There are many powerful reasons why cognitive-behavioral therapy is the most popular brand of therapy. The top three are that it is easy to understand, easy to apply, and true to life. Who doubts that thinking as we would like to think and behaving as we would like to behave wouldn’t amount to huge benefits? That just about goes without saying.
I’ve found it remarkably easy to coach clients “in a cognitive way” just by presenting one simple idea. All I do is invite clients to “think thoughts that serve them.” I then go on to do a tiny bit of explaining. This sounds like: “I think you can tell that I’m saying that in a very careful way. This isn’t about the truth or falsity of a thought. Even true thoughts may not serve you. The criterion you want to use to judge whether to countenance a thought that’s popped into your head is whether or not that thought actually serves you.”
Then I’ll give a simple example. If I’m working with a writer, I might say, “Say that you go online to a big online bookstore, see the millions of books there, and think to yourself, ‘Wow, there are a lot of writers out there!’ That is an abundantly true thought that, although true, will not serve you to think. It will demoralize you and discourage you, and three days late,r you may stop writing and never even know why. Why did you stop? Because three days previously, you let that thought ‘Wow, there are a lot of writers out there!’ just sit there. It would have been much better if, the instant you heard that thought, you rejected it by saying, ‘Nope, sorry, you are not a thought that serves me!”
If I’m working with a client on existential issues of meaning and purpose, my mini-explanation might sound like, “You know, many of the things we do in the service of our meaning needs don’t feel meaningful as we’re doing them. They may just feel like drudgery. So, it may pop into your head to think, ‘Wow, this doesn’t feel very meaningful. Why on earth am I doing this?’ You have to be very careful here, remind yourself that your efforts in the service of meaning may not always feel meaningful, and reject a thought like ‘This doesn’t feel very meaningful’ as not serving you. Get what I mean?”
