Positive beliefs and negative beliefs in CBT

In everyday life, we often talk about believing and not believing in something. We can think of religious beliefs and sometimes we talk about limiting or negative beliefs.

Within cognitive psychology, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), the concept of beliefs is very important for understanding mental disorders. According to CBT, beliefs are understood as central to the cause and maintenance of suffering. But what are beliefs?

In the third edition of the famous book (which is great for an introduction to CBT) – Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Theory and Practice, by Judith Beck, we find the following definition:

“Core beliefs are our core ideas about ourselves, others and the world. Adaptive beliefs are realistic and functional and not extreme. Dysfunctional core beliefs are rigid and absolute, maintained by maladaptive processing of information” (Beck, p. 280).

Beliefs, therefore, are ideas that we have and believe. They can be negative or positive, adaptive or maladaptive. In the image below, we can see three negative and maladaptive beliefs that have been studied in CBT for many decades:

belief development

One question we might ask is why some people have and hold more negative beliefs than positive ones.

According to Judith Beck: “people begin to develop core beliefs from a very early age, influenced by their genetic predisposition, their interaction with significant others and the meaning they attribute to their experiences and circumstances” (Beck, p. 280).

3 negative beliefs

The beliefs of helplessness, unworthiness and lack of love, as we said above, have been extensively studied, for example, in depression. Patients with major depressive disorder tend to believe that they are incompetent (helplessness), that they are not worthy of love (lovelessness) and hold negative beliefs about themselves (I am worthless, worthless, bad, etc).

Modifying dysfunctional beliefs

At the beginning of therapy, just before working with dysfunctional beliefs, there is psychoeducation work on the cognitive model, on automatic thoughts and emotions, the situations in which thoughts appear and coping behaviors.

However, the work with changing beliefs is done as early as possible, after the initial phase of assessment and psychoeducation, as we know that changing (or decreasing the intensity and frequency) of beliefs brings a significant improvement in quality of life. Situations are interpreted through a more realistic and understanding look. Beliefs about the other, the world and the future, as well as self-assessment about oneself, become more adaptive and generate fewer difficult emotions.

Strengthening positive beliefs

The work of modifying beliefs can follow two paths: strengthening adaptive beliefs and weakening maladaptive beliefs. Strengthening positive beliefs includes strategies such as (according to Beck):

– identify positive data and draw useful conclusions about the experiences,

– identify the advantages of believing adaptive beliefs,

– point out the meaning of the positive data,

– use another person as a reference,

– use a board to collect evidence,

– induce images of current experiences and their history and

– act “as if”.

And to modify and weaken maladaptive beliefs:

– Socratic questioning,

– restructuring,

– behavioral experiments,

– stories, movies and metaphors,

🇧🇷 continuum cognitive,

– use of other people as a point of reference,

– self-exposure,

– dramatizations,

– historical tests,

– restructuring the meanings of early memories.

Conclusion

As we can see, there are many techniques for modifying beliefs. From the CBT perspective, in the cognitive model, beliefs are very important because they impact on the automatic thoughts we have, on our way of interpreting the world, the other, the future and ourselves, generating certain behaviors and attitudes (and not others). ).

By changing a negative, maladaptive belief, strengthening more positive beliefs, we will therefore be changing automatic thoughts, the behaviors that we will or will not do, as well as having a more realistic and adapted interpretive look at who we are, who other people are that we relate to, how the world is and how the future can be.

This is a super introductory text on the topic. Its objective is to inform about the concept of beliefs in CBT, understanding its importance and the inherent complexity of the work of modifying beliefs.

If you are going through a period of suffering and if you notice that your beliefs may be harming you, seek help from a psychology professional!

Questions, suggestions, comments, write below.

Reference

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