Cognitive Behavioural Therapy dictates that what we feel is a product of your thinking. Depression and anxiety are therefore a consequence of negative thinking.
Free Association was a therapy technique of psychoanalysis. It encouraged people to express whatever came to mind without the usual mental censorship. Eventually the analysis could see the patterns of thinking, obsessions, and resistances that the analysand struggled with. When they were explored together the analysand could root out what were usually once useful thoughts but had outlived their value.
I have shared my own thoughts as a ‘writer’s journal’. This was the teaching of Julia Cameron in Artist’s Way. She recommended writer’s daily do ‘morning pages’ to free up their creativity.
“Journalling’ is a recognized therapy technique to help people in my words ’squeeze the pus out of their brains’. When I journal in the morning I record those things that are uppermost in my mind. In this way I tell my mind that I have acknowledged its concerns and recorded those matters most important to it. And just as when I make a list I don’t have to keep returning to remember it but can get on with other things till I need to review the list again, so with journalling I can quiet my mind. My mind no longer has to repeat the same concerns.
Fear and resentment are the major negative emotions and daily these primal emotions are triggered by recurrent negative thoughts.
Mostly fear and resentment resolve around security or money. Next they’re a response to interference with ambition or expectation. Something blocks our mental plan or interferes with our intention. Finally fear and resentment revolve around status, how we see ourselves in relationship to other, all the issues that are involved with shame.
Cognitive distortions are recurrent negative patterns of thinking like ‘catastrophizing’, jumping to conclusions and believing the worst. Black and white thinking is the ignoring of the possibilities of grey. Such binary thinking leads to paranoia and persecution delusions. Grandiose thinking is believing it’s all about you when it fact the play might not even have you as a lead. Not every theatre has you as the lead.
Logic is the study of thinking and the basis of philosophy. Rhetoric is the study of ‘sales’ thinking and politicking. Logic endeavours to reach the ‘truth’ whereas rhetoric endeavours to manipulate and ‘win arguments’. The fallacies are well recognized false arguments.
The one I notice most these days is the ‘ad hominem. When I say Justin Trudeau needs to be randomly drug tested others respond attempt to ‘kill the messenger’ and attack the arguer rather than address the thesis. Hence the standard ‘Facebook’ argument, “you’re an asshole to question Justin Trudeau’. This may be true but it’s quite irrelevant and ‘begging the question’.
Sadly most advertising a series of ‘fallacies’. Laboissiere teaches fallacy and sadly given the marketing and political nature of the world today it’s a topic that should be the basis of grade school just as scientific method should be taught that early. However the profound ignorance in the Canadian population reflects the propagandistic nature of the school system which fails to teach children ‘how to think’ by instead teaching them ‘what to think’.
Cognitive behavioural therapy with it’s tools of psychoeducation and logic includes journalling especially free association journalling as a means to allow us to review alone or with another what exactly is going on in our minds. If we can see and understand that then we can root out negative memes that are no longer useful or simply correct the fallacies and cognitive distortions that make life less joyful.
St. Paul taught us to ‘pray unceasingly’. My psychiatrist minister friend Dr. Willi Gutowski used to described the brain as a ‘radio’ which picked up all manner of stray frequencies from the world around us. He recommended taking two hands and turning the dial to the ‘god channel’ and holding it there.
Practicing the ‘presence of the Lord’ requires one to focus on being in the now. God is Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnipotential so to know God and all Joy is to be in the present. As my army friend used to tell me when I talked to him, “Bill you have one foot in the future and one foot in the past and you’re pissing and shitting on the day. Get your head in the same room as your ass is.”
Mostly our mind is ranging out into the past where we have resentments or ranging out into the future where we have fears. Meditation is a means of focusing on the present. Mindfulness meditation as taught by Buddha is the means where by we see the thoughts as ‘creatures’. One identifies with the Self of Kohut’s “Self Psychology’. This has also been called the ‘Observer’. C.S. Lewis, the great Christian philosopher encouranged us to join with God and see that God was permanent and infinite and all else was finite and transient. This expression ‘this too shall pass’ refers to all but the essence of the flow, i.e. God.
Emmett Fox, author of Sermon on the Mount teaches that as we address the thinking disease we will find the underlying ‘spiritual laws’ of creation and be better able to live by them.
Selfishness and self centeredness is closed minded and fear based. It’s all the response to hurt. A child is like a fool all trusting until it learns from trial and error the dangers of the world around it. These leads to ruts of thinking, behaviour and attitudes. These had a value at the time and may be held onto for that very survival aspect but later may indeed impede further learning.
Showing posts with label logic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label logic. Show all posts
Sunday, April 24, 2016
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
B.F. Skinner developed the 'behavioural therapy', essentially programming animals with reward mechanisms. It wasn't original but he systematized it and popularized it and made this ancient 'training' and 'educating' mechanism scientific so that it could be 'programmed'. Rats and maizes and all that sort of stuff was shown to be made up of little building blocks. Many clinical applications followed.
Pavlov's dogs, 'conditioned' by being giving meat on the sound of a bell, salivated thereafter when they heard the bell.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy followed showing that 'cognitions' programed behaviour. No surprise. If I think I'm going to fail at a task and say to myself, "you're a failure, you're a failure", I'm more likely to fail. Like the 'little engine who can' subjects in experiments were told to change their 'self talk' and surprise surprise the outcome was scientifically significantly altered.
Insight therapy for example, psychoanalysis, delved into the past to see what was causing present day limitations, whereas Cognitive Behavioural Therapy focussed principally on the present.
It is in fact an "educational" form of therapy and lends itself to group instruction, reproduction and work book materials.
Feeling Good was the 1980 classic in the new "Mood Therapy" written by Burns who was a student of the greatest Cognitive Behaviour Therapist of the day, Dr. Beck. His "Beck Depression Scale" remains today as a standard Cognitive Behavioural Therapy tool.
Patients, or clients, like students, are encouraged to record their 'thinking', what are they 'actively thinking about a problem .
eg. "No one likes me."
Then the person is encouraged to write the 'cognitive error' ie this is a Generalization. Whenever a person thinks "no one likes me" they are indeed encouraged to respond to their inner Cognitive errors 'that is a 'Generalization", some people don't like me, some people do."
Psychology , a relative new kid on the block, tends to forever 'rename' things and claim them. It's a very 'plagiaristic pseudoscience' at this level.
The original "cognitive errors' or 'cognitive disonance' or 'negative programming' was best described years ago in philosophy under the heading, "Fallacies".
Most of the cognitive errors which are popularly called with 'neat memorable psychology labels' were rigorously defined and given the proper labels of 'illogical' thinking. Indeed Cognitive Behavoural Therapy in it's own way attempts to encourage 'logical thinking'.
Much of the understanding and communications used in teaching Cognitive Behavioural Therapy were originally developped in Theology and Philosophy and now are renamed and over taken by psychology.
Michael LaBoisiere, (42 Fallacies) a French philosopher has, to my mind, made the Fallacies most understandable. Listening to patients for decades I've noted the 'illogical' thinking and the 'emotionally reasoning' and simply ticked off the 'fallacies' the patients use much as Laboissiere describes. Burns has in his classic popularizing book Feeling Good listed a few of these cognitive errors like 'catastrophising' , "the world is going to end".
The fallacie of catastrophising is taking a single event and assuming that one event represents the whole and because it's a negative event assuming that the future will be negative.
Affirmations are 'thought blocking' techniques that go back thousands of years in pastoral care and theological literature.
Patients are advised to say "All shall be well" rather than "I"m going to die, I'm going to die." Since the panic thought leads the body to accelerated heart rate hyperventialiation and blacking out it's fairly maladaptive. So by 'blocking' the negative thought with the affirmation 'all shall be well' one breaks up the negative behavioural program by changing cognition.
The term 'emotional reasoning' can be understood by considering the statement 'It feels good so it is good." Translate this to "it looks good so it is good" and you have a person who would pick up a 'red' coloured insect without realizing that 'red' is often the symbol for deadly.
Ad hominen means 'against the man'. The cognitive distortion would be to say, "I can't believe what John told me about physics because John isn't married". Commonly people have this kind of bizarre thinking.
Generalizations are fallacious and cognitive distortions can occur. Eg. My mother told me I could trust her brother but he sexually abused me, therefore everything my mother says is false." This isn't true and therefore based on this one 'event' patient generalizes that what their mother told them about the existence of gravity is also false. Not true.
Alot of the problems with distorted thinking can be found in the media presentation of stories, marketting and advertising. Clinton was not a poor president because he had sex with Monica. However, since he had a contractual relationship with his wife called marriage and a duty to his children as father and as a president he had a responsibility to follow contracts and a duty to the country. When questioned by Star as to whether or not he had sexual relations with Monica he could reasonably have answered "I didn't commit adultery". Biblically, technically, oral sex is not mentioned and adultery laws most clearly are related to knowing who the father is in patriarchal societies. However when he answered he 'did not have sexual relationships with Monica", he either 'lied under oath' thereby forfeiting his responsibility to the american people or he didn't know that what he was doing was deemed 'sexual' whereby he'd be a complete idiot and not worthy or safe to be President. The media coverage of this pivotal moment in history was however mostly at the level of a lot of rather stupid media coverage, crass and sexual. We can't have good media with so many perverted mental midgets being allowed to speak on tv. However the vast majority who watch mainstream media aren't themselves that swift. Most media is marketed to the majority who are under the college level. Hence the stupidity of mainstream media and the continuation of the insaniety for which CBT is needed to address.
Eg. I loved him so I killed myself.
Love does not beget suicide, only narcissism begets this kind of adolescent suicidal behaviour. Yet Hollywood continues to celebrate it's suicides and continues to support the cognitive disorder that love is destructive when theoretically at least love is considered love because it's life enhancing.
Schizophrenia per se is often associated with flipping the pronowns which we call 'projection'. In cognitive behaviour therapy we encourage people to use "I " statement. "I don't like you" rather than "You don't like me".
Pavlov's dogs, 'conditioned' by being giving meat on the sound of a bell, salivated thereafter when they heard the bell.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy followed showing that 'cognitions' programed behaviour. No surprise. If I think I'm going to fail at a task and say to myself, "you're a failure, you're a failure", I'm more likely to fail. Like the 'little engine who can' subjects in experiments were told to change their 'self talk' and surprise surprise the outcome was scientifically significantly altered.
Insight therapy for example, psychoanalysis, delved into the past to see what was causing present day limitations, whereas Cognitive Behavioural Therapy focussed principally on the present.
It is in fact an "educational" form of therapy and lends itself to group instruction, reproduction and work book materials.
Feeling Good was the 1980 classic in the new "Mood Therapy" written by Burns who was a student of the greatest Cognitive Behaviour Therapist of the day, Dr. Beck. His "Beck Depression Scale" remains today as a standard Cognitive Behavioural Therapy tool.
Patients, or clients, like students, are encouraged to record their 'thinking', what are they 'actively thinking about a problem .
eg. "No one likes me."
Then the person is encouraged to write the 'cognitive error' ie this is a Generalization. Whenever a person thinks "no one likes me" they are indeed encouraged to respond to their inner Cognitive errors 'that is a 'Generalization", some people don't like me, some people do."
Psychology , a relative new kid on the block, tends to forever 'rename' things and claim them. It's a very 'plagiaristic pseudoscience' at this level.
The original "cognitive errors' or 'cognitive disonance' or 'negative programming' was best described years ago in philosophy under the heading, "Fallacies".
Most of the cognitive errors which are popularly called with 'neat memorable psychology labels' were rigorously defined and given the proper labels of 'illogical' thinking. Indeed Cognitive Behavoural Therapy in it's own way attempts to encourage 'logical thinking'.
Much of the understanding and communications used in teaching Cognitive Behavioural Therapy were originally developped in Theology and Philosophy and now are renamed and over taken by psychology.
Michael LaBoisiere, (42 Fallacies) a French philosopher has, to my mind, made the Fallacies most understandable. Listening to patients for decades I've noted the 'illogical' thinking and the 'emotionally reasoning' and simply ticked off the 'fallacies' the patients use much as Laboissiere describes. Burns has in his classic popularizing book Feeling Good listed a few of these cognitive errors like 'catastrophising' , "the world is going to end".
The fallacie of catastrophising is taking a single event and assuming that one event represents the whole and because it's a negative event assuming that the future will be negative.
Affirmations are 'thought blocking' techniques that go back thousands of years in pastoral care and theological literature.
Patients are advised to say "All shall be well" rather than "I"m going to die, I'm going to die." Since the panic thought leads the body to accelerated heart rate hyperventialiation and blacking out it's fairly maladaptive. So by 'blocking' the negative thought with the affirmation 'all shall be well' one breaks up the negative behavioural program by changing cognition.
The term 'emotional reasoning' can be understood by considering the statement 'It feels good so it is good." Translate this to "it looks good so it is good" and you have a person who would pick up a 'red' coloured insect without realizing that 'red' is often the symbol for deadly.
Ad hominen means 'against the man'. The cognitive distortion would be to say, "I can't believe what John told me about physics because John isn't married". Commonly people have this kind of bizarre thinking.
Generalizations are fallacious and cognitive distortions can occur. Eg. My mother told me I could trust her brother but he sexually abused me, therefore everything my mother says is false." This isn't true and therefore based on this one 'event' patient generalizes that what their mother told them about the existence of gravity is also false. Not true.
Alot of the problems with distorted thinking can be found in the media presentation of stories, marketting and advertising. Clinton was not a poor president because he had sex with Monica. However, since he had a contractual relationship with his wife called marriage and a duty to his children as father and as a president he had a responsibility to follow contracts and a duty to the country. When questioned by Star as to whether or not he had sexual relations with Monica he could reasonably have answered "I didn't commit adultery". Biblically, technically, oral sex is not mentioned and adultery laws most clearly are related to knowing who the father is in patriarchal societies. However when he answered he 'did not have sexual relationships with Monica", he either 'lied under oath' thereby forfeiting his responsibility to the american people or he didn't know that what he was doing was deemed 'sexual' whereby he'd be a complete idiot and not worthy or safe to be President. The media coverage of this pivotal moment in history was however mostly at the level of a lot of rather stupid media coverage, crass and sexual. We can't have good media with so many perverted mental midgets being allowed to speak on tv. However the vast majority who watch mainstream media aren't themselves that swift. Most media is marketed to the majority who are under the college level. Hence the stupidity of mainstream media and the continuation of the insaniety for which CBT is needed to address.
Eg. I loved him so I killed myself.
Love does not beget suicide, only narcissism begets this kind of adolescent suicidal behaviour. Yet Hollywood continues to celebrate it's suicides and continues to support the cognitive disorder that love is destructive when theoretically at least love is considered love because it's life enhancing.
Schizophrenia per se is often associated with flipping the pronowns which we call 'projection'. In cognitive behaviour therapy we encourage people to use "I " statement. "I don't like you" rather than "You don't like me".
Friday, October 31, 2014
Emotional Reasoning
Emotional Reasoning is the reasoning of psychopaths and sociopaths. Because “I feel” it is true, it is “true”. Psychotics collectively respond to ‘emotional reasoning’.
“I knew she loved me so I forced to have sex with me so she would feel for me the way I felt for her."
“I heard the anguish in her story so she must be telling the truth”.
“No one would share such a heart wrenching story without it being true."
Emotional reasoning is the new “if it ‘feels’ right,” it is right. In the age of rationalism people said “I think I should kill you so I’m right to kill you” . Today in the age of emotionalism people say, “I feel I should kill you so I’m right to kill you”. The media sells by taking advantage of peoples emotions. Every day there’s a dying child, a new war zone, the latest rape victim, another spotted owl going missing, the temperature going up or down, a volcano or an avalanche. They sell ‘emotion’ the way Hitler and Stalin before them sold “ideas’.
But hey, who am I to question insanity, “If it feels good, do it”. “You’ve got to be right because ‘it feels right’.
Personally I know why people have difficulty believing in evolution . Evolution implies ‘forward motion’. The media’s fear mongering and playing on emotions of citizens en mass for personal profit presents far more evidence of ‘devolution’. Emotionalism is such evidence. Cavemen and cave women and especially cannibals loved the logic of emotionalism. Rationalism was a higher level of discussion. Rationalists at least questioned whether eating your neighbour was ‘healthy’ but emotionalists merely depend on ‘group think’. The more mass appeal, the greater the sense of emotional rectitude.
Indeed, Hitler was likely the one to first develop emotionalism as the weapon. The bully always uses 'emotional reasoning'.
“I knew she loved me so I forced to have sex with me so she would feel for me the way I felt for her."
“I heard the anguish in her story so she must be telling the truth”.
“No one would share such a heart wrenching story without it being true."
Emotional reasoning is the new “if it ‘feels’ right,” it is right. In the age of rationalism people said “I think I should kill you so I’m right to kill you” . Today in the age of emotionalism people say, “I feel I should kill you so I’m right to kill you”. The media sells by taking advantage of peoples emotions. Every day there’s a dying child, a new war zone, the latest rape victim, another spotted owl going missing, the temperature going up or down, a volcano or an avalanche. They sell ‘emotion’ the way Hitler and Stalin before them sold “ideas’.
But hey, who am I to question insanity, “If it feels good, do it”. “You’ve got to be right because ‘it feels right’.
Personally I know why people have difficulty believing in evolution . Evolution implies ‘forward motion’. The media’s fear mongering and playing on emotions of citizens en mass for personal profit presents far more evidence of ‘devolution’. Emotionalism is such evidence. Cavemen and cave women and especially cannibals loved the logic of emotionalism. Rationalism was a higher level of discussion. Rationalists at least questioned whether eating your neighbour was ‘healthy’ but emotionalists merely depend on ‘group think’. The more mass appeal, the greater the sense of emotional rectitude.
Indeed, Hitler was likely the one to first develop emotionalism as the weapon. The bully always uses 'emotional reasoning'.
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Ad Hominem - Against the Man
Ad Hominem - "against the man" , is perhaps the most famous, most common and diabolical of logical fallacies. A fallacy is a rhetorical 'argument' that is by nature seriously weak on logic and hence seriously lacking in validity and truth.
The following is an example of ad hominem.
Person 1 - "The world is round."
Person 2 - "That's not true. The world is flat. You only say it is round because you're a liar and a pedophile."
A person may be a liar and a pedophile but this may have no relevance to the discussion of the geographical nature of planet earth. Note that the 'respondent' has indeed given no 'evidence' to support his position that the world is not round.
The term 'toxic politics' has come into play to describe the present nature of the world political system as it devolves into tribalism and banality.
Some examples of ad hominem in present day politics:
"You don't believe in global warming and climate change because you're a Republican."
The term "unpack' is used to break down these complex argument which are indeed simply 'name calling'.
The term 'global warming' was initially used but then there was a recent identified period of global cooling. Therefore the new 'term' was 'climate change'. Everyone knows that climate change occurs even hourly or daily, so to accuse a person of 'not believing in climate change' is like accusing a person of not believing in weather.
Further 'to believe in climate change' carries with it an acceptance of a whole set of actions which may be as convoluted as answering a person who says, "You don't believe in Jesus Christ." I, personally, might believe in 'climate change' but be unwilling to accept that I should 'buy' your wind generator at exorbitant profit to you, underwritten by my own taxes, and sold by China as some sort of political economic terrorism. Further, I might not want to ride my bicycle to work in Canada or do a whole list of other things which follow my 'agreement' with you that there is weather. Further, though I may believe in Jesus Christ I might not want to become a celibate priest or give my lifesavings to your church.
I can believe something and not 'act' in a way, different from what you believe is the correct action associated with a particular belief.
Ad hominem couples and links 'beliefs' with 'actions' in a peculiar way. In the example above, a person may be a republican, which is a belief system, vaguely associated with Conservatives in Canada and Tory's in England. Having that belief does not mean that one shares the 'other' belief which is 'climate change'. Being a republican one can believe in 'climate change' but historically would not believe that the country should raise taxes to build a multi billion dollar freezer unit to stabilize climate and encourage American know how and engineering.
Today, 'toxic politics' is also historically what psychiatrists called the 'paranoid' position in the psychotic extreme.
In this regard "I'm okay; you're not" becomes 'I'm okay. I'm right. I'm God's representative on earth. I'm the future of man and woman kind, I'm the saviour of civilization. I'm the only one with the answer to everything, I'm the ONE, You are wrong. You are not okay. You are the devil. You are going destroy the planet, kill women and children, polute the galaxy, you don't have an answer for anything."
Shaming refers to 'ad hominem'. To shame is to say you are intrinsically a bad and evil person, not that you have a 'wrong idea' , or did a 'wrong thing'.
Ad hominem attributes "wrongness" or "rightness" to an intrinsic value such as your 'character', 'personality', 'race', 'sexual preference', 'religious affiliation' , 'colour of your skin', 'language', 'birth origin', 'genetics', 'nationality', 'culture' etc.
Rhetoric in arguments is a magician's hat trick. The idea is to 'distract' you from the issue at hand and emotionally move you into an area where your 'instincts' will confuse you. Rationally it's obvious that in the above example there is no logical association between whether the earth is round and whether you are a pedophile. However, the 'word' 'pedophile'; like most labels as an explosive device in an argument. This 'irrationality' moves the 'discussion' about "what" is right or wrong into 'who is right or wrong.
Women and now men do this today by suddenly stating."You don't love me?"
Of course the answer is 'fish fly.' Right?
The following is an example of ad hominem.
Person 1 - "The world is round."
Person 2 - "That's not true. The world is flat. You only say it is round because you're a liar and a pedophile."
A person may be a liar and a pedophile but this may have no relevance to the discussion of the geographical nature of planet earth. Note that the 'respondent' has indeed given no 'evidence' to support his position that the world is not round.
The term 'toxic politics' has come into play to describe the present nature of the world political system as it devolves into tribalism and banality.
Some examples of ad hominem in present day politics:
"You don't believe in global warming and climate change because you're a Republican."
The term "unpack' is used to break down these complex argument which are indeed simply 'name calling'.
The term 'global warming' was initially used but then there was a recent identified period of global cooling. Therefore the new 'term' was 'climate change'. Everyone knows that climate change occurs even hourly or daily, so to accuse a person of 'not believing in climate change' is like accusing a person of not believing in weather.
Further 'to believe in climate change' carries with it an acceptance of a whole set of actions which may be as convoluted as answering a person who says, "You don't believe in Jesus Christ." I, personally, might believe in 'climate change' but be unwilling to accept that I should 'buy' your wind generator at exorbitant profit to you, underwritten by my own taxes, and sold by China as some sort of political economic terrorism. Further, I might not want to ride my bicycle to work in Canada or do a whole list of other things which follow my 'agreement' with you that there is weather. Further, though I may believe in Jesus Christ I might not want to become a celibate priest or give my lifesavings to your church.
I can believe something and not 'act' in a way, different from what you believe is the correct action associated with a particular belief.
Ad hominem couples and links 'beliefs' with 'actions' in a peculiar way. In the example above, a person may be a republican, which is a belief system, vaguely associated with Conservatives in Canada and Tory's in England. Having that belief does not mean that one shares the 'other' belief which is 'climate change'. Being a republican one can believe in 'climate change' but historically would not believe that the country should raise taxes to build a multi billion dollar freezer unit to stabilize climate and encourage American know how and engineering.
Today, 'toxic politics' is also historically what psychiatrists called the 'paranoid' position in the psychotic extreme.
In this regard "I'm okay; you're not" becomes 'I'm okay. I'm right. I'm God's representative on earth. I'm the future of man and woman kind, I'm the saviour of civilization. I'm the only one with the answer to everything, I'm the ONE, You are wrong. You are not okay. You are the devil. You are going destroy the planet, kill women and children, polute the galaxy, you don't have an answer for anything."
Shaming refers to 'ad hominem'. To shame is to say you are intrinsically a bad and evil person, not that you have a 'wrong idea' , or did a 'wrong thing'.
Ad hominem attributes "wrongness" or "rightness" to an intrinsic value such as your 'character', 'personality', 'race', 'sexual preference', 'religious affiliation' , 'colour of your skin', 'language', 'birth origin', 'genetics', 'nationality', 'culture' etc.
Rhetoric in arguments is a magician's hat trick. The idea is to 'distract' you from the issue at hand and emotionally move you into an area where your 'instincts' will confuse you. Rationally it's obvious that in the above example there is no logical association between whether the earth is round and whether you are a pedophile. However, the 'word' 'pedophile'; like most labels as an explosive device in an argument. This 'irrationality' moves the 'discussion' about "what" is right or wrong into 'who is right or wrong.
Women and now men do this today by suddenly stating."You don't love me?"
Of course the answer is 'fish fly.' Right?
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