luckyturtle788
New member
my bf watches a tv show or movie or listens to a sermon or something to put himself to sleep, because when he lays down his mind races, which is aversive to him, so he turns whatever it is on because listening to it focuses his mind and that allows him to go to sleep. that's negative reinforcement because he behaves to reduce an aversive stimulus, and the consequence of that increases the occurrence of the behavior in the future. he needs, for his own health (not really his concern) and for my sake (because i can't fall asleep with anything on) which becomes for his sake (definitely his concern), to stop watching something to get to sleep. really he needs to stop needing it. so i'm looking to terminate behavior, which really sucks because this is negative automatic reinforcement, i think, the hardest to work on. cold turkey is reducing the behavior, but i don't think that is the best approach. what i've been doing is reducing how long the show runs for each night, contingent on if he was able to fall asleep within that time. the point is to get his mind and body to adjust to needing it less and less, because even if he's asleep, he is still being stimulated by the noise and sound of the tv. eventually, he will be weened off of needing the something audible to get to sleep. am i extinguishing his behavior, or am i using dra or dri?
to be clear, i didn't go about this project very well, and i'm making up for that in my discussion. there is a huge problem in that we are several states apart and i am therefore relying on him to relay info back to me instead of directly observing it myself. i decrease the amount of time the tv show (one he's already seen before) by 2 min per instance of sleep (nap or regular going to bed stuff) contingent on whether or not he was able to go to sleep within the previous time limit. this is based on whether he remembers the end of the episode. i did not control for when he was going to sleep, how many hours of sleep he got, etc. while those would have been good, in all honesty those would have been they're own behavior change project.
please just answer my original question instead of telling me how to do this better!
to be clear, i didn't go about this project very well, and i'm making up for that in my discussion. there is a huge problem in that we are several states apart and i am therefore relying on him to relay info back to me instead of directly observing it myself. i decrease the amount of time the tv show (one he's already seen before) by 2 min per instance of sleep (nap or regular going to bed stuff) contingent on whether or not he was able to go to sleep within the previous time limit. this is based on whether he remembers the end of the episode. i did not control for when he was going to sleep, how many hours of sleep he got, etc. while those would have been good, in all honesty those would have been they're own behavior change project.
please just answer my original question instead of telling me how to do this better!