It is human nature to ask ourselves why we act a certain way and why things happen. Over the years, many scholars have developed numerous theories to classify known things and explain what it all means. Life is full of trials and tribulations, and those who study maladaptive behavior usually focus on the thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and skills one uses during daily life. Feelings, thoughts, perceptions, and abilities all combine to help create our mental states and lead to behavioral abnormalities. Thoughts are made up of ideas, concepts, and the internal dialogue that a person has in their mind. Perceptions are how one interprets 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). Doctors and researchers use both formal and informal theories to analyze and explain behaviors and also to help decide how to treat them. individual effectively. There are currently six theoretical perspectives that are used quite prevalently today: the biological perspective, the psychodynamic perspective, the behavioral perspective, the cognitive perspective, the humanistic-existential perspective and the community-cultural perspective (Sarason & Sarason, 2005, p.46) The biological perspective revolves around the idea that a disorder of the organism is responsible for every physical or behavioral disorder. The biological view also assumes that all maladaptive behaviors are caused by a disordered body part or function. Maybe today, having lost the best person in his life who truly cared for him and loved him deeply, he can see the errors of his ways. Leaving him, I told him that I only hoped that he too had learned from his mistakes and would treat the next person who came along with complete honesty and respect. Today I have an incredibly perfect relationship with my soulmate and I tell myself that maybe I had to experience the absolute worst to appreciate the best. I'm lucky. References Nystul, Michael S. (2006). Introduction to Counseling: An Artistic and Scientific Perspective (3rd ed.). Boston: Pearson Education, Inc. Sarason & 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