Freedom!
A therapy that relies on the strength and goodness of the individual is a "good therapy". One such therapy is called "Cognitive Therapy" which emphasizes personal responsibility in contrast to the destructive and unreliable therapies based on blame. "Cognitive Therapy" emphasizes that there are "traps" that hold people back from fully realizing their potential. Avoiding these traps can help one live more healthy and free:
1. Assuming the intentions of others: We assume that we know what people think without having sufficient evidence of their thoughts. “He thinks I’m a loser.” This is destabilizing to relationships whether assumptions are correct or incorrect.
2. Dire expectations: We predict the future negatively: things will get worse, or there is danger ahead. “I’ll never be accepted into that program" or "I will never be able to see my family again” or “I won’t be a good mother to my children."
3. Catastrophizing: We believe that what has happened or will happen will be so awful and unbearable that we won’t be able to stand it. “It would be terrible if I failed” "If I get back in contact with my family they will all hate me."
4. Labeling: We assign global negative traits to yourself and others. “I’m undesirable,” or “He’s a rotten person.” or "My family are all horrible. They hate me."
5. Discounting positives: We claim that the positive things we or others do are trivial. “That’s what wives are supposed to do—so it doesn’t count when she’s nice to me,” or “Those successes were easy, so they don’t matter.”
6. Negative filtering: We focus almost exclusively on the negatives and seldom notice the positives. “Look at all of the people who don’t like me.”
7. Overgeneralizing: We perceive a global pattern of negatives on the basis of a single incident. “This generally happens to me. I seem to fail at a lot of things.”
8. Dichotomous thinking: We view events or people in all-or-nothing terms. “I get rejected by everyone,” or “Everyone in my family is bad. I need to detach from them completely.”
9. Blaming: We focus on the other person as the source of your negative feelings, and we refuse to take responsibility for changing ourselves. “My parents have caused all my problems. They will always deny it." or "If only my family was not so abusive so cheap my life would be better.”
10. What if? We keep asking a series of questions about “what if” something happens, and we fail to be satisfied with any of the answers. “Yeah, but what if I get anxious?,” or “What if my family contacts me when I have told them not to?” or "What if my children finally learn the real truth?"
11. Emotional reasoning: We let our feelings guide our interpretation of reality. “I feel depressed; therefore, my family must be terrible.”
12. Inability to disconfirm: We reject any evidence or arguments that might contradict our negative thoughts. For example, when we have the thought "I have this depression so I must have had a childhood trauma" and then we reject as irrelevant any statements or evidence of everyone in our immediate family that the events falsely remembered never happened. When we cling to our "memory" and consequently, our thought or "memory" (even if false) cannot be refuted. “That’s not the real issue. There are deeper problems. There are other factors.”
Informative Links: Learn about a Therapy that Traps and Isolates, Damage being done by Medications A partial list from Robert L. Leahy, Stephen J. F. Holland, and Lata K. McGinn’sTreatment Plans and Interventions for Depression and Anxiety Disorders (2012).
========================================
==============================
Grace and I while visiting family in New England
No comments:
Post a Comment