ABSTRACT
Epictetus’s famous dictum, ‘People are disturbed not by things, but by the views they take of them’, has been put forward as a saying that describes in a nutshell the role of cognition in the emotional disorders. In the ABC framework, that most CBT therapists use, ‘B’ describes the cognitions that we hold about the adversity at ‘A’ that explain our responses to that adversity at ‘C’. As I explained in Chapter 3 , different approaches to CBT have different views about the nature and importance of ‘B’ in accounting for and treatment of psychological disturbance. In CBT approaches which take the view that problematic cognitions or meanings explain such disturbances and need to be modified, the nature of such cognitions vary according to the approach. Here is a partial list of these problematic cognitions:
• negative automatic thoughts; • cognitive distortions; • dysfunctional assumptions; • irrational beliefs; • maladaptive schemas.
