How many of you heard this, " Think positive, you'll do positive & get positive result."? Believe almost everyone.
But, have you ever thought, what's the connection between thinking & getting!
Well, let's go deeper for better understanding. The idea that maladaptive thoughts are the cause of maladaptive behavior & people must be taught new ways of thinking has been used as a basic approach by many therapists. Several forms of Cognitive Therapy are based on cognitive perspective. There are 3 basic assumptions.
1. Cognitive activity affects behavior.
2. Cognitive activity can be monitored, analyzed & altered.
3. Behavior change can be achieved through cognitive change.
Aaron T Beck, the father of CBT, thought that the job of the therapist is to help clients restructure their thinking & replace maladaptive thoughts that are more helpful in coping with stressful situations. Beck's work was originally focused on the conditions of depressed individuals, but his approach has been extended to several other types of disorders & problems, such as proneness to anger easily. Beck thought that people's emotions & behavior are based largely on the way they view the world. In his view, many people exaggerate their difficulties & minimize possibilities that anything can be done about them. Applying this idea in therapy, it becomes important to identify those beliefs that shape personal interpretation of events & inhibit actions.
Patients in cognitive therapy are encouraged to test their perceptions of themselves & others, as if they were testing hypotheses. They receive homework assignments from therapists & learn to express and view more objectively their assumptions & schema about how they & the world work. There are some common questions which reflect the flow of events that therapists assume to result in unhappiness.
1 . What situation trigger maladaptive cognition?
2. What are these cognition & how do they intrude?
3. How does the patient interpret?
4. What are the consequences of cognition with regard to behavior & experience?
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