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Post: 026145
Date: 19 Jun 1997
Subj: feeling good
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for my extended cyber family:

my 'visually re-interpreted' version
of excerpts from a book describing cognitive therapy

parkinson and his disease [pd]
have given me 'enforced' mulling and thinking time
which in turn
has given me an opportunity to learn and grow

i have been struggling with clinical depression [cd]
but have found this book
to be of great help

i sometimes wonder whether the whole of our society
could benefit from some of these insights
so you are my guinea pigs!


your parkie sister in the other island paradise


janet


----------------------------------------------------------
THE FIRST PRINCIPLE OF COGNITIVE THERAPY:
(your thoughts create your emotions ...)
----------------------------------------------------------

you feel
the way you do right now
because of the thoughts you are thinking
at this moment

to illustrate this
how have you been feeling as you read this?

you might have been thinking,
"cognitive therapy sounds too good to be true
it would never work for me"

if your thoughts run along these lines
you are feeling skeptical or even discouraged

what causes you to feel that way?

your thoughts

you create those feelings by the dialogue
you are having with yourself
about this book

conversely
you may have felt a sudden uplift in mood
because
you thought
"hey, this sounds like something which might finally help me"

your emotional reaction
is generated
not by the sentences you are reading
but by the way you are thinking

the moment
you have a certain thought and believe it
you will experience an immediate emotional response

your thought
actually creates the emotion


----------------------------------------------------------
THE SECOND PRINCIPLE OF COGNITIVE THERAPY:
(... which, in depression, are dominated by negativity ...)
----------------------------------------------------------

when you are feeling depressed
your thoughts are dominated by a pervasive negativity

you perceive not only yourself but the entire world
in dark, gloomy terms

what is even worse -
you'll come to believe
things really are as bad
as you imagine them to be

if you are substantially depressed
you will even begin to believe that things
always have been and always will be negative

as you look into your past
you remember all the bad things that have happened to you

as you try to imagine the future
you see only emptiness or unending problems and anguish

this bleak vision
creates a sense of hopelessness

this feeling
is absolutely illogical
but it seems so real
that you have convinced yourself
that your inadequacy will go on forever


----------------------------------------------------------
THE THIRD PRINCIPLE OF COGNITIVE THERAPY
(... which contain gross distortions)
----------------------------------------------------------

this is of enormous
philosophical and therapeutic importance

our research has documented that the negative thoughts
which cause your emotional turmoil nearly always
contain gross distortions

although
these thoughts appear valid
you will learn that they are irrational or just plain wrong

and that
twisted thinking
is the exclusive cause of nearly all your suffering

the implications are
startling

your depression
is not based on an accurate perception of reality
but is the product of
mental slippage

depression
is not a precious, genuine, or important
human experience

it is a phony, synthetic
counterfeit


----------------------------------------------------------
THE TEN DEFINITIONS OF COGNITIVE DISTORTIONS
----------------------------------------------------------


----------------------------------------------------------
1. ALL OR NOTHING THINKING
----------------------------------------------------------

you see things
in black and white categories
if your performance falls short of perfect
you see yourself
as a total failure

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2. OVERGENERALIZATION
----------------------------------------------------------

you see
a single negative event
as a never-ending pattern of defeat

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3. MENTAL FILTER
----------------------------------------------------------

you pick out
a single negative detail
and dwell on it exclusively
so that
your vision
of all reality
becomes darkened
like the drop of ink
that discolours the entire beaker of water

----------------------------------------------------------
4. DISQUALIFYING THE POSITIVE
----------------------------------------------------------

you reject
positive experiences
by insisting that "they don't count" for some reason or other

in this way
you can maintain
a negative belief that is
contradicted by your everyday experiences

----------------------------------------------------------
5. JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS
----------------------------------------------------------

you make
a negative interpretation
even though there are no definite facts
that convincingly suppport your conclusion

you arbitrarily conclude
that someone is reacting negatively to you
and you don't bother to check this out
[mind-reading]

you anticipate
that things will turn out badly
and
you feel convinced
that your prediction is an already-established fact
[the fortune teller error]

----------------------------------------------------------
6. MAGNIFICATION [CATASTROPHIZING] OR MINIMIZATION
----------------------------------------------------------

you exaggerate
the importance of things
[such as your goof-up or someone else's achievement]
or
you shrink things
inappropriately until they appear tiny
[your own desirable qualities or the other person's imperfections]

this is also called "the binocular trick"

----------------------------------------------------------
7. EMOTIONAL REASONING
----------------------------------------------------------

you assume
that your negative emotions
necessarily reflect the way things really are

"I feel it
therefore it must be true."

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8. "SHOULD" STATEMENTS
----------------------------------------------------------

you try to motivate yourself
with "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts",
as if you had to be whipped and punished
before you could be expected to do anything
["Musts" and "oughts" are also offenders]

the emotional consequence
is guilt

when you direct
"should" statements toward others
you feel anger, frustration, and resentment

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9. LABELING AND MISLABELING
----------------------------------------------------------

this is an extreme form of
overgeneralization

instead of describing your error
you attach a negative label to yourself "I'm a loser"

when someone else's behavior rubs you the wrong way
you attach a negative label to him: "He's a goddam louse"

mislabeling
involves describing an event
with language that is highly coloured and emotionally loaded

----------------------------------------------------------
10. PERSONALIZATION
----------------------------------------------------------

you see
yourself as the cause
of some negative external event
which in fact you were not primarily responsible for

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from
Feeling Good - The New Mood Therapy
by David D. Burns, M.D.
published 1980
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janet paterson
"http://www.geocities.com/janet313/"