Four PROBLEM AREAS: Immediately choose four problem areas or issues in your life that you want to focus on throughout the course. These will give you concrete directions for applying the generalities from the reading and class. I’ve listed below a few of the problem areas some people have used, just to stimulate your thinking. List genuine problems or goals of yours. Choose the most important ones in your life right now. You can, of course, keep the nature of some of yours to yourself.
Step 1: Journal about a list of your problems and write freely, trying to come up with a good list that you can choose from later. This might be done in class.
Step 2: Type out and turn a thorough statement of each of the problem areas. The deadline is on Schoology. This is to be at least 1.5 page double spaced and at most 3 pages double spaced.
It will be most useful if you choose a variety, since techniques appropriate to one kind are not necessarily useful with another. These areas might relate to academic, social, or romantic life, to family, job, leisure-time, money, physical health, or vaguer areas of concern, anxiety, stress, or challenge. You are likely to find that you will work a lot on some of these areas, not much on others, and that new areas arise to occupy you during some of the term.
Examples:
Changing a Habit. Being late, overeating, over-smoking, over-drinking, under-studying, speaking too much or too little, under-exercise, procrastinating, quitting, failing, excessive drugs. These often represent conflicts between long-term and short-term motives.
Communication Problems. Hiding truths, unassertive, resentful.
Unwanted Feelings. Depression, anger, anxiety, tension, shame, boredom, pressure, worthlessness, meaninglessness, fear, guilt, ugliness, unlovableness, futility, embarrassment.
Unclear Motives. What am I doing here, what to study in college, how to spend leisure time.
Skill Problems. Coursework, music performance, paper-writing, mathematics, chess, baseball, taking examinations, getting money, loneliness, coping with changes (like changing groups of friends), time pressure.
Relationship Problems. Parent, sibling, romantic partner, friend, other relative, coworker, boss, teacher.
Others. Something you want to have, to become, to change, to affect, to do, to experience.