Tomoaki ISHIDA

The TOM Method

Self-Stress Management Conducted with The Best One Who Understands, One's Own Self

Tomoaki ISHIDA

Department of Biomedical Sciences

College of Life Sciences

Ritsumeikan University

Abstract

Animal-Assisted Therapy, AAT, is the most popular therapy effective against mood disorders such as depression. Animals, such as dogs, horses, and dolphins, assist in improving patients’ mood. Although AAT has been used successfully around the world, animals often cause problems among neighbors because of their barks, smells and so on. For this reason, it is necessary to originate the alternative stress management for AAT. In this project, I named my stress management the TOM method from my first name and developed the TOM method to the alternative method as AAT. Purposes of this project are to generalize the TOM Method to be a comfortable method and to build the procedure of generalization of the TOM method. The TOM method is one kind of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), one of the psychotherapies. CBT represses the reaction against the fear by working on the brain. Besides that, there is no fear that the TOM method causes problems among neighbors because CBT doesn’t need the assist of animals. As a result, the TOM method is more comfortable to use than AAT. The key point of the TOM method is that the person divides one’s own self into two roles. This procedure equals that the person creates two imaginary friends. From this standpoint, the generalization of the TOM method is following. First, people become accustomed to assigning a role by using a stuffed toy. After that, they train it by assigning a role to everything around them. Finally, they practice using the TOM method. The TOM method represses the reaction to the fear and there is no fear that the TOM method causes problems among neighbors. The procedure of generalization is stuffed toy, everything around us and no item, in other words, to accustom, to train and to practice. In conclusion, the TOM method can be used as an alternative self-stress management to AAT.

Video Clip

The outline of my project is shown in this video clip. Please watch it.

References

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