Tag: mhealth

According to Professor Guy Doron and his colleague Gur Ilany, the application developed (named ‘GG Relationship’) was especially designed for dealing with relationship doubts and fears. The application is based on the principles of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) – one of the most research-supported psychological therapies.

According to CBT models, negative self-talk – individuals’ ongoing interpretations of the self, others and the world – maintain psychological difficulties such as obsessive preoccupation, low mood, and maladaptive behaviors. In ROCD, for instance, individuals negative self-talk often relates to fear of being in the wrong relationships or/and missing the ‘right’ relationship. Individuals with such fears will continuously say to themselves (in their heads) phrases such as ‘Maybe my partner is not the ONE’, ‘He is not smart enough for me’ or ‘I will regret my decision to stay/leave with my partner forever‘. Such negative self-talk, of course, ultimately increases relationship doubts/fears, intensifies negative mood and often provokes relationship conflict.

Professor Guy Doron says ‘GG Relationship was developed in order to provide an accessible CBT training platform that would allow individuals with relationship fears and doubts to better deal with negative self-talk’. According to Gur Ilany, the application is designed to ‘(1) increase individuals’ awareness of negative self-talk, (2) train individuals’ to better identify and challenge negative self-talk, (3) increase individuals’ access to neutral and positive self-talk, and (4) increase the automaticity of the above processes’.

The core gameplay of the training  is simple: individuals are presented with ‘blocks’ featuring self-talk statements such as “I am proactive”, “I am reliable” or “I am a loser”- and have to respond by pulling the supportive ‘blocks’ towards themselves (i.e., downwards) and throwing away from themselves the negative ‘blocks’ (i.e., rejecting them upwards). A/Prof Doron says ‘to further strengthen learning of supportive self-talk, each level the player completes is followed by a small memory game in which one has to identify a supportive statements that appeared in the previous level’. As the game progresses, the individual passes through thematically relevant issues such as self-esteem, beliefs in change, dealing with relationship doubts, facing uncertainty, overcoming perfectionism, coping with embarrassment, commitment anxiety, etc.,.

Training using this application, Gur says ‘will hopefully allow for gradual, steady learning of more positive self-talk thereby helping to break the vicious thought cycle maintaining relationship doubts and preoccupations’.