Receptive Skepticism kind of takes cognitive restructuring for granted, but I have been shocked to have seen so little familiarity to it with most of the critical thinkers I have encountered so far. To make it easier I’ll call cognitive restructuring “emotion management”.
To allay any concerns, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is the discipline, or theoretical orientation from where emotion management derives, and is most of what CBT is about. Unlike psychoanalysis, for instance, emotion management was never made for just working in a clinical setting, and as a result is for life practice, and has been presented from the beginning as something people can do on their own, with guides being written for its self practice. A self-practice guide for Emotion Management actually was responsible for CBT’s rise as the gold standard of clinical therapy. It was made for being used in everyday living, by helping everyday thought processes to be more rational. It was never meant to be just used for one or two problems, or not be self-guided. The idea was to change one’s pattern of thinking to being more consistently rational. Emotion management is used to improve relationships, manage problems, and deal with life changes, all through holding oneself to better standards of rational discipline.
We don’t change emotions well by trying to fight them. Emotions are reactions to what we think is happening, and as long as we think something is happening, we will not escape the emotions from that belief. The ABCDE model covers the process for an emotion developing. First, an Action happens. Then we form a Belief about either what the action means, or what the result of the action means. That belief forms a Consequence, a reaction in the form of an emotion. But if you correct the belief, you change the emotion. The more rational the beliefs that you hold about the presenting situation, the more accurate your emotions about it become. If we find an irrational belief caused the emotion we don’t fight the emotion, that’s a lost cause, instead we strongly Dispute and then replace that belief. The Effect of replacing the belief causes the old emotion to end, and a new emotion to arise, based on more rational beliefs.
So emotion management is a prevention discipline. As you grow in skill with it, you pay attention to the original belief-forming process and make it more consistently rational, keeping the irrational beliefs from ever arising. When you find yourself faced with an emotion that is causing problems, an emotion management approach, using the ABCDE model is to identify the facets of the belief that cause the emotion. Often an emotion will come from one belief, which is a belief based on a layer cake of beliefs based on other beliefs that each need a good fact-check for being rational. Now in a therapy setting, this can help people through problems. But this was made for better overall functioning as a person, not just for treatment.
So it takes self-evaluation. Discovering the beliefs you hold that cause a misleading emotion to exist, takes figuring out what the beliefs you have formed to lead to that emotion. But beyond emotion, this process helps you better focus on the claims you are making about situations, and put them under better scrutiny, and serves to better filter out wrong conclusions. Make sure to check out this list of cognitive distortions to better find those beliefs, or at least stop new ones from being formed.
More resources on Emotion Management:
Feeling Good, The New Good Mood Therapy (It has a silly title, but is what popularized CBT and I found this free copy online.) If you see the previous link above that compares the parent, now REBT with CBT, you find this is also very likely to explain how CBT got back to REBT roots.
Feel free to contact me for any other resource suggestions, I am more than happy to help get additional resources to any reader.
Source: te