to the narrowness in the anus.
Based on the delivered complaints, his case was evaluated and a treatment plan was designed, suiting his psychological case. This includes some techniques of cognitive behavioral therapy, psychological and religious counseling. The used techniques of cognitive behavioral therapy are asking Tamer to prioritize his problems according to his severe need to be treated. This includes, also, increasing his awareness about depression and modifying his previous thoughts about this illness. Socratic methods were used to modify his wrong thoughts, affecting negatively his psychological state. He was taught how to replace illogical ideas and way of thinking with logical ideas. Religion counseling includes using logical convincing ways which are based on religious bases, helping him to accept his birth defects and increase his self-confidence. The importance of changing the daily routine was highlighted. This happens through using daily-activity-schedule techniques and making use of spare time. Also, he was advised to make big achievements to give him the feeling of being influential. He was also advised to be involved in enjoyable activities that make him feel relaxed and improve his mood. Advantages-and-disadvantages technique was used to discover the advantages and disadvantages of keeping the negative ideas and manners and of getting rid of these negative ideas and manners. He was trained how to get desirable alternatives of bad ideas and manners. A schedule was used to know Tamer’s strong points to enhance it, so his self-confidence was increased. He decided to continue his education and choose a suitable specialization and not to study industry. After this self-taken decision, he was trained to achieve long and short-term goals and to make a schedule for the difficult subjects for him to know how to deal with it. He was also trained of time-management skill. Situations making him feel shy were identified and arranged from the lowest to the highest to get rid of it by sensitivity-lowering sessions. He was taught how to make school friends. The treatment plan succeeded to achieve its goals in Tamer’s case. He succeeded to get rid of sadness and isolation and he said “ I really want to return to school and I have a goal in like that I will work in achieving it. I want to enroll in police academy. Now I have a dream; I am able to compete and this made me distinguished and a study lover. I loved my teachers and became distinguished in English, math and Arabic subjects and this increased my self-confidence. I made friendships and I get up early, organize my time and defend myself when someone criticizes me. I am committed to my prayers. I get rid of over sensitivity and I became sociable, loving to sit with my family and friends. This really made my life a happy one.”