It is human nature to question why we act the way we do and why things happen. Over the years, many researchers have developed many theories to categorize known things and explain what it all means. Life is full of trials and tribulations, and those who study maladaptive behaviors typically focus on the thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and skills one uses in daily life. Feelings, thoughts, perceptions, and skills all combine to help create our mental states and lead to behavioral abnormalities. Thoughts are made up of ideas, concepts, and the internal dialogue a person has in their mind. Perceptions are how we interpret incoming sensory signals by processing and organizing information. Feelings are simply subjective states, including happiness or sadness. Skills are a person's basic abilities, including intelligence, memory, attention, and language (Sarason & Sarason, 2005, p. 45). Clinicians and researchers use formal and informal theories to analyze and explain behaviors, and also to help decide how to treat each. There are currently six theoretical perspectives that are used quite widely today: the biological perspective, the psychodynamic perspective, the behavioral perspective, the cognitive perspective, the humanistic-existential perspective, and the community-cultural perspective (Sarason and Sarason, 2005 , p.46). ).The biological perspective revolves around the idea that a disturbance in the body is responsible for any physical or behavioral disorder. The biological view also assumes that all maladaptive behavior is caused by a disordered body part or function. The biological point of view can also po...... middle of paper ......ge, it was never going to mature and change. Maybe today, after losing the best person in his life who truly cared for him and loved him deeply, he can see the error of his ways. As I left him, I told him that I only hoped that he also learned from his mistakes and treated the next person with absolute honesty and respect. Today, I live an incredibly perfect relationship with my soul mate and I tell myself that perhaps I had to experience the worst to appreciate the best. I'm lucky.ReferencesNystul, Michael S. (2006). Introduction to Counseling: An Artistic and Scientific Perspective (3rd ed.). Boston: Pearson Education, Inc. Sarason and Sarason, (2005). Abnormal psychology, the problem of maladaptive behavior (11th ed.). Upper Saddle River: Pearson Prentice Hallwww.dsmivtr.orghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ICD-9_codes