Aaron Beck and cognitive therapy

Aaron Beck is clear, “If our thinking is simple and clear, we are better equipped to achieve our goals”. Is it possible that we overcomplicate ourselves on many occasions? It could be, or maybe it’s that our vision of the world is distorted almost unintentionally, right?

The fact is that Beck, a psychologist and professor, has developed a cognitive therapy that demonstrates great effectiveness in the treatment of depression. Besides, When their ideas have been adapted to other problems specific to psychological therapy, they have also shown a high degree of effectiveness.

Cognitive therapy and Aaron Beck

Cognitive therapy It is a psychological current that deals with studying and knowing the processes by which the individual becomes aware of the world and its environment.as well as its results.

Thus, A cognitive model pays special attention to beliefs, meanings, expectations, ideas… That is, in the filters that we use to perceive reality or the mechanisms that we use to work with this information and with the information that we already have stored in our brains.

Thus, the role played by memory, concept formation, attention, conflict resolution, and information processing is very important and is thus reflected in the different cognitive models.

Aaron Beck has been a pioneer in this type of therapy. Others such as Albert Ellis have also developed similar models. However, Beck focuses on the study of cognitive distortions, while Ellis opts for irrational beliefs.

Method used in Beck’s cognitive therapy

It is not easy to define Aaron Beck’s cognitive therapy. However, we will try to make a complete and understandable summary. In this sense, The psychologist bases his model on the personal suffering of an individual due to the particular interpretation of events, but not of these events themselves..

Hence, Beck showed great interest in how this interpretation of events influences the establishment of psychological disorders, especially depression.

So, To treat depression and other disorders, Beck proposes cognitive restructuring; which consists of ensuring that the patient is able to modify the models that he uses to interpret. To do this, the situations experienced and the subjective assessment that the person makes of the events are addressed.

Once the schemes with which the individual works are known, in therapy they are worked on so that they lose rigidity.. Through this treatment, the patient sees himself and finds ways to see the world and his environment in a way that is more beneficial for his mental health.

Although this therapy emerged to treat depression, Its growing success in the treatment of this disorder allowed it to expand to address other conditions.such as anxiety and phobias.

To better understand what it is about, let’s propose the following example: if someone has a phobia of injections, their beliefs could be restructured so that they understand that the small discomfort caused can save them long and painful medical treatments.

That is, making the patient see that by avoiding contact with the needles, it can cause problems, discomfort and pain much greater than that of a simple injection or blood draw.

Key concepts of Beck’s cognitive therapy

The model proposed by Beck maintains that when faced with a situation, individuals do not respond automatically; but Before issuing an emotional or behavioral response, they perceive, classify, interpret, evaluate and assign meaning to the stimulus. depending on your prior assumptions either cognitive schemes (also called core beliefs).

Now, fully developing Aaron Beck’s cognitive therapy would be a work that, due to its extensive nature and need for nuances, would exceed the aims of this article. However, we can summarize some of its most important principles:

Cognitive organization

In Beck’s model, the individual emits an interpreted and evaluated response to a situation, so that we do not act automatically. What Beck says is that behind the vast majority of our behaviors there is a particular style of processing information -based on our previous cognitive schemes- that has a great influence on this behavior.

Cognitive schemes

These refer to the structures that contain the mechanisms for encoding, storing and retrieving information. This includes memory, interpretation, perception and attention. That is, how you perceive something specific and how you interpret it.

Cognitive distortions

They are irrational thoughts that the person develops and maintains for a long time.. As time passes, thoughts strengthen until they become personal beliefs.

Since most of these thoughts began to develop during childhood, They remain unconscious in the person, exerting great influence on their way of being and thinking.. Therefore, she will need the help of a therapist to modify them and thus overcome the psychological disorder that afflicts her.

Some of the cognitive distortions defined by Beck were:

Dichotomous thinking: tendency to value events in polar extremes: good/bad, black/white, everything/nothing, etc.Overgeneralization: consists of extracting, without sufficient basis, a general conclusion from a particular fact.Magnification and minimization: tendency to exaggerate the negative aspects of a situation, an event or one’s own quality, and to minimize the positive.Selective abstraction: consists of focusing our attention on a single aspect or detail of the situation. In general, we tend to ignore the positive aspects, giving greater importance to the negative ones.Catastrophic vision: anticipate events and, among the different options, think that the worst will always happen.Culpability: tendency to attribute all responsibility for events to oneself, or to others, ignoring other factors that contribute to them.

Beliefs

For Beck, cognitive schemes are essentially composed of beliefs. We would say that they are maps that allow each individual to see the world, make sense of it, and build structures through experience.

In this case, Beck distinguishes between two types of beliefs:

Central or nuclear beliefs: They are absolute, lasting and global statements about oneself, others or the world. For example, “I am a sensitive person” or “I like women.” These are deeply rooted propositions, which is why they are difficult to change, they give a sense of identity and are idiosyncratic.Peripheral beliefs: They are more satellite and do not involve the central aspects of the personality, therefore they can be modified more easily. An example of them would be believing life always gives you a second chance.

Cognitive products

Beck refers to those thoughts that They result from the interaction with the information that a specific situation provides. Beliefs, schemas and the cognitive organization itself also interact in this case. That is, how the individual acts according to his way of being and seeing the world.

Automatic thoughts

These are maladaptive and negative cognitive products. In general terms, are the internal dialogues, thoughts or images that appear in a given situation; and people often consider them to be true, undistorted statements.

Its main features are:

They are evaluations referring to a specific situation.They are considered true, regardless of whether they are irrational or not..They are learned.They appear spontaneouslydramatizing and exaggerating the negative of the situation. They are not easy to detect or control, as they appear in the flow of internal dialogue.

Beck’s explanatory model of depression

Beck’s model aims to explain the origin of depression and highlight the influence of the type of information processing What we do in the appearance of this, beyond circumstantial events. You can see a diagram of this model below.

In the diagram you can see how cognitive schemeswhich we talked about before, act as seeds of depression. These schemes, which come into play due to the need imposed by stress, to work mentally quickly, would produce cognitive biases that would have a great influence on information processing.

Besides, It would be these biases that would ultimately configure a triple negative vision -with respect to oneself, with respect to the environment and with respect to the future- that would precipitate depression.

Cognitive triad: the basis of cognitive therapy

One of the central concepts of Beck’s theory is Cognitive triad. As the author describes: “consists of three main cognitive patterns that induce the patient to consider yourself, your future, and your experiences in an idiosyncratic way“.

Self-consideration. It consists of the negative view that the patient has of himself. Everything negative that happens to him he attributes to himself and, in this way, confirms his clumsiness and his inability to face life. The patient also underestimates himself, criticizes himself and feels worthless. He is convinced that he does not possess the necessary elements to achieve happiness.Your experiences. The patient tends to interpret what happens to him in a negative way. He thinks that the world only gives him obstacles that are impossible to overcome. Despite being able to interpret situations in a positive way, the patient tends to interpret everything in the worst possible way, almost as if the world is conspiring against him.The future. The patient’s view of his future is negative. Every project you undertake will think that it is destined to fail.

Difference between cognitive therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy

It is common to confuse both types of therapy, however, both are different.

In cognitive therapy The therapist and patient work together to understand and thus redirect erroneous and maladaptive thinking.. In this sense, the person’s behavior is modified to the extent that his or her beliefs are corrected.

For its part, Cognitive behavioral therapy encompasses many other techniques, including cognitive therapy, multimodal therapy, and rational-emotive therapy.. In this case, the therapist focuses on delving into the problem experienced by the…