Cognitive Therapy suggests "self-explanation" (no. 7) as a method for disputing irrational, core beliefs.

I understand what this means finally. Case in point...

One core personality bit that I'm trying to change is the way I interpret disagreements or teasing from other people. I had a conversation with someone last night that spurred me to feel very negative, and it was my internalized, habitualized belief that was causing the tension.

So, in my self-programming this morning, I vented in a methodological way. I explicated how, despite how I've been trying to accustom myself to haughty people, disagreements and criticism still viciously irritate me. I wrote in my diary all the emotions I felt, such as weakness, inferiority, and subservience.

By describing and laying out my core feelings, I could then re-framed my self-programming in such a way to accommodates those emotional qualms.

One re-framing was to change the terms from being "other-oriented" to being "me-oriented." I kept feeling subservient because I felt I was changing for other people's sake. Instead, I re-framed my self-improvement into a selfish activity: "I am changing for myself, my own benefit, not others. Ultimately, I bear the costs for being intolerant to other people"

A second re-framing was from "fixing my flaws" to "strengthening myself." Changing myself socially to meet other people's standards while others are not doing the same to me makes me feel like I'm a lame animal, trying to recover from my flaws. Therefore, I re-frame self-change as me bettering myself, not fixing a flaw. To help convince me that this was the right perspective, I reminded myself that I do have an inferiority complex. This complex creates a bias that makes me view myself in the harshest lights.

So by venting oven the belief, and why I still hold onto it, I was able to respond better to myself, and thus self-program more effectively.