AUTHOR: Philosophistry TITLE: Extra Cognitive Therapy Method -- Substitutes DATE: 5:08 AM ----- BODY: In addition to the basic methods of cognitive therapy, I want to add "substitution" as another method.

"Substitution" is taking an irrational core belief, finding what utilities might be causing you to hold onto that belief, and discovering a new belief that provides a similar utility but is more useful to happiness.

For example, I have the core belief that "conflict should be avoided." This belief has caused me much pain by making me unnecessarily passive and unassertive. It has gotten to the point where I fall into dysphoria because I'm so concerned that my decisions will be met with the resistance and disapproval of others. The thing is, conflict is inevitable. All relationships cannot ever have perfectly matching interests, and so therefore it is expected that interests will be against each other, and someone will be hurt.

Telling myself that "it is okay that my actions hurt others" is difficult to swallow in some ways because avoiding conflict has been my way of being likeable and having friends.

So, in trying to undo the belief that I should avoid conflict, a substituted core belief would then be, "it is important to be nice." So while it is okay that my actions will hurt others, it is still important for me to be friendly and compassionate. If someone makes a request of me that is unreasonable, I can politely say no.

I came to understand the importance of substitution when I was initially undoing my conflict-avoidance belief. Initially, I started to be "conflict-seeking" and unnecessarily mean since all of a sudden it became okay to hurt others. This caused me problems, and almost made me want to revert back to "conflict-avoidance" until I decided to install a "be nice" imperative.

So changing core beliefs through cognitive therapy is like changing flat tires on a car. When you take off one tire, make sure you replace it with working spare tire so that you can keep on going about in good spirits.

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----- -------- AUTHOR: Philosophistry TITLE: Supression versus Repression DATE: 2:21 AM ----- BODY: I've never really been a fan of thought-control.

Take the stream-of-consciousness: words pop in there, start conversations, and eventually fade. My form of "thought-control" has usually been just to pop counter words in the conversation, or argue with myself. So for example, if I wanted to stop thinking about how much I hate someone, I'll usually try to argue myself out of it.

Other forms of thought-control are distracting yourself, which I have come to employ lately.

Others are just letting the conversations fade. The conversations fade ultimately in the end, but you can accelerate the fading by just not stoking the flames of the conversation.

A form of thought-control that I haven't had much success with is nipping the thought in the bud, before the words pop in there. I think I should do this because from what people tell me, they seem to do it well. Like if I explain my over-the-top worries to people, they tell me "don't think about it!" I usually balk at those suggestions and dodn't trust when people say that. I always write them off like, "maybe they just don't have these thoughts."

Yeah, I should try to inhibit thoughts from popping up in there that I don't need, like jealousy, comparing myself to other people, or rehearsing what I say to people.

See, before I used to harbor this fear of repression. I don't want to blame my education, but from TV shows and what little we learned in psychology classes, it seemed like repression would lead to really terrible effects for the user, like schizophrenia.

Really, I have no idea how repression works, and I think I let that bogeyman bother me.

Because there's a difference between repression and suppression. Suppression is more like not listening to interfering voices in your head, or in trying to distract yourself out of the thought, or trying not to think something. Repression is more like an extreme version of suppression, where you really try to squash a thought out of existence.

I tried recently to do some suppression, and basically I think it's safe to do so as long as you use a moderate touch. You keep on trying to withold yourself from a thought, but if after a reasonable effort, it bubbles up again, then you just have to let it speak and hopefully the conversation fizzles out or maybe it requires attention.

Eventually nature will out, so you can trust that if you try to suppress too hard, you'll get plenty of feedback that what you are experiencing is repression. Suppression usually takes a little bit of up front effort, but once it's done, you're usually thankful afterwards.

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----- -------- AUTHOR: Philosophistry TITLE: Can Cognitive Therapy change my tastes? DATE: 1:51 AM ----- BODY: Outside of marriage, one of the most committed relationships we have is with our tastes. By now, you've developed a stable set of tastes for certain genres of food, music, religion, and people. How do we acquire our tastes?

I want to know so I can understand how to change my current tastes.

I used to be a prolific web designer in the 90s, but then became on-and-off-again during college as my interests shifted into writing. Writing has yet to pay off, and so I'm going to return back to serious web design. Unfortunately, my return is met with some reluctance. Sure, I understand and still value the benefits that freelance web design entails: freedom, money, and technology. However, the actual task of preparing HTML and cooking Flash is no longer appealing in and of itself. As a result, my only motivations for freelance web design are the external rewards. This, for one, makes the part of the day that I spend working feel like "work" and not like "passion." Second, without a natural zest for picking up my web design tools, I am slower, less motivated, and my business suffers.

So, can I revert my tastes back to how they used to be in the 90s? I used to love the feel of HTML, the sense of satisfaction creating a complete interactive communication device (a website), and the gestalts of programming. Can I bring those back?

My first thought from Cognitive Therapy is to use the "cognitive spectrum" technique. Compare the target belief or task to something else in order to change the value that that object has. For example, to make web designing more attractive, I should try to imagine myself doing an activity that is a much worse alternative. Here we go.

Okay, I am bagging groceries at Whole Foods. A rich tarty lady gets mad at me for putting her tomatoes with her eggs and asks for separate bags for each one. I smile it off, but I get tense for the next 10 minutes, and then my manager says that I need to lighten up. And I do this everyday in the morning, and I have to wake up early. Or how about I'm doing data entry for a hospital. For 4 hours non-stop, I'm looking at a piece of paper while in a crappy fluorescent room, reading numbers, and punching them onto a screen, and it sucks, and I'm hungry, but it's not time to check-out yet


Hmm, this is weird, somehow I the negative vignette has the opposite effect. Because they are so laborious, I seem to want to do them more, to somehow dig in and experience pain. Not what I intended.

Also, I am scared to change my tastes. I'm afraid that I'll get sucked back into web design. That's what my heart says. My mind refutes though, "if I really want to do something other than web design, then I'll prioritize that. And I can't get "sucked in" to anything, since I pursue happiness with the fiber of my entire body."

Changing tastes and personalities is a weird process like that. How can you change the hand that changes? If I have a taste for something, how could I convince myself to change it, since my taste would interfere with my desire to change. Of course, once the change is over, that taste no longer has a hold over your desire to change, and is then moot. But the self doesn't really internalize that subtly and is stubborn to change.

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