ABSTRACT
Once clients have elicited their NATS and understood the differences between situations, thoughts and feelings, they are now ready to examine their NATS in various ways in order to develop more helpful and adaptive responses to them (see Points 50-62). Beck et al. state that ‘the therapist’s major task is to help the patient think of reasonable responses to his negative cognitions . . . to differentiate between a realistic accounting of events and an accounting distorted by idiosyncratic meanings’ (1979: 164). As we have seen in the section on detecting NATS, idiosyncratic meaning (e.g. ‘My life is over’) can make dealing with an objectively unpleasant situation (e.g. losing one’s job after twenty years with the same company) much more difficult (e.g. the client says he feels ‘overwhelmed with sadness and despair’). Encouraging clients to look at the situation in more realistic ways reduces the intensity of their distressing feelings (e.g. ‘My life with that company is over and I still feel upset about it, but not to the same extent as I did. I realize that my life still has new possibilities and opportunities if I want to seek them out’). In order to achieve this outcome, clients are taught to regard their NATS as hypotheses about themselves, others and the world so that they can be tested and evaluated (see Point 11). If a client’s NATS are realistic (e.g. ‘I have no friends’), then ways to tackle this situation would be developed.
