COGINITIVE THERAPY

• Cognitive therapists are particularly concerned with the impact of

thinking on individuals’ personalities.
• Background. In the late 1960s and early1970s, Aaron Beck became
dissatisfied with the psychoanalytic assumption that unconscious
conflicts were the chief cause of psychological problems.
• As Beck treated patients,he noticed that they would often repeat a
string of negative statements, almost without notice. Beck believed
that these automatic,negative self-statements played a major role in
emotional problems.
• Basic assumption.
• Beck pointed out that our automatic, irrational thoughts and beliefs
can color our feelings and actions, distort our perceptions, and result
in various psychological and emotional problems.
• He assumed that these irrational self-statements, such as polarized
thinking, needed to be changed.
• As a form of cognitive therapy, CBT also assumes that disorders come
from illogical, irrational cognitions and that changing the thinking
patterns to more rational, logical ones will relieve the symptoms of
the disorder, making it an action therapy
COGINITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY
• Cognitive therapists are particularly concerned with the impact of
thinking on individuals’ personalities.
• Cognitive therapy, a system developed by Aaron Beck, stresses the
importance of belief systems and thinking in determining behavior
and feelings.
• The focus of cognitive therapy is on understanding distorted beliefs
and using techniques to change maladaptive thinking while also
incorporating affective and behavioral methods.
Beck coginitive therapy
• Cognitive therapy (Beck, 1979; Freeman et al., 1989) was developed by Aaron
T.Beck and is focused on helping people change their ways of thinking.
• Rather than focusing on the behavior itself, the cognitive therapist focuses on the
distorted think-ing and unrealistic beliefs that lead to maladaptive behavior
(Hollon & Beck, 1994),especially those distortions relating to depression (Abela &
D’Allesandro, 2002;McGinn, 2000).
• The goal is to help clients test, in a more objective, scientific way, the truth of
their beliefs and assumptions, as well as their attributions concerning both their
own behavior and the behavior of others in their lives. to Chapter Twelve: Social
Psychology, pp. 466–467.
• Then they can recognize thoughts that are distorted and negative and replace
them with more-positive, helpful thoughts. Because the focus is on changing
thoughts rather than gaining deep insights into their causes, this kind of therapy
is primarily an action therapy.
CAUSATION AND PSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDERS.
• As Beck (1967; Clark, Beck, & Alford, 1999; Wills, 2009) has said,
psychological distress can be caused by a combination of biological,
environmental, and social factors, interacting in a variety of ways, so
that there is rarely a single cause for a disorder.
• Sometimes early childhood events may lead to later cognitive
distortions.
• Lack of experience or training may lead to ineffective or maladaptive
ways of thinking, such as setting unrealistic goals or making
inaccurate assumptions (Beck, Freeman, Davis, & Associates, 2004).
CAUSATION AND PSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDERS
• At times of stress, when individuals anticipate or perceive a situation
as threatening, their thinking may be distorted.
• It is not the inaccurate thoughts that cause the psychological
disorder;rather, it is a combination of biological, developmental, and
environmental factors (Beck & Weishaar, 1989).
• Automatic thoughts are likely to be a significant part of the processing
of the perceived distress.
AUTOMATIC NEGATIVE THOUGHTS
AUTOMATIC NEGATIVE THOUGHT
ANT
ANT
BUDDHA
THE NEGATIVE EFFECTS
AUTOMATIC THOUGHT
• The automatic thought is a key concept in Beck’s cognitive
psychotherapy.
• Such thoughts occur spontaneously, without effort or choice.
• In psychological disorders, automatic thoughts are often distorted,
extreme, or otherwise inaccurate.
AUTOMATIC NEGATIVE THOUGHTS (ANT)
COGINITIVE DISTORTIONS
• Cognitive distortions appear when information processing is inaccurate or
ineffective.
• In his original work with depression, Beck (1967) identified several
significant cognitive distortions that can be identified in the thought
processes of depressed people.
• Freeman(1987) and DeRubeis, Tang, and Beck (2001) have discussed a
variety of common cognitive distortions that can be found in different
psychological disorders.
• Nine of these are described here: all-or-nothing thinking, selective
abstraction,
• mind reading, negative prediction, catastrophizing, overgeneralization,
labeling
• and mislabeling, magnification or minimization, and personalization.
NINE ANTS
NINE TYPES OF DISTORTIONS
1. All-or-nothing thinking
2. Labeling and mislabeling
3. Selective abstraction
4. Mind reading
5. Negative prediction
6. Catastrophizing
7. Overgeneralization
8. Magnification or Minimization
9. Personalization.
1.ALL OR NOTHING THINKING
2.LABELLING AND MISLABELLING
• Labeling and mislabeling.
A negative view of oneself is created by self-labeling based on some errors
or mistakes. A person who has had some awkward incidents with
acquaintances might conclude, “I’m unpopular. I’m a loser” ratherthan “I
felt awkward talking to Harriet.” In labeling and mislabeling in thisway,
individuals can create an inaccurate sense of themselves or their
identity.Basically, labeling or mislabeling is an example of overgeneralizing
to such adegree that one’s view of oneself is affected.
LABELLING
LABELLING AND MISLABELLING
3.Selective abstraction
• Selective abstraction.
• Sometimes individuals pick out an idea or fact from an event to
support their depressed or negative thinking.
• For example, a baseball player who has had several hits and
successful fielding plays may focus on an error he has made and dwell
on it.
• Thus, the ballplayer has selectively abstracted one event from a
series of events to draw negative conclusions and to feel depressed.
SELECTIVE ABSTRACTION
4.MIND READING
• Mind reading.
• This refers to the idea that we know what another person is thinking
about us.
• For example, a man may conclude that his friend no longer likes him
because he will not go shopping with him. In fact, the friend may have
many reasons, such as other commitments, not to go shopping.
MIND READING
5.NEGATIVE PREDICTION
• Negative prediction.
• When an individual believes that something bad is going to happen,
and there is no evidence to support this, this is a negative prediction.
• A person may predict that she may fail an exam, even though she has
done well on exams before and is prepared for the upcoming exam.
• In this case, the inference about failure—the negative prediction—is
not supported by the facts.
6.CATASTROPHIZING
• Catastrophizing.
• In this cognitive distortion, individuals take one event they are
concerned about and exaggerate it so that they become fearful.
Thus, “I kno when I meet the regional manager, I’m going to say
something stupid that will jeopardize my job. I know I will say
something that will make her not want to consider me for
advancement” turns an important meeting into a possible
catastrophe.
7.OVERGENERALIZATION
• Overgeneralization:
• Here a person draws a sweeping conclusion from one incident and
then assumes that the conclusion applies to areas of life that have
nothing to do with the original event.
• Example: “I insulted my algebra teacher.I’ll flunk and I’ll never be able
to get a decent job—I’ll end up on welfare.”
8.MAGNIFICATION OR MINIMIZATION
• Magnification or minimization.
• Cognitive distortions can occur when individuals magnify imperfections or
minimize good points. They lead to conclusions that support a belief of
inferiority and a feeling of depression.
• An example of magnification is the athlete who suffers a muscle pull and
thinks, “I won’t be able to play in the game today.
• My athletic career is probably over.” In contrast, an example of
minimization would be the athlete who would think, “Even though I had
a good day playing today, it’s not good enough.
• It’s not up to my standards.” In either magnification or minimization, the
athlete is likely to feel depressed.
8.MAGNIFICATION OR MINIMIZATION
9.PERSONALIZATION
• Personalization. Taking an event that is unrelated to the individual and
making it meaningful produces the cognitive distortion of personalization.
• Examples include “It always rains when I am about to go for a picnic”
and“Whenever I go to the shopping center, there is always an incredible
amount of traffic.” People do not cause the rain or the traffic; these events
are beyond our control.
• Furthermore, when people are questioned, they are able to give instances
of how it does not always rain when they have planned an outdoor
function and that they do not always encounter the same level of traffic
when shopping.
• For example, traffic is usually heavier at certain times of day than at
others, and if one chooses to shop at a particular time, there will be more
or less traffic.
9.PERSONALIZATION
HOW TO CHALLENGE
AWARE:BY CREATING JOURNAL OR THOUGHT
DIARY WILL HELP IDENTIFY AND RECORD ANT.
WRITING DOWN YOUR NEGATIVE THOUGHTS
ASK QUESTIONS
VIEW YOUR NEGATIVE THOUGHTS BORING
TURN YOUR ANTs INTO PETs
REFRAME
EXAMPLE
OTHER WAYS
PROFESSIONAL HELP
CHALLENGE IT
REPLACE
CHALLENGING AND REPLACING ANT
• Techniques. The techniques of cognitive therapy include having the
client monitor and identify his or her automatic, negative,irrational
thoughts and replace them with positive ones. !us, clients deal with
and solve their problems by gradually substituting positive thoughts
for distorted self-statements.