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It is rare that personality problems are the chief complaint of a patient presenting for treatment. Instead, difficulties with depression, anxiety, or external situations compel the patient into treatment. Personalitydisordered patients will often see the difficulties they encounter in dealing with…

The goal of CBT is not to eliminate negative emotion. All emotions are important. Negative emotions frequently point to a problem that needs to be solved (which may or may not include changing one’s thinking)—or, if it can’t be solved, accepted. The goal of CBT is to reduce the degree and duration …

Beck (1999) theorized that negative core beliefs about the self fall into two broad categories: those associated with helplessness and those associated with unlovability. A third category, associated with worthlessness (Figure 3.2), has also been described (J. S. Beck, 2005). When clients are depre…

What is the situation? You might be having thoughts about something that just happened in the environment or something that happened inside of you (an intense emotion, a painful sensation, an image, a daydream, a flashback, or a stream of thoughts—e.g., thinking about my future). I got a parking ti…

All-or-nothing thinking
Also called black-and-white, polarized, or dichotomous thinking. You view a situation in only two categories instead of on a continuum.
Example: “If I’m not a total success, I’m a failure.”
Catastrophizing (fortune-telling)
Also called fortune-telling. You predict the fu…