Extra Cognitive Therapy Method -- Substitutes

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.

Can Cognitive Therapy change my tastes?

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.

Cognitive Therapy's "Self-explanation" (no. 7) method explained

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.

core beliefs (from Cognitive Therapy, Basics and Beyond)

I read some more of J.S. Beck's Cognitive Therapy: Basics and Beyond

In order to change your core beliefs, she suggests any of the following methods

1. Socratic argumentation - dispute the irrational belief as if you were on a debate team
2. Behavior experimentation - test the irrational belief in the real world, and see if it holds up
3. Cognitive Spectrum - ex. it hurts me when others tease me, but if I tell myself, "at least I can trust them" then it makes the teasing less hurtful
4. Role-play rational/emotional selves - play a back n' forth scenario between your mind (which is trying to change your belief) and your heart (which is trying to hold onto the older belief)
5. Using others as a reference point - look at others with your new belief, and derive inspiration from them
6. As if - pretend as if your core belief was changed, what would you then do?
7. Self-explanation - vent yourself, and then try to reframe or redesign your belief-changing approach to suit it
8. Metaphors/Fables - use simple lessons or aphorisms (like Aesop's Fables) to dispute your irrational core belief

Unhelpful core beliefs also generally fall into two categories:

A. unlovability - ex. "I'm never good enough", "people hate me", and "I'm different"
B. helplesness - ex. "You can't be happy" and "nothing has meaning"

How does the self-programmer deal with the command prompt that is the mind?

Ah, cognitive therapy... I think that may be the knowledge base I'm looking for with regard to self-programming.

Check out the table of contents of J.S.Beck's "Cognitive Therapy: Basics and Beyond"
ch6. identifying automatic thoughts.
ch7. identifying emotions.
ch8. evaluating automatic thoughts.
ch9. responding to automatic thoughts.
ch10. identifying and modifying intermediate beliefs.
ch11. core beliefs.

Cognitive Therapy started in the 60s and has now come of age as an equally effective alternative to pills in treating depression and anxiety disorders.

I see within Cognitive Therapy a wealth of information that the average person can use to kick their living up a notch: whether its intensifying the quality of relationships, reaching previously unfathomable heights of happiness, or seeking self-understanding.