Basic Principles of Strategies and Skills Learning and Development (SSLD)
Our social environment includes social realities such as social systems, institutions, conventions, norms, laws, rules, cultures, and so on. It also includes all the relationships we have with these social realities as well as all the people in our lives.
Most of our needs in life are met through interacting with other people or social systems (e.g., being fed by our parents when we were babies, going to a drugstore to get medication).
When we do not successfully achieve what we want through these interactions, we end up not meeting some of our needs such as the need for food or the need for companionship. When our needs are not met, we experience negative emotions (e.g., being hungry, feeling lonely, insecurity), or we may keep on using ineffective or harmful strategies (e.g., using drugs to cope with emotional pain and sense of defeat).
The major reason for negative life experiences is that we have not mastered effective strategies and/or skills to interact with our social environment to attain what we need. For example, a person may wish to develop an intimate relationship with another person, but cannot get the other person's attention and a positive response.
Most human actions are motivated by needs. We seek company when we feel lonely, we look for water when we are thirsty, etc.
Our actions, motivated by our needs, are also mediated or directed by our thinking. The way we think and the way we make sense of the world can affect the relationship between what we need and what we want. Hunger, for instance, can be translated into a quest for food, or as a call for further self-restraint. A teenager who is not popular at school may believe that popularity can be increased by owning the latest video-game system. Another person may think that a face lift will have the same effect. Their knowledge and experience will also condition how they go about getting what they need or want, such as going to the mall or shopping online.
Our needs and our emotions can influence the way we think, including our judgment, beliefs, and values. An extremely hungry person is more likely to see objects as food. A person who is afraid of insects walking outside in the dark may mistake objects as insects. It is therefore important to be aware of our own motivations and emotions when trying to understand our own behavior.
The way we think about ourselves is often critical to the way we approach situations in life. In most circumstances, the more positive we think about ourselves, the more helpful it will be.
The actions we take are sometimes effective in getting us what we need, and sometimes they are not. It is possible that an action that is effective in meeting certain needs may interfere with our attempt to meet other needs. For example, taking drugs may give sensory pleasure and reduce anxiety, but it can damage our health and career. Avoiding challenging social situations may meet our need for safety, but will deprive us of the opportunity to meet other needs such as developing intimate relationships or career advancement.
SSLD is a model designed to help us acquire and master strategies and skills that will allow us to effectively attain our personal goals (what we need) within our social environment. The mastery of these new strategies and skills would allow clients to give up former behavioural strategies that are either ineffective or problematic.
Clients will be able to learn new strategies and skills, and to refine old ones, in a safe learning environment. In an incremental manner, clients will build an expanded set of strategies and skills that will enable them to realize their goals more effectively. SSLD intervention is therefore always empowering in that it increases the client's range of options, capacity, competence, and effectiveness.
SSLD distinguishes itself from other intervention models focusing on the training of skills (e.g., life-skills training, social skills training, life coaching, etc.) by its adoption of a multiple contingency perspective. This perspective recognizes the various contingencies related to personal variables, cultural and social variables, etc., and maintains an open and flexible approach that allows the practitioner to respond to individual needs and circumstances of the client.
SSLD emphasizes learning instead of training. The focus is on the client's learning and development of strategies and skills that will effectively address the client's needs. Apart from training and instructing, the practitioner plays multiple roles to facilitate learning, offer resources and information, provide feedback, coach, consult, and support.
A key feature of a contingency-based SSLD practice model is the recognition that client learning can occur without training. Whereas clients can often learn and develop strategies and skills beyond the limited repertoire of the practitioner, the practitioner is often a learner who learns together with clients. In group programs, clients can also learn together and from each other through experimentation and collaborative generation of strategies and skills.
