Key Concepts of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

Cognitive is the way in which we filter and process information structurally in our brains. What we can do about it if we have filtered in an unhealthy way, and what we can do if we believe things are true when they are not true. Behaviourism is the way in which people can be conditioned to behave in a certain way over time. 

            Pavlov and classical conditioning. Russian physiologist who grew up in a monastery. He was supposed to become a priest, but later in the 1860’s science became very popular and Pavlov interest peaked. 

A very famous theory of his was Pavlov’s classical conditioning of dogs. He defined the unconditioned stimuli of dog food, created an unconditioned response of salivation in the dog. Pavlov noticed however that the dogs started to salivate at the sound of the dog handler’s footstep. He hypothesised that any event associated with the food triggered salivation in the dog, eventually this would be independent of the food being present or not. Naturally there should not be any correlation between salivation and footsteps, but the two stimuli would become linked together to produce a new response. 

An example of human classical conditioning can be seen in advertising. For example, perfume adverts associate their perfume with sex, which is a powerful appeal to most humans. So, after seeing the advert multiple times you will start to associate that perfume with sex. Skinner thought that he could explain all of human behaviour through classic conditioning. All learning happens through conditioned learning of the environment. 

Aaron Beck born in 1921 in Rhode Island. Beck believed that if he could help patients stop thinking negatively then he could treat the symptoms of those thoughts. This in a nutshell is cognitive behavioural therapy. CBT is how you think about yourself, the world and other people. Unlike some of the other talking therapies it focuses on the ‘here and now’ problems and difficulties. Instead of looking at the causes of the distress of symptoms in the past, for ways to improve the state of mind. It is not easy to change behaviour without changing the way we think about it. CBT assists you in making sense of overwhelming problems. CBT focusses on a situation, a problem, event or difficult situation.

The cognitive triad is a view of depression and how negative thoughts become automatic. Negative view of self (I’m stupid), negative view of world (people think I’m stupid), negative view of the future (This will never change). This triad was present in a person’s belief system with depression. 

Beck claimed that negative schemas developed during childhood – a negative schema could be from a traumatic experience such as bullying. E.g. if your mother would constantly bring up that she thought you were useless then eventually you would believe that. They make up the core of what we believe – even if they are untrue. 

Beck defined Illogical thinking and negative thoughts and feelings as cognitive distortions for example arbitrary interpretation. Which is the belief that any negative view you have of yourself you believe others think the same.