TÉCNICAS DE SIMULACION

Aaron Beck started to develop his Cognitive Theory in the 1960s during the period that he was with the University of Pennsylvania. He believed the key to helping and understanding other people lies in their cognition. Alford and Beck (1998: 14) define cognition as “that function that involves inferences about one’s experiences and about the occurrence and control of future events”. It is through their thinking or cognition that people make sense of their surroundings.

2.2.7.1. Schemas and controlling beliefs

Beck (1990: 4) explains, “Cognitive therapists work at dual levels of the symptom structures (manifest problems) and underlying schema (inferred structures).” Schemas, rules and basic beliefs are all similar concepts, the differences being that schemas are “cognitive structures

that organise experience and behaviour”, and beliefs and rules are “what determine[s] the content of the thinking, affect, and behaviour” (Beck, Rush, Shaw and Emery. 1979).

There are two categories of meaning-making that occur through schemas; an objective public understanding ascribed to an event and the more private personal meaning that an individual might assign to an event. Psychologically the meaning is controlled through four systems; the “behavioural, emotional, attentional and memory” (Nelson-Jones 2006: 338) systems and they can all be used to adjust and adapt to new circumstances. Schemas are developed early in life and are stable personal understandings about the world that people use to comprehend their surroundings. They come about through personal experiences and are influenced by association and linking to parents, caregivers and significant others. They are supported and re-enforced by new learning experiences that fit with the pattern and shows the schema to be valid.

2.2.7.2. Modes

According to Beck (1996: 2), a mode is defined as “a network of cognitive, affective, motivational, and behavioural components. The modes, consisting of integrated sectors or suborganisations of personality, are designed to deal with specific demands or problems.” These modes are related to four underlying systems of personality (Beck 1996: 4-5):

 cognitive, i.e., linked to the perception of a threat and triggers fight or flight responses;

 affective, i.e., feelings of sadness, joy, anxiety or anger to induce action;  motivational, i.e., the urge and desire to react (fight, flight, and freeze); and  behavioural, i.e., the action itself.

Some of the modes operate at a ‘primal’ level and link to an individual’s continued existence and ability to pass on their genes to the next generation.

Beck (1996: 21) explains that the conscious system of a person is the most malleable and adjustable part of the personality system. It dominates the responses of a mode in four distinct ways:

 It takes precedence when there is a mismatch with the values and plans that an individual is aware of;

 It provides a wider view and understanding of a situation;  It ensures a fit with reality and expectations of that reality; and  Assists with the formulation of long term strategies, goals and plans.

Cognitive therapy adjusts modes which cause disturbance because altered thinking about a problematic thought by adopting more adaptive modes enables their disappearance and

neutralisation (Nelson-Jones 2006: 339). Cognitive therapy assists depressed people and counters recurrence through the alteration of the structure of the mode (Beck 1996: 22).

2.2.7.3. Cognitive vulnerability

This term refers to human beings being ‘frail’ when it comes to their cognition and their own individual understanding, characteristics and vulnerabilities, which sometimes makes them prone to distress. People tend to interpret behaviour of others they interact with on the basis of their own self-esteem and self-worth. Beck (1999: 50) states “a change in self-evaluation or self-esteem – generally triggers an emotional response: pleasure or pain, anger or anxiety.” This is related to the difference between their own assessment of “what they should be” and how they see themselves at a time. Beck provides an example of out of his practice as a psychologist to clarify this. Sue, a patient with “dependent and avoidant personality disorders” (Beck 1990: 30) who was afraid of being rejected, when hearing her partner being noisy in the room next door attributed that noise to the thought that her partner is noisy “because he’s angry at me” (Beck 1990: 30). An alternate explanation of excitement and enthusiasm does not occur to her because Sue was directed by her own belief and attribution of an angry response. This thought was based on a deeper belief that ‘If people reject me, I will be all alone’ and ‘being alone will be devastating’ (Beck 1990: 31). The root cause of this thinking pattern was Sue’s “belief that she was unlovable” (Beck 1990: 31).

People are guided by preconscious thoughts which “often are at the periphery of awareness” (Beck 1967: 321) and it helps them to become conscious of these automatic thoughts to understand what drives their thinking and which triggers the negative emotions which plague them. Beck (1967: 321-329) explains that automatic thoughts are reflected in a person’s interior monologue. They show themselves as pictures or in the chosen words. These thoughts occur very quickly and are just on the edge of conscious thought. They are linked to emotions, feelings and inhibitions and are based on people’s interpretations rather than on the concrete actions triggering the emotions. These thoughts are experienced as accurate and therefore plausible, and they tend to reoccur even though the person tries to stop them. They reveal themselves in a person’s tone of voice, their facial expressions and their gestures even if not acknowledged through their words and are associated with deeper, more subtle thoughts. Aaron Beck’s daughter, Judith, also explains the process in her publication on cognitive therapy procedures by describing how people can be helped to identify their automatic thoughts and evaluate and assess their validity and with greater awareness can develop more rational and reasonable thought patterns (Beck 1995).

Psychological vulnerabilities can be acquired through childhood traumas that are incorporated into personal beliefs. To clarify a five-year-old child when returning after a family holiday to

find the dog had died, can develop an internal belief that something bad is going to happen when they are not physically close to their pet or somebody that they care about. Similarly, when the father of a seven-year-old left the family permanently after a marital fight developed, the underlying belief for their child might be that ‘If I make others angry they will leave me’ (Nelson-Jones 2006: 344). Furthermore, a parent that chronically criticises a child can develop a tendency for their offspring to engage in self-criticism.

2.2.7.5. Social learning

When helping others to adjust their behaviour Beck (1990: 90) writes that “behavioural rehearsal, modelling, assertiveness training, and role-playing for skill development” are beneficial strategies to learn to change behaviour which is ineffective. During reverse role play people develop more empathy for the perspectives of the other party in a conflict situation, which helps to defuse the tension previously driving the conflict situations. Role play can “mobilise affect and produce “mutation” of the schemas or core beliefs”. Sometimes it may lead to “emotional catharsis in order to change their strong beliefs” (Beck 1990: 91). When situations which occurred in the past are re-enacted, an opportunity arises to change the understanding of a person regarding such troubling early experiences in life. “Re-experiencing the episode facilitates the emergence of dominant structures (the “hot” schemas) and makes them more accessible” (Beck 1990: 92) for adjustment or correction to take place. Treatment for disorders happens by means of reality testing and correcting of automatic thoughts, by identifying and modifying the underlying beliefs and through behavioural interventions. Beck makes use of the strategies (cf. Nelson-Jones 2006: 357-358) outlined in the ensuing paragraph to show that situations are often not as black and white or extreme as they are feared to be. When applied to the learning situation, these strategies may teach children other perspectives by testing their understanding of their reality, and this can be achieved by means of engaging with them in the following ways:

1. Socratic dialogues where by means of asking questions the closed belief systems of a person are changed into open systems. Socratic questioning is systematic, disciplined, and deep and usually focuses on foundational concepts, principles, theories, issues, or problems (Paul and Elder 2007). First, by achieving awareness, then examining the cognitive distortions in their beliefs, substituting them with more balanced thoughts and then making plans to develop new thought processes. 2. Identify the automatic thoughts and cognitive distortions;

3. Decatastrophize by asking “So what if that happens?” By discussing the probability and severity of something happening, children’s capacity to cope improves and by

indicating support factors, their ability to accept and deal with the worst possible outcomes also increases;

4. Reattribution processes can help children to assess their own responsibility, and the real cause of negative events and what the feared outcomes might be and in so doing alternative explanations for the occurrence of events can be pointed out;

5. Redefining problems by making them more concrete and by identifying what can be done is helpful so that the feared outcomes of behaviour for a child are given other vantage points;

6. Decentring to make a person aware that others are not focused on them all the time, and neither are they always focused on the activities of other people. This helps children to become aware of how limited their own observations are, and thus, they create awareness that others are similar in not being focussed upon them all the time either;

7. Forming more rational responses is beneficial in general; 8. Daily recording of their rational responses; and

9. Imagery techniques can help children gain more realistic perspectives, projections into the future and by looking back from present situations will help them to arrive at more realistic images.

There are three drivers underlying these beliefs, those of acceptance, competence and control. Cognitive therapy has over time proved to be a very effective and schema-focused approach and is a very important development. It is useful for treating a wide range of psychological disorders and leads to lower relapse rates.

2.2.7.5. Implications of Beck’s cognitive approaches for life skills acquisition

As human beings make sense of their surroundings, they look for patterns and rules to improve their survival abilities. A better understanding of what is happening around them will help a person to either avoid a negative situation or to maximise a positive event. Beck called a person’s stable thinking patterns schemas. These stable patterns are developed early in life with influences from parents and other significant caregivers. People are susceptible to primal responses when in survival threat situations such as attack or anger. Beck called these modes, and such modes usually are rigid primal responses to the world people live in. People who are feeling threatened tend to understand the world around them in ways which are detrimental to them; they make assumptions and interpret the behaviour of others incorrectly, often based on irrational thinking, negative self-appraisal, and they are governed by feelings of threat. Sometimes these insecurities are rooted in childhood traumas, sparked by events that took place onto which an incorrect belief has been built. For instance, a child who was often criticised can become self-critical as a result, and with a lack of communication between the

child and their family members, caregivers or friends, misunderstandings and frustrations in their relationships with others can arise.

Reality testing is an important way to identify and deal with unhelpful underlying beliefs. Teachers can ask questions to create awareness when they come across distorted thoughts. “So, what will happen if...” type questions can lead to a discovery that some fears might be highly unlikely. Teachers can sketch other possible outcomes to scenarios, give alternative explanations, and make children aware that other people are not as focused on them as they tend to believe, just as they as children are not focused on other people all the time. Visualisation and creation of other, more real-life images can help to defuse the tension that the dysfunctional belief can call up in a person. These techniques lead to better decision making about an assessment of the world in which a person lives through the creation of a sounder cognitive understanding of their world.

In a nutshell, Aaron Beck’s cognitive theory teaches life orientation teachers another aspect of the human psyche; people use their cognitive abilities to make sense of their surroundings. In the early stages of life, people develop schema’s that are stable cognitive patterns that they consider to be proven and true patterns in life. Automatic thoughts are linked to emotions, feelings, and inhibitions that are based on our interpretations rather than on the actions themselves. Anger and anxiety are survival strategies linked to our fight, flight, freeze, faint, and flock responses. Modelling is a key strategy within social learning, and parents model rules such as the ‘should’s and should not’s’ that they teach. Teaching children how to deal with adversity especially helps anxious individuals. Assertiveness skills are foundational in the development of self-esteem and lead to less occurrence of depression. Exposure to modelling of good communication skills within a child’s living space and learning that there can be alternative explanations when wrong conclusions are drawn can assist in healthy development. Reality testing helps to identify unhelpful underlying beliefs and asking questions such as “what will happen if...” leads to the discovery of alternative explanations. In this way, problems can become less threatening because they are redefined, and the children are given other perspectives. Children need help to become aware that others are not focused only on them. More helpful and positive life images can assist with countering of dysfunctional beliefs about inadequacy in some children and thus can lead to a sounder more realistic cognitive understanding of their world.

The following section deals with Arnold Lazarus who made a significant contribution to the field of psychotherapy with his introduction of Multimodal therapy theory. Moreover, Lazarus, in his lifetime, developed an intensive questionnaire which is very helpful to assess an individual who is requesting help properly.