When Behavior Intervention Just Feels... Wrong

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Behavior charts. Consequence ladders. ABC data.

They’re everywhere- and school counselors are often expected to be in the middle of it.

But what happens when the behaviorist framework you're handed feels completely misaligned with your counseling instincts? 

What if you’re tired of being the “behavior person” when all you want is to help kids feel safe and understood?

In this episode, I'm naming the tension between behaviorism and trauma-informed care, and why school counselors are so often stuck in the middle. We’ll explore how to hold both structure and compassion… and how to begin stepping back into the role that actually reflects your training.

If you’ve ever felt caught between compliance and connection, this one’s for you.

[00:00] Why behavior plans feel off for counselors

[03:00] Behaviorism basics (and why it still dominates)

[06:45] Trauma-informed care: the “can’t,” not “won’t” lens

[10:00] Can you hold structure and compassion?

[14:00] Real-life examples: escape and attention-seeking

[16:30] The problem isn’t just strategy—it’s your role

[17:30] Three frameworks that actually work

[20:00] How to stop being “the behavior person”

[24:00] Four ways to shift the narrative

[27:00] Final encouragement + your next step

References

Barth, R. P., Lee, B. R., Lindsey, M. A., Collins, K. S., Strieder, F. H., Chorpita, B. F., Becker, K. D., & Snowden, L. R. (2004). Evidence-based practice in mental health services for youth. The Journal of Behavioral Health Services & Research, 31(2), 213–233. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02287377

Berger, E., Green, S., & Dalton, L. (2019). Educator perceptions of trauma-informed care in schools: A qualitative study. School Mental Health, 11(3), 483–496. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12310-019-09323-z

Blaustein, M., & Kinniburgh, K. (2010). Treating traumatic stress in children and adolescents: How to foster resilience through attachment, self-regulation, and competency. Guilford Press.

Greene, R. W., Ablon, J. S., & Goring, J. C. (2003). A transactional model of oppositional behavior: Underpinnings of the Collaborative Problem Solving approach. Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services, 41(11), 20–25. https://doi.org/10.3928/0279-3695-20031101-08

Overstreet, S., & Chafouleas, S. M. (2016). Trauma-informed schools: Introduction to the special issue. School Mental Health, 8(1), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12310-016-9184-1

Perry, B. D. (2006). Fear and learning: Trauma-related factors in the adult education process. In S. Johnson & K. Taylor (Eds.), The Neuroscience of Learning and Development (pp. 123–142). Jossey-Bass.

Perry, B. D., & Szalavitz, M. (2017). The boy who was raised as a dog: And other stories from a child psychiatrist’s notebook (3rd ed.). Basic Books.

The National Child Traumatic Stress Network. (n.d.). Trauma-Informed School Strategies During COVID-19. https://www.nctsn.org/resources/trauma-informed-school-strategies-during-covid-19

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Our goal at School for School Counselors is to help school counselors stay on fire, make huge impacts for students, and catalyze change for our roles through grassroots advocacy and collaboration. Listen to get to know more about us and our mission, feel empowered and inspired, and set yourself up for success in the wonderful world of school counseling.

Chapters

• 0:00 The Tension Between Systems and Instincts
• 3:53 Understanding Behaviorism vs. Trauma-Informed Care
• 9:37 Finding Middle Ground in Both Approaches
• 14:21 Alternative Frameworks That Bridge Both Worlds
• 18:46 Redefining Your Role in Behavior Intervention
• 22:49 Practical Steps to Reclaim Your Lane

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

What do you do if you're being asked to intervene with behavior or write behavior intervention plans, as we've been talking about in our last few episodes? But you just don't feel good about it. And it's not because you don't feel like you know enough or you know how to handle behavior. It just feels fundamentally wrong to your school counseling position. If you've been listening to my last few episodes on behavior intervention plans, you've probably walked away with a lot to think about and maybe you did feel uncomfortable. Maybe these thoughts about behaviorism don't sit right with you, and that would not be surprising because for many school counselors, traditional behavior approaches feel misaligned with how we're trained to understand students. You're probably feeling the tension between a system that wants charts and consequences and compliance and your instincts that are telling you to slow down and connect. You might have even found yourself wondering how you support students without participating in practices that feel more like we're trying to be in control and less like we care. If that's you, I want you to hear this. You are not looking at this wrong. These conversations are complicated and as school counselors, we are often caught right smack dab in the middle. In this episode of the podcast, we're going to talk about that tension, the tension between behaviorism and trauma-informed care, because, whether we realize it or not, we're using elements of both of them every single day. Hey, my friend, welcome back. I'm so glad you're here with me for another episode of the School for School Counselors podcast. I'm Steph Johnson, a full-time school counselor, just like you, on a mission to make school counseling feel more sustainable and more enjoyable, and this is the last in a series of podcast episodes revolving around behavior intervention. Now, traditionally this shouldn't be considered a primary role for us as school counselors, but unfortunately we are often tagged as the default right and we are called to go intervene in explosive behaviors, to figure out behavior plans and what steps come next, as well as sometimes trying to assure that everyone is compliant, and that's a big load on our shoulders, especially when we never really were trained to do that kind of work. And then that tension comes in between our counseling expertise and these behaviorism lenses that don't quite feel like they match up very well. So let's start with the basics there. In the last episode, I talked in detail about how behavior intervention plans are built. We started with observations, we moved through functional behavior assessments and then we finally ended up in data-driven goals and interventions. That entire process is rooted in behaviorism and while behavior plans absolutely have value on our campuses, especially when we build them well, they're also rooted in a system of thinking that can feel foreign and even uncomfortable to us. If you didn't catch that last episode, you should go back and give it a listen. It'll help give a little bit more context to today's conversation.

Speaker 1: 3:49

Behaviorism is fundamentally the idea that behavior is observable, measurable and changeable. It's all about what you can see Reinforcement, consequences, shaping behavior over time, abc, data, function of behavior. And if that feels a little bit clinical or mechanical, it makes sense because early behaviorism was built on studies with lab animals. That's where many of the foundational principles were first tested and a lot of behaviorism's foundational work. You probably remember learning about BF Skinner in grad school. His operant conditioning research all focused on stimulus response patterns in the lab. Reinforcement and punishment were used to either increase or decrease behaviors, and these behaviorists really didn't pay attention to the internal emotional or cognitive states that were driving the behaviors. So while behaviorism gave us some powerful tools for shaping behavior, it also left out an entire dimension, which is a human being's inner world, and there's value in that, especially when we're trying to create consistent plans that can be implemented by lots of people across a school campus and lots of different kinds of environments, the behaviorist approach can help us feel organized and efficient and confident that we're quote unquote doing something, and when we have students who benefit from structure and consistency, those behaviorist plans can absolutely help.

Speaker 1: 5:36

But then there's trauma-informed practice, which focuses on an internal world. It asks things like what's happening inside the student, what's going on in their nervous system, how does their experience shape their behavior and what would it take to make them feel safe enough to show up differently? This lens is rooted in attachment theory, brain development research and polyvagal theory, and particularly focuses on the understanding that behavior often reflects a physiological state, not a conscious choice. According to Perry and Solovitz, 2017, children who have experienced trauma often react with survival-based behaviors, meaning those responses aren't premeditated or calculated. They're protective and we know that from a neurodevelopmental perspective, trauma can significantly disrupt a child's ability to self-regulate or to problem-solve, or even to connect socially, especially when that trauma exposure was early on in life or continues to be ongoing.

Speaker 1: 6:56

As Dr Bruce Perry explained 2006, the lower brain takes over during distress and in those moments, logic and reasoning simply aren't accessible. You've probably talked with your students about this before, about flipping their lid with the hand model of the brain right. And when we look at behavior that way, it changes the conversation from won't to can't. At least they can't yet. So herein lies the tension. One approach behaviorism is external. It's focused on what we can see and what we can change. The other is internal and it's centered on what we feel and understand. So, if we're honest, these approaches do not always play nicely in the same room.

Speaker 1: 7:51

You may have been in a trauma-informed training that told you never to ignore a child's dysregulation and then walked into a behavior team meeting where the goal was extinction through planned ignoring or withholding attention. Or you've likely heard someone say that a student is attention-seeking, with a tone that implies that they think the student is manipulating them, when your gut is telling you it's really about seeking connection, and here's where we get stuck. We are trained in empathy. We know behavior is communication, but we're also working in buildings that lean heavily on compliance-based systems, and so we're often asked to operate somewhere where we don't feel comfortable. We're expected to help students regulate without being too soft. We're expected to collaborate with behavior teams without pushing back on punitive practices. And we're expected to advocate for kids but not challenge the system that's failing some of them.

Speaker 1: 9:03

It's a tall order. No wonder we feel so overwhelmed and tired, overwhelmed and tired. So what do we do? Do we just reject all these behavior plans in the name of compassion, or do we stick with these behavior plans and risk overlooking students' emotional needs? Fortunately, I think we can hold space in both sides. We can understand the function of behavior and consider the nervous system. At the same time, we can support positive behavior change while remaining careful that we're not pathologizing a student's response to stress. We can set boundaries, but also provide safety. Let's talk about some ways that might happen. Let's say we have a student that starts throwing chairs every time it's time to go to math.

Speaker 1: 10:03

A traditional behaviorist might say the function of the behavior is escape, but a trauma-informed lens would say what is it about math that feels unsafe? Are they worried about failure? Do they feel a lack of control? Did someone once yell at them? Did someone once embarrass them in math? And if we can understand both sides, we can say yes, the behavior is about escape and we should be proactively co-regulating during transitions, or we can build in success moments or adjust our tone and body language whatever's needed, but we can do both.

Speaker 1: 10:47

What about the student that just shouts out whatever's on their mind all day long? I bet you've had one of these before. I know I have many. The behaviorist view would say it's attention seeking. The trauma-informed view would say that may be rooted in some attachment trauma or maybe the fear of being unseen or forgotten. Can we teach the student to raise their hand through a behavior plan? Yes, gotten. Can we teach the student to raise their hand through a behavior plan? Yes, but we can also make sure that we're meeting that core need for connection in ways that reduce the need for disruption. This is how we can successfully work in an area where we're caught between the science that idolizes compliance.

Speaker 1: 11:35

Sometimes you might feel like you're the only person that's advocating for a student's emotional needs, because this over-focus on compliance is also tied to a lot of school-wide pressures accountability, data, classroom management expectations and even evaluations management expectations and even evaluations. But behavior without buy-in isn't sustainable. Barth and Team 2004 noted that programs that ignore relational context often see short-term compliance at the expense of long-term emotional regulation and resilience. So, while you might worry that bringing up trauma will make you look like you're making excuses for students it's still important to be talking about, because we're not going to see the long-term effects of our interventions until we acknowledge that. So if you've been carrying some guilt or some resentment that you're not able to fully protect your students in these situations, or you feel absolutely exhausted from trying, my friend, I see you. You are not imagining that conflict and you are not wrong for wanting to do behavior intervention differently.

Speaker 1: 12:57

The good news is this is where we shine as school counselors. We don't have to throw out the data-driven plans or abandon accountability, but we can bring a human lens to this work. We can show up and ask questions like what's driving this Before we jump into how do we stop it? We can advocate for co-regulation or sensory tools or adult modeling, while still setting clear behavioral goals. And really most importantly, we can help our teams on campus stay focused on the why of the plan and not just the what.

Speaker 1: 13:40

But how do we take this understanding that behavior is both observable and emotional and turn it into something that we can use on a school campus without being the lone voice shouting into the wilderness? There's a better way. There's a better way. We need some frameworks at our back to help promote buy-in and authority right. So there are a couple frameworks that would be great options. The first is my favorite Ross Green's Collaborative and Proactive Solutions Model. It used to be called the collaborative problem-solving model up until fairly recently, but Ross Green's model invites us to shift from how do we get compliance to what lagging skills or unsolved problems are getting in the way. So instead of focusing on reward or consequence, it centers on working with students to solve the problems collaboratively, so that we're offering structure but also compassion. Research by Green, ablon and Goring in 2003 has shown that this CPS model brings significant reductions in oppositional behavior and disciplinary removals, especially in students with behavioral challenges who struggle with flexibility, frustration, tolerance or executive functioning skills, and it has been used and widely proven in trauma-sensitive schools.

Speaker 1: 15:12

You could also use a trauma-informed adaptation of positive behavior, interventions and supports, or what we always call PBIS informed principles into it, like emotional safety, predictability, staff regulation and strong adult-student relationships in Tier 1 and Tier 2 supports. So this creates a PBIS model that supports structure, but it doesn't sacrifice understanding and care. And then there's the ARC framework, which stands for Attachment, regulation, competency. It's a trauma-focused model that emphasizes building foundational relational safety, which supports emotional regulation and developmentally appropriate skill building. This approach, the ARC framework, has been recognized as an evidence-based practice by the California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse for Child Welfare, and research by Blaustein and Kinneberg 2010 shows that the ARC framework helps students improve regulation, reduce disruptive behavior and build more consistent relationships with caregivers and educators.

Speaker 1: 16:44

Really, the whole core idea of an ARC framework is that students can't show up well until their nervous systems and relationships are strong enough to hold change. So each of these frameworks collaborative and proactive solutions, a trauma-informed PBIS and the ARC framework show us that we don't have to choose between structure or emotional safety. We can ethically do both with intention and with the student at the center of the process. So these models do give us a path forward, but let's be real, they do not solve everything, because underneath all of this theory and frameworks, there's something deeper at play. There's theory and frameworks. There's something deeper at play, and that's our role on our campus as school counselors, because the reality is we're not just stuck between behaviorism and trauma-informed care by accident. We are expected to operate in both worlds, even when one of those worlds really wasn't designed for us.

Speaker 1: 17:59

The behavior systems in schools were not created with school counselors in mind. They were built to maintain structure in classroom management and to apply interventions driven by external compliance. But that's not how our brains think and that's not where our skill set shines. We're trained in human development, attachment, emotional safety. We're not behavior technicians. We're mental health professionals, and while we can absolutely contribute to the process of behavior planning, that does not mean that we should be the ones leading it. In fact, despite my best efforts over the last couple of episodes to guide you, if you have been tagged as the point person for behavior on your campus, we cannot ignore the fact that trying to own both the data collection and the emotional regulation of behavior intervention just burns us out and really kind of makes us feel like it waters down what we're best at.

Speaker 1: 19:08

There's actually research to back this up. Berger and team 2019 found that educators, especially school mental health staff, often experience ethical dissonance when trying to implement behavioral strategies that feel misaligned with trauma-informed values. Team emphasized that counselors are uniquely positioned to help schools adopt trauma-sensitive practices, which means we should not be absorbing the full weight of traditional behavior management systems. So, yes, we can build bridges between behaviorism and trauma-informed care. We can help teams understand the why behind the student behavior, but we should not be the keepers of every chart and every consequence plan and every compliance strategy. That is letting students down because we are not honoring our lane and the value that we bring to our work.

Speaker 1: 20:14

So maybe you're listening and you're thinking. You know, steph, that sounds great and really idealistic, but reality is I am the behavior person on campus. I didn't ask to be, I don't want to be, but I don't have a choice. So I want you to know if that is you. Yeah, it's frustrating. I've been there. I know what that feels like. But the good news is you may not be stuck.

Speaker 1: 20:40

Getting out of that kind of a role is not going to happen with one meeting or one magic sentence, despite what the internet is going to tell you. It's going to be a slow shift and it's going to be one that has to happen through the way you show up and how you reframe behavior work on your campus, little by little. If you want to shift out of this role, you're going to have to be committed to the long game, because it's going to be incremental, but it can be done. Here's what that could look like. First, you could start reframing requests.

Speaker 1: 21:18

When somebody brings you a behavior concern, you don't just automatically jump into problem-solving or plan-writing mode. Start by offering something that's actually in your lane. Let's look at what's driving this behavior. Let's work together and see if we can understand what the student is missing emotionally. So you're still showing up, you're still being helpful, but you're shifting the conversation from compliance to connection and you're laying the groundwork for a different kind of support. I think so often on campuses we instinctively just jump to the problem-solving mode right, because that's what everyone expects and we're very uncomfortable with the idea of people thinking that we don't know what we're doing, and so we often jump to things that are observable and measurable, ie behavior plans and interventions. But if you can really sit in and be okay with the fact that the rate of change through counseling interventions is often different than these compliance-based mechanisms, you're going to be okay.

Speaker 1: 22:29

Secondly, you could clarify your contributions. So if you want to get out of the behavior side of things, instead of saying that's not my job, which never ends well, right, you could say something like I may not be the best person to lead this intervention process. I can help with understanding behavior and I can provide counseling supports, but somebody else might need to manage the day-to-day plan. So that keeps you in the conversation while naming a boundary. Is it always going to work? No, like I said, this is going to be an incremental process, but if you can kind of start scattering these initiatives here and there, you're going to start to see the needle move. Third, and something we talk about often use your use of time data to redirect expectations. Keep the information about how many hours you've been involved in behavior programming throughout your week versus other initiatives. This is also going to involve a strong foundation of know, like and trust with your school administrator, and I wouldn't recommend jumping into this one right off the bat, but we have several members of our mastermind who have had great success with showing use of time data once they got to the right threshold with their administrator.

Speaker 1: 23:54

And last, a powerful approach that a lot of people don't really talk about is that teaching your campus to self-manage. Behavior teams often default to you because they don't know what else to do, so you can shift that by giving short specific tools that are aligned with the issue and with your training. You could give teachers a simple bank of regulation strategies to train the classroom. You could give them a co-regulation list. You could give them a brief summary that highlights not just what the student's doing in the classroom but why they might be doing it. Provide an explanation so that your school staff learns to lean on you strategically and not reflexively.

Speaker 1: 24:46

One amazing thing that we've done on our campus and I cannot take credit for this it was not my idea, but I sure wish it had been we have a cabinet in our teacher workroom full of behavior strategies, charts and things to try as Tier 1 and early Tier 2 interventions. We have trained our staff that before anyone else needs to jump in to help them, they need to try to help themselves, and that can be very powerful when it just becomes a way of doing business on your campus. When folks request support and you're able to say what Tier 1 interventions have you tried on your own here, come, try some of these listed in here, it becomes a big deal. The beauty of these approaches, of reframing the requests, clarifying your contributions, using use of time data and teaching folks instead of just bringing the heap none of those require some big, bold declaration. I hereby am no longer involved in behavior intervention plans. As much as we would like to provide those, it's just not realistic or safe. But they can, with consistency, give you the ability to step back into what your real role should be at school, and that's empowering y'all. That feels so good when we start to veer back into our lane and we start to get more opportunities to do what we do best.

Speaker 1: 26:19

All right, this episode has gone on a while, so I'm going to leave you with this. I want you to remember behavior change in students is possible, but compassion is also necessary and you do not have to choose between the two. So stop and think for just a minute. What's one thing that you might do differently this week? Not trying to fix everything, not trying to make a huge change, but what one thing can you do to try to bring your work closer to your lane and your values? Is it advising behavior teams on emotional responses? Is it collaborating more often with behavior plans instead of being the lone ranger? Or is it looking at some of these frameworks like CPS or ARC and advocating for implementing them on your campus in the coming years? Or is it one of these four most recent strategies I outlined for empowering your own school staff to jump into the mix. So it's not always you, whatever it is, whatever step you identify, however small it may feel, it's going to be a step in the right direction and I believe in you. I believe you can do this. I believe you can make these changes on your campus and start walking toward a more fulfilling role at your school as the school counselor.

Speaker 1: 27:55

Hey, if this episode spoke to your heart, make sure that you check out our School for School Counselors Mastermind, where we have conversations about these kinds of things each and every week, and we also have the Behavior Intervention Playbook. It's designed for school counselors that are navigating exactly these kinds of conversations in a checklist form, one step right after the other, so you never have to feel lost or flustered. So you never have to feel lost or flustered. We have all kinds of tools like this in our mastermind that are practical and designed to help you move forward with clarity, with confidence and with heart, and I would love for you to check that out. You can find out more at schoolforschoolcounselorscom. Slash mastermind. All right, my friend. That's all for now. I'll be back soon with another episode of the School for School Counselors podcast. In the meantime, I hope you have the best week, take care.