Posted by Larry Hoover on July 23, 2004, at 13:40:55
In reply to Re: Matt DDS? Other CBT'ers? » fires, posted by Dinah on July 23, 2004, at 11:35:32
> CBT is very rational and unemotional. I know it appeals to a lot of people because of its appeal to logic. As I said, I think it's a useful set of skills to have. But sometimes I find the logical underpinnings of CBT to be a bit less than logical in light of the complexity of human beings and the biological needs that are built in us.
Cognition is a whole lot more than logic alone. And I fear your impression overlooks entirely the second word, behavioural.
One of the foundations of the cognitive approach is to try to develop an oversight of the transition from the experience of an event to the resulting feelings. Many people believe that an event leads directly to a feeling, which might be symbolically represented as:
E --> F
However, cognitive approaches attempt to focus on an intervening (and automatic) step, the interpretation, symbolically:
E --> I --> F
Our interpretation can be simple, or it can be complex. A physical threat to a child is not very hard to interpret. Other interpretations, though, call on a host of cognitive characters, including: attitudes, beliefs, religion, innate traits (e.g. shyness), memories, mores, and on and on. These, collectively, create one or more schemata, the psychological term for the way (or ways) we view the world.
Cognitive analysis, then, is an attempt to bring to conscious awareness the components bearing on the interpretation of an event. First, those techniques are applied to past events, in hopes of making it easier to recognize those same characteristics in subsequent events. One trains oneself to become aware of the interpretative elements which shape the emotive response.
I hope it is not a trite example, but consider someone who has lost everything they own in a tornado. It's pretty likely that a fair number of people would feel devastated by the loss. However, adherents of the Buddhist philosophical traditions would be elated, as they have been provided with an opportunity to learn from the loss of material wealth. The event doesn't necessarily and predictably lead to a feeling, but the interpretation always does.
Upon learning of the E --> I --> F model, I quickly grasped that the only place I have effect is on I (me).
It is a vastly liberating feeling to become aware of interpretation in real-time experience. It takes practise, but the rewards are immense. You get to choose.
The second part is behaviour. You have to do things differently to actually effect change. I'm sure that many of you have heard these two sayings: "If you keep on doing what you always did, you'll keep on getting what you always got." and "You can't think your way into a new way of acting, but you can act your way into a new way of thinking."
Thinking about the past is not cognitive-behavioural therapy. Trying to develop new thinking rules is not CBT either, unless you actually put them to use, and experience new opportunities to generate feelings that otherwise may not have had the chance to exist. Cognitive insight gives you the chance to choose. Behavioural change *is* the choice. You become proactive, rather than reactive.
Kids coming. Gotta run.
Lar
poster:Larry Hoover
thread:368717
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040723/msgs/369485.html