Went to a hospital on Monday to get a referral letter to see a
specialist. At the hospital, I first decided to pay a courtesy call on
a counselor friend before getting the referral letter from a doctor.
In the event, the courtesy call ended up being a 90-minute chat about
cognitive therapy ~ the work of the father and daughter team of Aaron
T. and Judith S. Beck, and also of David D. Burns, in particular. We
also discussed the psychologist George Alexander Kelly, specifically
on his use of transitional constructs in correcting cognitive
dissonance. The counselor used to work for my late father and is an
old family friend.

To understand cognitive therapy, I'll begin by briefly explaining what
a cognition is. A cognition is a thought or perception. In other
words, your cognitions are the way you are thinking about things at
any moment, including this very moment. These thoughts scroll across
your mind automatically as you perceive the world around you and often
have a huge impact on how you feel.

In fact, your thoughts create your feelings. This is the powerful
principle at the heart of cognitive therapy--your feelings result from
the messages you give yourself. In fact, your thoughts often have much
more to do with how you feel than what is actually happening in your
life.

This isn't a new idea. Nearly two thousand years ago the Greek
philosopher, Epictetus, stated that people are disturbed "not by
things, but by the views we take of them." And even Shakespeare
expressed a similar idea when he said: "there is nothing either good
or bad, but thinking makes it so" Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2. Rene
Descartes, the Father of Existentialism, summed it up succinctly as
ergo et sum--I think, therefore I am.

Although the idea has been around for ages, most depressed people do
not really comprehend it. Nearly all depressed people are convinced
that they are facing some special, awful truth about themselves and
the world, and that their terrible feelings are absolutely realistic
and inevitable. Certainly bad things do happen and life does hand most
of us a dirty deal at times. Many people do experience catastrophic
financial losses and confront devastating personal problems.

Our genes, our hormones, and childhood experiences probably do have an
impact on how we think and feel. And other people can be mean,
annoying, cruel, harassing or simply thoughtless. But all the theories
about the causes of bad moods have the tendency to make us hapless
victims--because we are made to think the causes result from something
beyond our control.

In contrast, you can learn to change the way you think about things,
and you can also change your basic values and beliefs. And when you
do, you will often experience profound and lasting changes in your
mood, outlook, creativity and productivity. That, in a nutshell, is
what cognitive therapy is all about.

The theory is straightforward and may seem overly simple--but don't
write it off as pop psychology. I think you will discover that
cognitive therapy can be surprisingly helpful--even if you feel pretty
skeptical (as I did) when you first learn about it. The effectiveness
of cognitive therapy has been confirmed by many outcome studies by
researchers throughout the world in the past two decades.

No matter how terrible your depression, low self-esteem or anxiety may
feel, the prognosis for recovery through cognitive therapy alone or as
an adjunct to medications is excellent. You may be convinced that your
own case is so bad, so overwhelming and hopeless, that you are the one
person who will never get well, no matter what. But sooner or later,
the clouds have a way of blowing away and the sky suddenly clears and
the sun begins to shine again.

When this happens, the feelings of relief and joy can be
overwhelmingly brilliant.

References:
Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders by Aaron T. Beck
Cognitive Therapy: Basics and Beyond by Judith S. Beck
Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David D. Burns

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