Archive for the ‘Emotion’ Category

Newer Entries »

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Basics II: An Overview of Cognitive Distortions

Tuesday, August 28th, 2007

In the last article, we took our first glimpse at Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). To review, we discussed three key points:

  • All emotions arise from thoughts. All of them.
  • Thoughts that cause negative emotions such as depression are automatic and easily escape our awareness.
  • It’s possible to “debug” our thinking and thereby prevent negative emotions from arising in the first place.

Thoughts that give rise to negative emotions such as depression and anxiety but are incorrectly based on a distorted view of reality are called thinking errors or cognitive distortions.

Perhaps you feel you’re free of cognitive distortions. Unfortunately, this is extremely unlikely. Almost without exception, we all fall prey to them to one degree or another. If you ever find yourself depressed or anxious, it’s likely you’re suffering from one or more distortions of your making. Don’t worry; it’s perfectly natural, and the good news is you can take control of these distortions and ward them off in the future.

Cognitive therapists have identified 10 cognitive distortions. In future articles, we’ll look at each of them in depth, but for now here’s the list:

  • All or Nothing
  • Over-generalizing
  • Mental Filter
  • Disqualifying the Positive
  • Jumping to Conclusions
  • Magnification (or Catastrophizing)
  • Emotional Reasoning
  • Should Statements
  • Labeling
  • Personalization

For more information about cognitive distortions, read Feeling Good or come back tomorrow for the next article in this series.

Posted in Cognitive Therapy, Emotion, Mind | 5 Comments »

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Basics I: What is CBT?

Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007

Disclaimer: One of the main reasons I started this blog is to share the benefits of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. I am not a therapist and I am not dispensing medical advice. If you find these concepts intriguing, you should either read David Burn’s excellent book Feeling Good or seek professional counseling.

So, what is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)? CBT is a type of psychotherapy developed by Aaron T. Beck. The key principle of CBT is that all of our emotions arise from our thoughts. All of our emotions. So, if you’re feeling happy, angry, or sad — those feelings started with thoughts in your mind.

This is all fine and well when our thoughts are reasonable and free of distortion. But what happens when our thoughts are distorted? Distorted thoughts (or “thinking errors” or “cognitive distortions”) also give rise to emotions — usually anger or depression. For example, if you meet a stranger and think to yourself, “Oh no. This person thinks I’m stupid,” you will feel sad. (We will explore why that thought may be distorted in future articles.) Another example of a cognitive distortion is: “I’m a failure. I never do anything right.” (Actually, there are two distortions in that thought, as we’ll see later on.)

The tricky part of all this is that these cognitive distortions are so automatic and happen so reflexively and quickly that we’re not conscious of them. You may think, “Oh, I don’t say horrid things like that to myself,” but, sadly, most of us do — we’re just don’t know it. We know we get discouraged, or feel depressed, but we don’t realize that we’re creating those emotions with our thoughts. Remember: all emotions arise from our thoughts.

Fortunately, with practice, we can dismantle and avoid these cognitive distortions. And that means we can head off the suffering we cause ourselves. In future articles, I will discuss techniques to help “debug” our thinking and offer exercises you can try at home. Some of these techniques will be from the world of psychotherapy and others will be from Buddhism, which is a philosophy that harmonizes beautifully with CBT.

Posted in Buddhism, Cognitive Therapy, Emotion, Mind | 1 Comment »

The Universe is Out to Get You! Or is it?

Wednesday, August 1st, 2007

Albert Einstein suggested that the most important question we can ask ourselves is whether or not the universe we live in is friendly or hostile, and that your answer to that question shapes your destiny.

Note that this is Einstein we’re talking about here — not some feel-good, “power of positive thinking” guru. Einstein was a fairly serious fellow, famous for rigorous, highly-intelligent, and insightful scientific thinking, not for airy-fairy notions of the rose-colored-glasses variety.

The implications of this hypothesis are profound. If you believe the universe is friendly, your perceptions, thoughts, and behavior are shaped by that belief. And, if you believe the opposite — that the universe is fundamentally hostile — your perceptions, thoughts, and behavior are shaped by that belief.

Our emotions arise from our thoughts, and the negative thinking produced by trying to survive in a universe you believe to be hostile generates negative emotions such as depression and anger. And, in turn, negative thoughts and emotions shape behaviors that elicit negative responses in others, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

We’ve all known people like this; folks who believe the universe is hostile. In my experience, people in that mindset have more difficulty in life than their more positive counterparts. And yet we all live in the same universe.

The Friendly Universe folks’ behavior is shaped by positivity, and the results they reap tend to, in turn, reinforce their positivity. Another self-fulfilling prophecy, but one with healthy, desirable results. Their belief shapes behavior that elicits consequences that reinforce their beliefs.

Perhaps you’re feeling skeptical about all this. You can test the hypothesis empirically yourself. Though your belief about the universe’s friendliness, hostility, or indifference was shaped largely in childhood, you can “try on” the belief in friendliness, and see what it yields — say, for a week. At the end of the week, reflect on your experience. What effect, if any, did operating from this belief have on your mood, outlook, and experience? Did people respond to you differently than usual?

A final note: Believing in a friendly universe does not mean turning a blind eye to hostility in that universe. Even the briefest of glances at this morning’s newspaper will confirm the existence of hostility, and during your experimenting you very well may encounter hostility in other people. The goal here isn’t to pick out evidence to support either side of the question; the goal is to investigate the measurable effects of your belief in a larger, universal friendliness or hostility.

Posted in Emotion, Mind, Techniques | No Comments »

Newer Entries »