Life has its ups and downs, and refusing to acknowledge personal loss, disappointment, frustration, resentment, and tears by focusing only on the positives is just as irrational as focusing only on the negatives. As a cognitive behavioral therapist, my focus is to help people process negative events and emotions, not bury them or turn a blind eye to them. My goal is to help clients come to terms with the vicissitudes of life and move on, not getting stuck in habits of negative thinking or mental traps, such as misplaced blame, catastrophizing, pinning nasty labels on oneself, or becoming resigned to expecting only negative outcomes.
Here's why cognitive behavioral therapy isn't just positive affirmations. Is CBT just positive thinking? I get this question a lot. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) helps people rethink negative thoughts and challenge negative beliefs.
But it doesn’t preach that we should just discard reality in favor of thinking positive thoughts all the time. Unless your thoughts match up with your life experiences, they will seem hollow and forced.
When bad things happen, we need to recognize and process them, not simply gloss over them in the face of a grimmer reality. If you lose someone close to you, it’s reasonable to experience a profound sense of loss. If you lose a bundle in the stock market, it’s understandable to be upset, perhaps even upset with yourself for making some uninformed investment decisions. These situations involve genuine emotions that are proportional to the situation at hand. Jumping for joy when true disappointment occurs is a form of
, not rational thinking. What about self-affirmations? Don’t they work? Occasional affirmations have a role to play in motivating us, as when a young man I was treating prepared for a
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Life has its ups and downs, and refusing to acknowledge personal loss, disappointment, frustration, resentment, and tears by focusing only on the positives is just as irrational as focusing only on the negatives. As a cognitive behavioral therapist, my focus is to help people process negative events and emotions, not bury them or turn a blind eye to them. My goal is to help clients come to terms with the vicissitudes of life and move on, not getting stuck in habits of negative thinking or mental traps, such as misplaced blame, catastrophizing, pinning nasty labels on oneself, or becoming resigned to expecting only negative outcomes.
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