Is Distorted Thinking Hurting Your Relationships?

Usable Insights and Skills from Cognitive Therapy

According to the cognitive behavioral therapy(CBT) people, we all are vulnerable to distorted thinking that leads to unnecessary trouble and frustration in our relationships.

Fortunately, when it comes to dealing with distorted thinking in relationships, they have provided us with incredibly powerful and usable tools in some quite understandable forms.

They focus on things like -

• our assumptions about how things are "supposed to be"
• the meaning we place on what is said and done
• what we think we are capable of
• our predictions of what will happen next

Once your know a few terms and concepts from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy you'll be able to start putting in to work for you in your relationships.

Cognitive Psychology can be described as being about thinking. It deals with how we go about describing, understanding, and deciding how we will interact with the world around us.

For an especially clear, complete, and readable description ofthe cognitive behavioral perspective, I highly recommend the book Feeling Good by David Burns, MD, a student and later colleague of Aaron Beck.

The book is about the cognitive behavioral treatment of depression, but it is very easy to take the explanations, procedures, and worksheets and apply them to anything that involves thinking and feelings. You can get a copy very cheaply in a used bookstore, usually unmarked.


A few assumptions in CBT are especially worth noting here.

First, they believe that each individual's process is largely learned as a result of their experiences.

Second, at least some cognitive theorists believe that a big part of the learning process involves grouping kinds of experiences in terms of meaning and preferred response. George Miller, an pioneer of cognitive psychology at Harvard, named this "chunking".

Apparently, we have to do this because our brains have a limited ability to handle more than a few separate bits of information at a time. And, it works . . . . with a few potential problems -

• Were the right lessons learned from the experience when it was programmed in? (Since it has been estimated that half of this kind of thing is in place by the time we are 5 years old, it seems likely that they were not.)
  
  
• Did the right experiences get put into the right groups? (Probably not for use as an adult for the same reason just mentioned.)
  
  
• Is the situation in front of me right now getting placed in the right group? (A lot of problems can be solved very quickly right at this point.)
  
  
• Would I be better served right now to get this process off of automatic? (In the case of relationships, it appears to me that the answer to this one is almost always YES.)

Not only has CBT proven to be very effective in doing this to help people experiencing depression, anxiety, and other emotional difficulties, but its tools and techniques have also proven to be very usable in becoming more effective in all parts of our lives.

Research in cognitive psychology has shown that there are predictable types of distorted thinking, (also referred to as thinking mistakes, misinterpretations, cognitive distortions, crooked thinking) that lead us into feeling bad not functioning as well as we could, especially when under stress.

Put these apparently universal vulnerabilities in how we think together with inaccurate information about a particular part of life, such as getting old or sex or how relationships are "sposed ta" work, and you have a recipe for trouble!

Thankfully, when we get good at becoming aware of facts we are mistaken about and which patterns of distorted thinking are tripping us up, it is well within our power to take corrective action. When we succeed at doing that, (whether on our own or with the help of a professional) we feel better and things work better.

Think straight and your feelings follow.

OK, so we tend to misinterpret. So not everything that we think to be true really is? . . . So what?

Here comes the exciting twist! It has been shown that by identifying the particular forms of distorted thinking that we are using and consciously getting our thinking straight, we can feel better and be more effective. Don't think like an old grump and, lo and behold, we start to not feel and act like an old grump.


Sound like pop psychology or maybe an old wive's tale about the value of standing up straight and getting out of the house to feel better?

• Well, in the first place, in the words of the Peanuts cartoon character Linus van Pelt "Some of those old wives were pretty sharp".
  
  

• And, in the second place, since when does something have to be complicated and nearly impossible to understand to be useful? Cognitive therapies are supported by a very large, and increasing, body of scientific studies. It works!

Like most simple solutions to complex problems, actually doing this isn't necessarily easy, but it definitely can be done. Just be careful not to set an unrealistic time table and don't rule out seeking expert help if you get stuck.

Helpful books on using CBT techniques

There is a 1988 book written by the man who has been called the father of cognitive therapy for his groundbreaking work applying the principles of cognitive psychology to depression and later to anxiety that is a top-of-the-list read if this approach attracts you. Drawing on his experience a Director of the the Center for Cognitive Therapy and the University of Pennsylvania, Aaron T. Beck, MD, wrote Love Is Never Enough: How couples can overcome misunderstandings, resolve conflicts, and solve relationship problems through cognitive therapy. showing how to apply principles and techniques of cognitive behavioral therapy to identify and alter distorted thinking that is harmful to relationships in a very understandable, usable way.

Anything written by Albert Ellis on the topic of Rational Emotive Therapy can be quite helpful.

Also, for more recent books that do an excellent job on explaining this approach and giving workable ways of handling distorted thinking and keeping it from sabotaging us, see the already mentioned "Feeling Good" ( which is about depression, but is very useful for any application of CBT ) or anything else written by David Burns. He was trained by and worked with Beck and is more readable without giving up scientific accuracy.

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