Principle 3: We all evolve characteristic ways of seeing the world
Although some ways of looking at events may leave us feeling better than others, surely people don’t exercise much choice about the way they view situations or how they react emotionally? Many upsetting thoughts simply seem to pop into our heads unbidden – don’t they? Aren’t most of our responses just instinctive?
A cognitive behavioural therapist would completely agree with you. In fact Beck coined the term Negative Automatic Thoughts (NATs for short) to emphasise that much of the thinking responsible for our unwanted emotions is involuntary.
However this does not mean that it is not therefore possible to retrain the way we think. Indeed CBT aims to do just this, helping us ‘change ...
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