|
COGNITIVE BEHAVIOURAL THERAPY |
| |
The central insight of cognitive therapy as
originally formulated over three decades ago is that
thoughts mediate between stimuli, such as external
events, and emotions. As in the figure below, a
stimulus elicits a thought -- which might be an
evaluative judgement of some kind -- which in turn
gives rise to an emotion. In other words, it is not
the stimulus itself which somehow elicits an
emotional response directly, but our evaluation of
or thought about that stimulus.
Two assumptions underpin the approach of the
cognitive therapist:
the client is capable of becoming aware of his or
her own thoughts and of changing them
sometimes the thoughts elicited by stimuli distort
or otherwise fail to reflect reality accurately.
Cognitive therapy suggests that psychological
distress is caused by distorted thoughts about
stimuli giving rise to distressed emotions. The
theory is particularly well developed in the case of
depression, where clients frequently experience
unduly negative thoughts which arise automatically
even in response to stimuli which might otherwise be
experienced as positive.
Cognitive therapy aims to help the client to become
aware of thought distortions which are causing
psychological distress, and of behavioural patterns
which are reinforcing it, and to correct them. The
objective is not to correct every distortion in a
client's entire outlook -- and after all, virtually
everyone distorts reality in many ways -- just those
which may be at the root of distress. The therapist
will make every effort to understand experiences
from the client's point of view, and the client and
therapist will work collaboratively with an
empirical spirit, like scientists, exploring the
client's thoughts, assumptions and inferences. The
therapist helps the client learn to test these by
checking them against reality and against other
assumptions.
|
| |
|
