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25- Book- Cognitive therapy & the emotional disorders
Author : Aaron T. Beck
Note : 8/10
Year: 1976 (printed 1979)
Meridian
337 pages
After receiving ''self-help for your nerves'', I started ''Cognitive therapy'', a book I bought second hand, after reading its description and found it was still valid despite its age (1976).
After receiving ''self-help for your nerves'', I started ''Cognitive therapy'', a book I bought second hand, after reading its description and found it was still valid despite its age (1976).
I have the first edition with a different cover from the one I found online. I will replace the displayed photo after I'd taken a picture.
Within days, I finished the relatively long first two chapters, and starting this entry, because I know that I would never remember the details if I wait to finish my reading.
I chose bold to talk about the book itself, which is described and normal fonts for my own comments in drawing conclusions, or adding information that I have found elsewhere, or, for my testimony.
The book begins with an introduction by the author, explaining how emotional disorders attracted much attention and publicity in the years preceding publication. He also explains how each psychological therapy school (psychoanalysis, behavioral therapy, neuropsychiatry...) each formed an approach to these disorders and the consequent forms of therapies they developed...
In the first chapter, he explores how the patient faces the dilemma of choosing a therapist and explains the process of common sense and how each person uses it every day deal with various situations in life , categorizes and created rules of life and reactions to each stimulus.
The author details ways in which a faulty common sense can create difficulties, problems and emotional disorders, subject he continues in the second chapter where he focuses primarily on his discovery - as a therapist, of what he termed automatic thoughts.
He demonstrates, through cases of patients he treated, how he discovered this phenomenon; how he instructed his patients to reflect and identify their ''automatic thoughts'', mentioning in passing that he could'v named them ''autonomous thoughts'' because by their nature they arise independently, automatically and very quickly.
From these two chapters I can already understand that this discovery will develop into modern cognitive and behavioral therapy, and that the primary source behind the various forms of anxiety and phobias (from which I suffer) are those thoughts that result from bad associations in my past : cause/ situation= result = I have to act thusly.
The primary purpose of this reading is to me a self-analysis and self-therapy, until i am followed again - starting in May this year, and meanwhile forward in my understanding and make an additional part of work to heal my social phobias, and incidentally, other phobias in the process, if I can identify tools for them...
Updates 10 to 15/03 :
In the third chapter, Beck continues and specifies research between common sense and personal meanings that each person attaches to each event / stimulus and possible emotional reactions.
he details cognitive pathway resulting in sadness, euphoria and excitement, anxiety, and anger.
These emotions are the result of evaluations that can quickly operate rapidly, in all situations; our expectations, past experiences and possible outcomes are factors.
We evaluate possible additions or subtractions to our private domains constituted from our physical health, financial situation, relationships with others, etc.
The perception of danger, addition or subtraction create in us cognitions, these automatic thoughts mentioned above and which result in an emotional response.
As part of affective disorders and phobias, these reactions were disproportionate with the stimulus and appear totally illogical for a person who does not feel these emotions, because a sane person do not share the same underlying thoughts.
This is the case of social phobia from which I suffer: faced with situations that are difficult to me, I feel anxiety when other people have attached no personal meaning of ''danger'' and so they don't feel that anxiety.
Many other phobias cause me trouble, while people without them cannot fully understand; at least, this is not possible without empathy, putting yourself ''in my skin'' by imagining the stimulus and automatic thoughts to understand my emotions.
Follows the fourth chapter, focusing on the cognitive content of emotional disorders, with examples of erroneous and imaginary thoughts in the following disorders: depression, anxiety, phobia, paranoia, obsessions and compulsions, hysteria, psychosis. It defines the nature of cognitive impairment at the source of emotional disorders and different types of initial thoughts at the root of the unrest.
(And I have reached page 101 in 4 days of reading)
Update 28/03/2016 :
The fifth chapter is about thirty pages long ; it took me several days to read as I was very busy and took a short break in this reading. It focuses on the paradoxes of depression, following the usual development of depression with it's side effects of declining confidence and exacerbated self-criticism , the pessimism that it is often intrinsic and possible consequences in extreme cases of suicidal ideation.
Meanwhile, the author explores the notions of loss that depressive patients share at the source, a loss which may seem quite harmless for a person who does not suffer from depression, but when this illness develops, the patient attaches importance to survival in one or more objects he perceives the loss as huge and attained in his physical comfort, equipment etc.
During depression, one experience changes in the motivations ; we feel unmotivated, we lack energy and desire. Dreams and ideations are diminished, since often during depression, the patient's sleep drops in quality and quality, whilst the content of dreams reflect the lack of confidence that the person has of the future, through loss identification and imagery.
The author explains his clinical research with patients and control groups and how he found the faulty cognitions underlying depression.
to be continued...
Within days, I finished the relatively long first two chapters, and starting this entry, because I know that I would never remember the details if I wait to finish my reading.
I chose bold to talk about the book itself, which is described and normal fonts for my own comments in drawing conclusions, or adding information that I have found elsewhere, or, for my testimony.
The book begins with an introduction by the author, explaining how emotional disorders attracted much attention and publicity in the years preceding publication. He also explains how each psychological therapy school (psychoanalysis, behavioral therapy, neuropsychiatry...) each formed an approach to these disorders and the consequent forms of therapies they developed...
In the first chapter, he explores how the patient faces the dilemma of choosing a therapist and explains the process of common sense and how each person uses it every day deal with various situations in life , categorizes and created rules of life and reactions to each stimulus.
The author details ways in which a faulty common sense can create difficulties, problems and emotional disorders, subject he continues in the second chapter where he focuses primarily on his discovery - as a therapist, of what he termed automatic thoughts.
He demonstrates, through cases of patients he treated, how he discovered this phenomenon; how he instructed his patients to reflect and identify their ''automatic thoughts'', mentioning in passing that he could'v named them ''autonomous thoughts'' because by their nature they arise independently, automatically and very quickly.
From these two chapters I can already understand that this discovery will develop into modern cognitive and behavioral therapy, and that the primary source behind the various forms of anxiety and phobias (from which I suffer) are those thoughts that result from bad associations in my past : cause/ situation= result = I have to act thusly.
The primary purpose of this reading is to me a self-analysis and self-therapy, until i am followed again - starting in May this year, and meanwhile forward in my understanding and make an additional part of work to heal my social phobias, and incidentally, other phobias in the process, if I can identify tools for them...
Updates 10 to 15/03 :
In the third chapter, Beck continues and specifies research between common sense and personal meanings that each person attaches to each event / stimulus and possible emotional reactions.
he details cognitive pathway resulting in sadness, euphoria and excitement, anxiety, and anger.
These emotions are the result of evaluations that can quickly operate rapidly, in all situations; our expectations, past experiences and possible outcomes are factors.
We evaluate possible additions or subtractions to our private domains constituted from our physical health, financial situation, relationships with others, etc.
The perception of danger, addition or subtraction create in us cognitions, these automatic thoughts mentioned above and which result in an emotional response.
As part of affective disorders and phobias, these reactions were disproportionate with the stimulus and appear totally illogical for a person who does not feel these emotions, because a sane person do not share the same underlying thoughts.
This is the case of social phobia from which I suffer: faced with situations that are difficult to me, I feel anxiety when other people have attached no personal meaning of ''danger'' and so they don't feel that anxiety.
Many other phobias cause me trouble, while people without them cannot fully understand; at least, this is not possible without empathy, putting yourself ''in my skin'' by imagining the stimulus and automatic thoughts to understand my emotions.
Follows the fourth chapter, focusing on the cognitive content of emotional disorders, with examples of erroneous and imaginary thoughts in the following disorders: depression, anxiety, phobia, paranoia, obsessions and compulsions, hysteria, psychosis. It defines the nature of cognitive impairment at the source of emotional disorders and different types of initial thoughts at the root of the unrest.
(And I have reached page 101 in 4 days of reading)
Update 28/03/2016 :
The fifth chapter is about thirty pages long ; it took me several days to read as I was very busy and took a short break in this reading. It focuses on the paradoxes of depression, following the usual development of depression with it's side effects of declining confidence and exacerbated self-criticism , the pessimism that it is often intrinsic and possible consequences in extreme cases of suicidal ideation.
Meanwhile, the author explores the notions of loss that depressive patients share at the source, a loss which may seem quite harmless for a person who does not suffer from depression, but when this illness develops, the patient attaches importance to survival in one or more objects he perceives the loss as huge and attained in his physical comfort, equipment etc.
During depression, one experience changes in the motivations ; we feel unmotivated, we lack energy and desire. Dreams and ideations are diminished, since often during depression, the patient's sleep drops in quality and quality, whilst the content of dreams reflect the lack of confidence that the person has of the future, through loss identification and imagery.
The author explains his clinical research with patients and control groups and how he found the faulty cognitions underlying depression.
to be continued...
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