The cognitive model – Beliefs, automatic thoughts and emotions

Hello friends!

Today we are going to talk about the cognitive model in Cognitive Therapy, a model that is fundamental for understanding this approach to psychology. Despite its enormous theoretical and practical depth, the cognitive model is simple to understand. In short, we can say that we all have interpretations about the world and events and, therefore, it is not the events, facts or situations that cause problems or difficulties, but the way we interpret situations.

In Judith Beck’s book, Cognitive Therapy, Theory and Practice, we see a very interesting example. The author lists five possible reactions from supposed readers of the book. That is, when reading a book (being in front of new content), people can:

1) Think the book is excellent and will be of great use and feel enthusiasm

2) Thinking that the book is too simple and will not add anything and feeling disappointed

3) Feeling that the book is a waste of time and money and feeling bored

4) Thinking that the book has content and thinking, at the same time, that you will have to learn everything as quickly as you can and feeling anxious

5) Thinking that the book is difficult and thinking that you don’t have the intelligence to follow it and feel sadness

That is, the object, the book, is identical for all. But despite this objectivity of the content, each person will have a reaction, an interpretation and, consequently, will have emotional reactions and bodily sensations consistent with their way of thinking.

The author of the book, Judith Beck, then summarizes: “cognitive therapy is based on the cognitive model, which hypothesizes that people’s emotions and behaviors are influenced by their perception of events. It is not a situation per se that determines what people feel, but rather the way they interpret a situation.”

The cognitive model in clinical practice

The cognitive model, therefore, is fundamental for the professional performance of the psychologist with a cognitive or cognitive-behavioral approach. But before we show it in practice, it is important to understand that there is a hierarchy in this model:

1) Core beliefs

2) Intermediate beliefs (rules, attitudes, assumptions)

3) Automatic thoughts

4) Emotion

Core beliefs are usually unknown to the subject and consist of general, global, rigid and generalized ideas for hundreds of situations that the person experiences in their daily lives. The last example, above, of the subject who considered himself not very intelligent to understand the book could have a belief that he was not capable of understanding anything, that he was stupid, that he did not have enough intelligence to understand the author’s concepts.

Intermediate beliefs build on the core belief. The same reader who has the core belief that he is stupid may have the attitude that he hates being incompetent and a rule that he must try hard to overcome himself, or perhaps the reverse rule that it is no use trying since he cannot will not understand or memorize what is being said or read. In the rule we also find assumptions that can be useful (try harder) or dysfunctional (it’s no use trying).

In turn, core beliefs and intermediate beliefs (rules, attitudes, assumptions) give rise to automatic thoughts. What is curious is that often the subject who seeks therapy ends up being amazed by the fact of having these automatic thoughts. When the therapist helps him to listen to these thoughts and question them, confront them, contradict them, the patient starts to learn more about himself and starts to be able to understand and change.

According to the automatic thinking type, an emotion will appear and remain if the thought is sustained. As we saw in the first example, a thought generates a type of emotion. If the book is considered too simple, we are in for a disappointment. If the book is deemed too difficult, we get grief, and so on.

The path of therapy from the cognitive model

Bearing in mind the cognitive model, the experienced cognitive therapist will be able to address automatic thoughts in the sessions, relating them to intermediate beliefs or central beliefs according to the initial assessment of the patient and the moment in which the therapeutic process is.

Roughly speaking, we can say that the main goal of therapy is to modify fundamental beliefs, central beliefs that are dysfunctional and end up organizing the subject’s life, without perhaps being able to perceive exactly what is happening.

For example, if the person has the fundamental belief that he is stupid, he will end up managing to prove this fundamental belief in his experiences, insofar as he discards the experiences that prove his capacity and keeps only those that depreciate him.

I mean, if she manages to get a high grade on a test, she’ll think it’s luck or that the test was easy. Maybe compare yourself to someone else in the room who was even better. In any case, the high score is not changing the fundamental belief. If the grade were low, it would certainly be proof that you really don’t have any mental facility or intelligence.

Finally, with the therapeutic process of cognitive therapy, automatic thoughts are observed and a journey of self-knowledge begins in which the observation by the subject himself of how his beliefs are structuring his world and how healthy it is to question these basic beliefs and modify them for more functional beliefs, that is, more positive.

Conclusion

The cognitive model is a fundamental concept for theory and clinical practice within cognitive psychology. In summary, we can understand that there is a theoretical model that helps in practice and that comprises a hierarchy of cognitive functions that begins with core beliefs, passes through intermediate beliefs (or rules, attitudes, assumptions) and automatic thoughts to emotions and body sensations .

For cognitive therapy, it is not the phenomena in the world that are one way or another, but the way we interpret these phenomena that transform them into positive or negative, constructive or destructive facts.

I just remembered a story, to conclude, about two guys. One was a successful businessman, with a structured family, children and emotionally balanced. The other was a prisoner, arrested for drug dealing, addicted and emotionally unbalanced.

When they were asked why they had the life they had, they answered: “Also, with the father I had”.

It turns out that the two were brothers and therefore had the same father. While one used his father’s example to copy him and pursue a life of crime, the other rejected that experience and took a completely different path.

In any case, it is very interesting how the justification for each one’s life was given for the same reason: the relationship with the father. That is, it is not the fact (the relationship with the father) that determines what one thinks, feels or believes, but it is the interpretation of this relationship that makes each one follow a certain path.

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