Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Dummies by Rob Willson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A Practical Toolkit for Living, Liking and Loving

I found this book insightful and learned a lot from it.

I will try to integrate what I learned into how I think and live my life.

The book is well-structured, well-written and easy to understand.

CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) argues that our thinking informs and shapes our behaviour, and that flaws in our thinking (often the product of poor self-esteem) can distort our behaviour.

This in turn has a detrimental effect on our self-esteem, which completes a vicious cycle of misguided behaviour.

The book argues that we can correct our behaviour by correcting our thinking.

If it has a defect, it is that it tends to be repetitious. However, this is a result of the stylistic choice to design and define an abstract toolkit, before applying it to specific issues and problems that we confront in real life.

The repetition therefore reinforces our understanding of the toolkit and our ability to apply it practically.

Valuable Advice

Any person who seeks to benefit from the CBT toolkit will probably have to dovetail it into a system of abstract core values that they might have developed over a long period of time.

This can be a barrier to the process.

The starting point of my personal and political philosophy is that we are individuals.

However, we form relationships with others in the personal, family, social, work and political spheres.

Our first duty and relationship is to our self.

However, we then enter into a zone or space between us and others.

In any of these zones, we can be nervous, cautious, earnest, serious, relaxed, rigid, flexible, spontaneous, playful, flirtatious, exuberant, private, open, careful, careless.

We assert, argue, persuade, charm, play, flirt, seduce, compromise, cooperate, agree, consummate, like, love, respect, value, care, nurture.

The nature of our relationships is not static. As we get to know somebody, our relationship can change, improve and loosen up.

For any relationship to become more relaxed and spontaneous, it needs to be built on the foundation of certainty. This can only come with some level of mutuality and confidence in the relationship.

The desire for certainty and spontaneity needs to be reciprocated. It's a two way street. It needs two people to be committed. It needs to be based on some shared desire or values.

The hard part is determining whether we share this desire and these values.

We can only find out by asking and talking about it. We can't find out by denying an arena for the discussion or failing to respond to questions.

In fact, when you cut off communication, you are making a strong case that there is no shared foundation.

Harmony and Me are Pretty Good Company

In the western world, we tend to approach our other relationships from the perspective of individualism.

Within the political framework of liberty, equality and fraternity, we tend to emphasise our individual freedom.

Unlike the East, we tend to downplay fraternity or what can also be described as harmony.

However, harmony is at the heart of our relationships with others.

CBT is concerned with the impact of these relationships on individuals.

However, it doesn't address the issues or problems in the political language of rights and obligations.

It examines them from an individual personal perspective.

It assumes that we act selfishly in our own self-interest.

Similarly, it assumes that others in our lives act in their own self-interest.

It doesn't assume that harmony is the natural order.

Instead, it assumes that we might act at cross-purposes, and that problems will arise when our self-interest pulls us in opposite directions.

That doesn't mean that other people actually dislike or hate us. They might just be totally neutral about us.

If they fail to like or love us, it doesn't mean that there is anything wrong with us. We just have to learn how to cope or deal with it.

The important thing is that we not undermine our own self-esteem, because somebody else fails to display respect, affection or love.

It's as Easy as A, B, C

CBT uses our intelligence, cognition or rationality to minimise or manage our emotional problems.

It recognises that many of our problems are caused by the way we draw inferences from circumstances or the behaviour of others.

It uses a simple A, B, C approach.

A is the circumstance or  behaviour that concerns us, while C is our emotional response to it.

B is the inference we draw from A. It causes our emotional response in C.

Almost inevitably, our self-esteem problems derive from the fact that we draw just one inference and it is the most negative.

So CBT's solution is simply to get us to logically draw additional inferences.

Just by virtue of having other options to explain A, we can minimise or manage the tendency to draw the most negative inference.

This solution has a simple appeal. However, it reflects a faith in rationality. In effect, it asks us to be more rational in how we deal with our emotions.

While I agree with this approach, to some, it must be paradoxical.

Reason and Emotion

My personal life challenge has been how to get reason and emotion to sit happily in the one person, how to let them work as a three-legged race, rather than always be at loggerheads.

I have been professionally trained in logic and analysis. I had to think of all of the possibilities, weigh them up dispassionately and facilitate a decision.

Note that I say that I had to facilitate a decision. The decision was usually not mine, it was a client's. I am in the business of giving advice; the client has to make the decision.

Good Judgement

Very early in my professional life, I realised that clients want you to make their decision easy for them. They want you to recommend a decision. Alternatively, they trust your advice enough to permit you to make the decision. They don't want to get a 20 page letter that goes "on the one hand, but on the other hand, so you decide".

What emerges from this professional context is two conflicting approaches: one is what we all know as "overthinking" or "analysis paralysis" (where we are paralysed by the available options) and the other is what I will call "the rush to judgement" or "cognitive bias" or "bounded rationality" (where we grow overconfident of our ability to draw the right inferences and make the right decision and we start taking shortcuts and rely solely on our gut reaction).

Both are destructive of relationships. However, the latter breeds an intellectual arrogance that is possibly more destructive of personal relationships than the former.

Bad Judgement

It's very easy to fall into a judgement trap: I trust my judgement, therefore by definition, I can't or don't or won't trust yours and therefore, guess what, I am right and you are wrong.

It takes a strong partner, perhaps an equally strong-willed person, to maintain this type of relationship, but then you simply end up with a head-butting competition. And what's the point of that? Why not just find a meek and mild and compliant partner who you can bully into submission?

Obviously, that's just as unrealistic and unfulfilling, so ultimately you have to get to a point where on some issues you can disagree without jeopardising your respect, affection or love.

How to Draw More Inferences

A really important message from CBT is the need to expand your inferences and avoid negativity.

I don't regard this ability as destructive of efficient decision-making.

In fact, I regard it as a power of perception that is not radically different from the literary or linguistic ability to seek and find multiple meanings and connotations, which is the foundation of punning and wordplay and flirtation.

However, I feel that the need to get the basic message out to as many people as possible in an easy to understand format means that everybody gets exactly the same advice, regardless of their personal or relationship circumstances.

Perhaps, this is simply saying that, if you want personal advice, you need to see and pay for a therapist, which is quite possibly the correct approach.

You Can't Behave by Yourself

Another reservation for me relates to how the book deals with the need for mutuality or reciprocity.

There is a tendency in CBT to assume that any relationship is solely a matter of how the one patient deals with A, the circumstances or behaviour of the rest of the world.

It expects the patient to act rationally, to be more realistic and less assertive or argumentative or angry.

However, in many cases, it is the dynamic of the relationship that needs to be analysed.

How Much Do You Want Me to Bend?

This is not an open ticket to blame the other person.

Quite the opposite: if we're trying to run a better three-legged race, perhaps we have to start with what binds us together.

By definition, a three-legged race involves some compromise and accommodation. We can't run the race the same way we would run it solo.

The question is what and how do we compromise.

The book seems to be written from an individualistic perspective. it is dictated by the desire to maximise an individual's self-esteem, which is fair enough, but I think we each have certain core values (openness, fairness, humour, flirtatiousness) that constitute our authentic self.

In a personal relationship, if you have to compromise those values, then there comes a point when you cease to be authentic to yourself and become insincere with the friend.

I'm not talking about shared taste in music or film or books or food. I'm reluctant to use the term "essence", but I can't think of a better one at the moment. The book refers to "core values", which is close, but it uses it in such a broad way that it encompasses the negative view that "I am bad".

I think that friendships and relationships are founded on shared ethics and values.

If we don't have them, we should look elsewhere, regardless of the short-term impact on self-esteem.

Looking Around the Bend

I felt that this book urged too many compromises and accommodations in the pursuit of valueless harmony and personal self-esteem.

We have to accept that sometimes the answer will be that the three-legged binding in a particular relationship cannot be repaired or will never work, and perhaps each of us needs to find another running partner.

Still, I think we have much to learn from the key message of CBT that, if we think differently, we will behave differently.

The A, B , C approach is a very practical way to start the journey.



COGNITIVE BEHAVIOURAL HAIKU (THE NICK CAVE SUITE)
(A loose haikufication of the lyrics of Nick Cave)


No Cognition

I've read dirty books,
Tomes on human behaviour,
Still I don't get love.


I Wanna Hold Your Hand

I held your hand but
You took it away from me
I don't hold it now.


The Letters

I still don't know why
You tore my letters apart,
With long-fingered hands.


I've Been Searching with a Heart of Cold

You always said that
I was your cold-hearted man.
I guess you were right.


SOUNDTRACK

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - "Nobody's Baby Now"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQNsSS...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7yq74...


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