ABSTRACT
Patients may be clearly aware of their schemas and how they interpret relational events, the life circumstances leading them to develop a distress-causing self-image. Now they need to be helped to modify how their minds process information, with direct action on their attention to distressing mental states. Research shows that disciplining attention makes it possible to deactivate nodes in the brain default mode network –– involved in mind-wandering —– in various types of perseverative thought and reinforce areas to which self-monitoring and cognitive control are delegated. Lastly, other coping strategies, both cognitive –– like avoidance, thought suppression or distraction –– and behavioural –– like reassurance-seeking, perfectionism, alcohol and drug use, workaholism –– are considered. Now, when patients are aware that, on recalling a distressing episode, they tend to engage in a long set of evaluations leading to a worsening of their mood, the therapist elicits positive and negative meta-beliefs supporting maladaptive coping strategies.
