
CBT and How our Thoughts Work
Have you thought about your thoughts
Our thoughts develop in our brains constantly, with sometimes no time for us to even think about them. Some of these thoughts are good, and others are negative thoughts that can be disturbing and need further assessment. Still, you need to be able to catch your thoughts before you can even think about assessing them.
If that sounds like a complex thing to do, do not worry, you are not alone. Most people have problems identifying their thoughts, separating them from their feelings, and evaluating them.
Dr Aron Beck, a renowned psychologist, explained this well in his cognitive behaviour model.
He called these thoughts our automatic thoughts ( they pop up in our heads automatically). These thoughts lead to us forming assumptions and feelings, which he called intermediate thoughts. The great thing that Dr beck picked out is that some of these thoughts, specifically those that are repetitive, are all linked to our core beliefs. And it is because of these you can find yourself trapped in a pattern of thoughts. Working with a therapist through cognitive behaviour therapy will guide you through your thought process. CBT can help you identify these negative automatic thoughts and develop more positive core beliefs that eventually give you more helpful positive thought patterns to help you cope with life events.
What Happens During Conflict
Have you ever thought about why we can get things wrong in conflict? The problem is our brain's capacity to process information when we are emotionally triggered is less than ideal for seeing through the conflict.
So, our brain capacity is called mentalizing power. Our ability to mentalize and analyse things can be significantly affected the higher our emotional flare is. The more our attachment to the subject of the conflict, the more we are emotionally irritated and the less our mentalizing ability becomes. In other words, we can't think right.
To settle ourselves into a better mentalizing ability, start recognizing our emotions and exploring them. Once you become more self-aware and be able to express your emotion well, simply being able to set feeling apart from the situation can make things get clearer and get the person to preserve what is really going on, usually getting to a better outcome because we can start mentalizing again. You power to resolve things and your organised brain capacity is back.
Counselling can help guide a person become more self-aware of their emotions and able to recognise a healthier way to deal with conflict.
What do Couples Sometimes Get Wrong
The most common reason a couple can fall apart is miscommunication. Research done by Dr John Gottman, a renowned psychologist and researcher in the field of coupe therapy, has found that the most common problems of couples not being able to connect is them not turning towards each other, not looking out to the small things that happen daily that couples use to reach out to each other at times. While otherwise facing each other with contempt, stonewalling, criticism, and defensiveness. Once couples learn to overcome these four hurdles and communicate effectively, they can resolve most of their conflicts.
Couple therapy using the Gottman technique uses scientific evidence to support its approach t solving problems. Knowing what works well from the data can get couples back on track and help them learn a lot more about each other that they otherwise would not have learnt if they didn’t communicate.
Communication is key to couples getting closer. Once they know what is happening within each other, couples tend to get closer together, and they can work together on resolving conflict, or as Dr John Gottman calls it, understanding the dream within conflict.