The 17 best quotes from Aaron Beck

Aaron Beck, father of cognitive-behavioral therapy, left us thoughts worth remembering.

The phrases by Aaron Beck that we list in this article capture the fundamentals of his thinking on cognitive distortions, congruent thinking and their influence on different mood and personality disorders. In the 1960s, this American psychiatrist and professor made one of the most relevant contributions to current psychotherapy: he contributed to shaping Cognitive Therapy or Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT).

Among his many achievements, he stands out as the only psychiatrist to have published articles in both the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association. In fact, the latter considers him one of the 5 most influential psychotherapists of all time.

Specific, Aaron Beck’s quotes talk about how A targeted and successful restructuring of our cognitive schemes allows us to enjoy better mental health and greater emotional balance.. Furthermore, through this change in our schemas and our mental filters we can obtain qualities that we need to advance and survive, overcome our problems and learn with and from our partner.

The interpretation is what hurts, not the fact itself

“Cognitive therapy seeks to relieve psychological tensions by correcting misconceptions and self-signals. By correcting erroneous beliefs, we can end overreactions.”

His thinking, framed within cognitive therapy, is based on the idea that people suffer because of the particular interpretation they make of the events that happen to them, not because of the events themselves. That is to say, Most of our suffering would depend on the meaning and importance we give to what happens to us, not on what happens to us itself.

Beck believes that The psychotherapist must help the person identify their distorted beliefs as a prior and necessary step to modify them. Therefore, its objective is to know the cognitive schemes that the subject uses, in order to modify them and reduce their rigidity. This cognitive restructuring allows the person to change their way of interpreting and evaluating what happens to them on a subjective level.

His theory applied to couples

The way we interpret reality influences all areas of our lives. Therefore, These thoughts disturb and also affect the couple.both on an individual level and in the relationship itself.

“Spouses must cooperate, compromise and proceed with supportive decisions.”

Your book Love is not enough: how to overcome misunderstandings, resolve conflicts and face relationship problems can serve as a reference. In it he gives guidelines on how to instruct, from a cognitive perspective, the two members of the couple so that they can identify and transform these schemas.

“There are special qualities, such as commitment, sensitivity, generosity, consideration, loyalty, responsibility, reliability, that are determining factors for a happy relationship.”

The objective is for them to be able to identify these schemes that harm them and manage to find an alternative scheme to replace them. Only by being aware of this can the couple prosper and develop. These are one of Aaron Beck’s phrases that best explains it:

“Although love is a powerful incentive for husbands and wives to help and support each other, make each other happy, and create a family, it is not in itself the essence of the relationship, since it does not provide the personal qualities and aptitudes that “They are decisive to sustain it and make it grow.”

A model for and by depression

When he was a child, this psychiatrist suffered a serious illness that gave rise to many fears that he had to face.. This cognitive way of approaching his problems inspired him to develop his therapeutic theory years later. And specifically, he focused on depression.

“If our thinking becomes bogged down by distorted symbolic meanings, illogical reasoning, and erroneous interpretations, we become, indeed, blind and deaf.”

For him, The symptoms of depression begin with the activation of negative cognitive schemas and subsequent distortions. So profound was his study and articulation of depression that today one of the most commonly used instruments to measure its severity bears his name: the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). It was a very important contribution to psychiatry and psychology, because it became one of the most powerful alternatives to the psychoanalytic conceptualization of depression.

“If our thinking is simple and clear, we are better equipped to achieve our goals.”

To treat depression and other conditions, Beck proposes cognitive restructuring therapy; whose objective is that the patient is able to modify the models they use to interpret reality. That is why the subject’s lived situations and their assessment of the facts are addressed.

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Once their interpretation schemes are known, in therapy they are worked on to make them more flexible. Through this treatment, the patient sees himself and identifies more adaptive thinking models that are beneficial for his mental health.

Its application has been extended to other disorders

He also investigated the effectiveness of your Cognitive Therapy in a wide variety of other problems, such as anxiety, substance abuse and different personality disorders. This is one of Aaron Beck’s most clarifying and didactic phrases to understand his approach:

“As applied to substance abuse, the cognitive approach helps people to confront the problems that lead to emotional distress and to gain a broader perspective on their dependence on drugs for pleasure and/or relief of discomfort.” ”.

Regarding schizophrenia, his contribution was to consider that the dysfunctions of these patients were vulnerabilities. Therefore, he assumes that the professional’s job is to develop more realistic alternatives to his beliefs, delusions and hallucinations.

Starting point for your personal transformation

“There is more on the surface than what our eyes can see.”

Beck’s model can be taken as a basis to promote great personal change. On many occasions, although we cannot choose the contexts or the events that are going to happen to us, it is in our power to consciously intervene on that practically automatic interpretation that we make of what happens to us… and that sometimes harms us so much.

We can choose what to internalize and what not to internalize a given fact, stay with the positive or the negative… How our mind processes it and its impact will depend on it. Likewise, we will also choose how to act, that is, what our response will be.

Other quotes from Aaron Beck

This famous psychologist left us some other useful and thought-provoking statements. Let’s see some of them:

The strongest person is not the one who is making the most noise, he is the only one who can quietly direct the conversation towards defining and resolving the problems. If we stumble along without having a clear sense of where we are going or what What we do, we are doomed to hurt ourselves and others. Our mindset largely determines whether we will achieve our goals and enjoy life or even survive. The patients we work with over the years have allowed us to share with them their burden. Their pain and anguish were our motivation for developing the theories and techniques called “cognitive therapy.” Over time, the therapist becomes a role model for the patient—someone the patient can emulate when it comes to demonstrate consideration, tact, sensitivity and understanding in your own circle of intimates and friends. Clinicians are strongly encouraged to clarify that their role is not that of arbiter or judge, but rather that of an assistant or cooperative partner in personal evaluation, and that of a specialist in that evaluation process. Sometimes grandiose unmet expectations accumulate over time, and finally impose the dysphoric conclusion that great dreams will never come true. When trying to put oneself in the place of the patient (perhaps imagining that he has the same set of sensitivities, the same sense of helplessness and vulnerability), the therapist can understand him better. At the same time, he must be careful not to become so involved in the patient’s problems that he loses objectivity.

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Conclusions

All these phrases from Aaron Beck have a hopeful undertone. Many times we feel unable to find an alternative, more hopeful point of view, to give meaning to what happens to us. Thus, we do not realize that by being aware of how we interpret what happens to us, we can modulate the intensity of our suffering.