Why a Functional Approach?

All behavior serves a purpose. Yes, even the behaviors that seem to sabotage our desire for improvement. In many cases, the behaviors that create the most pain are attempts to meet the most important unmet needs.

A decade ago during my senior undergrad year at UMass Boston, I sat in an early morning trauma capstone course taught by psychologist Lizabeth Roemer. We were discussing traumatic stress through a cross-cultural lens when she posed a deceptively simple question:

Two people can experience the same event. One develops post-traumatic symptoms; the other does not. Why?

The answer, of course, is context. Human experience does not happen in a vacuum. Our nervous systems, histories, relationships, environments, and beliefs shape how we interpret and respond to what happens to us.

Then she casually said something that, years later, I realized fundamentally shaped my clinical approach—especially when working with people who struggle to verbalize what they’re experiencing internally:

“If you listen to a person’s experience, their behavior makes perfect sense.”

That idea stayed with me.

When a client becomes angry and defensive in session, lashes out at their partner, sobs after receiving critical feedback at work, shuts down when asked to communicate, or spends borrowed money on scratch tickets despite desperately wanting to stop, I do not see evidence of something broken that requires fixing.

I see adaptation.

I see a person responding to their internal and external world with the tools their mind and body have learned to use. And most importantly: somewhere along the line, those behaviors worked.

To be clear, a behavior “working” does not mean it improves our lives or moves us toward the future we want. It simply means the behavior successfully fulfills a function in the moment. It reduces distress. It creates escape. It restores control. It protects against shame, vulnerability, rejection, or emotional overwhelm.

The problem is that many of these strategies come with enormous long-term costs.

This is why treatment focused only on stopping behavior often provides temporary relief before new behaviors emerge that create similar consequences. If we never understand what the behavior is doing for a person, we risk fighting the symptom while leaving the underlying need untouched.

For me, therapy is not about asking, “What is wrong with this person?”

It is about asking:

“What problem is this behavior trying to solve?”

Behind our most destructive and difficult-to-manage behaviors is often a part of us trying desperately to meet a basic human need: safety, connection, control, validation, relief, belonging, autonomy, or emotional protection.

Once we understand the need, we can begin developing ways to meet it that no longer collide with the life we want to build.

That is where meaningful change begins.