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Originally Posted by Onward2wards
Has anyone else discovered that there are very basic fundamental thinking errors, maybe made as far back as childhood, which spin off into more nuanced negative thinking later on in life? One of my big problems is I'm uncovering a sort of "fundamental nonassertiveness" effect. I'll read about a negative thought process, try to apply the insights myself, and realize I am just not standing up enough for my own self-chosen basic values and strongest drives when a negative thought casts doubt on them. It's like I don't have the self-trust and intrapsychic assertiveness to say, "I want to believe this, and that it is okay to believe this, because that would actually make me happy and confident and trigger better effort on my part". There's a lot of subtle "Maybe I don't deserve..." and "Maybe my best won't work..." stuff going on here that is getting confusing (especially since my family was big on encouraging persistence and self-confidence, to my recollection, qualities I feel I have lost a lot of). Not sure what is going on here, but it's getting annoying. Learned helplessness eroding psychological resilience maybe?
Self-directed CBT is working, but I feel there's a missing element to the technique I can't quite define. Any thoughts???
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Very good, then I guess you may have to address the secondary negative thoughts as well . . .
i.e. identify 'Maybe my best won't work' as a cognitive distortion and change the thought to something that helps you.
I experienced something similar to you and what helped me was to define the 'changed thought' as 'realistic' instead of simply 'positive', and to thus change my negative thoughts to thoughts that were primarily realistic. This got rid of the nagging thought that CBT was just a way of lying to myself with overly positive thoughts in order to make myself feel better.
I mention this as an example of eliminating a secondary negative thought arising from the CBT, which seems to be what's occuring in your example.
Maybe a similar change to your CBT process will help you. Whatever fits your personality or need.