ABSTRACT
Educating clients about core beliefs (or schemas) serves as a prelude to modifying them. Core beliefs are usually formed in the light of early learning experiences. They can be both positive (e.g. ‘I’m likeable’) and negative (‘I’m unlikeable’); most people have both. Core beliefs process incoming information and thereby determine how we perceive events; in a sense, we can only see what the core belief allows us to. Dormant negative core beliefs are often activated and thereby pass into our awareness at times of emotional distress, such as a client who becomes depressed following the end of his marriage as he believes ‘I’m worthless without her’. With this belief dominant in his thinking, any information or experience that contradicts his schema is likely to be dismissed, distorted or overlooked; the client will more actively process information that confirms this belief. For example, the client is reluctant to accept any reassurances from his friends that he is still valued by them as this discrepant information would not ‘fit’ with his view of himself as worthless but, instead, focuses on information that would ‘fit’ with it: ‘If I’m still valued so much by them, why are they coming round to see me less and less since my wife left me? They are lying.’
