What are beliefs? - Chapter 17

This chapter will give an introduction into beliefs.

Beliefs are the deeper, often unarticulated ideas of understanding depressed clients have about themselves, others, their world, and their future that give rise to specific automatic thoughts. The therapist often can easily infer beliefs from conversations and can easily test them.

The most central ideas about the self, others and the world are reffered to as core beliefs. When beliefs are adaptive, they are realistic and functional and not at an extreme. In contrast, dysfunctional core beliefs are rigid and absolute, and are maintained through maladaptive processing of information. These beliefs are sometimes reffered to as schemas.

The development of core beliefs start from a very early age. It is influenced by the genetic predisposition of a person, their interaction with important other people, and by meaning they put to their experiences and circumstances. In a depressed state, the negative schemas of a client can be continuously activated.

Once a schema is activated, the following three things generally happen:

• The new experience will be interpreted by the client in accordance with the core beliefs.
• When the schema is activated, it strengthens the core belief.
• Other types of schemas are activated too.

A reason why modifying dysfunctional cognitive schemas in CBT is because of their impact on the other schemas.

Negative core beliefs about the self can fall into three broad categories: beliefs associated with helplessness, those associated with unlovability and beliefs associated with worthlessness. Negative core beliefs of clients can primarily fall into one of these categories, or they might have core beliefs in two or all three categories. It is also possible for clients to have one belief within a category or have multiple beliefs with one category.

Various strategies are useful in eliciting the negative core beliefs of clients, among these are:

• Looking for central themes in the automatic thoughts of clients.
• Using the 'downward arrow' technique.
• Watching for core beliefs expressed as automatic thoughts.

The downward arrow technique involves asking clients to assume their automatic thoughts are true and then questioning them about the meaning of these thoughts. 

What are some important concepts about beliefs?

The therapists should make sure that clients understand the following concepts about beliefs:

• Beliefs are ideas and can be tested and changed.
• Beliefs are learned and can be revised.
• Beliefs can be rigid and feel as if they are true. They are mostly untrue or entirely untrue.
• Beliefs started through the meaning clients give to their experiences as youth and/or later in life. These meaning may or may not have been accurate at the time.
• When relevant schemas are activated, clients readily recognize information that seem to support their core beliefs, while discounting data to the contrary.

How to identify maladaptive intermediate beliefs?

There are multiple techniques to identify maladaptive intermediate beliefs:

• Recognizing when intermediate beliefs are expressed as automatic thoughts.
• Directly eliciting an intermediate belief.
• Reviewing a belief questionnaire.