-new experiences, places, or people can make you nervous or anxious or even a fearful
-talking about those feelings is normal as it can help you overcome
-it is not good to allow experiencing anxiety mean that you are in great danger as it amplifies your fears and doesn’t allow you to overcome them
-it is not good to stay stuck in that experiencing trauma make you kind of broken, and you may be that way for the rest of your life (there is no recovery)
“Now, since we know you are in grave danger, let’s discuss how you can hide.”
-”Always trust your feelings” today mean something very different than “trust your gut” instincts
The great Untruth = Emotional Reasoning = is a direct contradiction of much ancient wisdom
Examples:
“Our life is the creation of the mind. “ (Buddha)
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” (Shakespeare)
“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” (Milton)
Why Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBBT)?
-patient comes in moping, fearfulness, and bitterness toward the circumstances of life
-the therapist helps the patient reframe the patient’s thinking and teaches how to shut off negative emotions
-the therapist guides the patient into reflecting on facts and redirects thoughts to the positives
-with each exercise, as the the patient sees the situation in a new light
-this weakens the grip of the negative emotions and prepares the patient to accept circumstances, then move through the circumstances gains positives
“Nothing is miserable unless you think so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it.” (Lady philosophy)
Points:
-the insight that feelings are always compelling, but not always reliable
-feelings distort reality
-feelings deprive us of insight
-feelings can needlessly danger our relationships
***happiness, maturity, and even enlightenment require rejecting the Untruth of Emotional Reasoning and learning instead to question our feelings
-the feelings themselves are real, and sometimes they alert us to truths that our conscious mind has not noticed, but we need to understand feelings can also lead us astray
Happiness Hypothesis:
-the mind is divided into parts that sometimes conflict
-conscious and controlled processes such as: intuitive, unconscious, or “automatic” which is what goes on in the mind outside of our direct control
Emotional Reasoning:
-the cognitive distortion that occurs whenever the person interprets what is happening in ways that are consistent with the emotional state without investigating what is true
-there is no inquire, rationalization, justification, but are pre-ordained conclusion not what is really true
Strategy: Talking Back
-asking questions to teach the patient to ask questions to see life in new ways
-help the patient see the good like love for family, gratitude that they are safe, etc..
-this changes how the patient interprets things, which causes emotions to change, which then causes thinking to change
What is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT):
-developed in the 1960s by Arron Beck, a psychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania
-Freudian ideas were dominating psychiatry at the time
-clinicians assumed that depression and the distorted thinking it produces were just surface manifestation for deeper problems usually stretching back to unresolved childhood conflict
-to treat depression, you had to fix the underlying problem, and that could take many years of therapy
***Beck saw a close connection between the thoughts a person had and the feelings that came with them
-he noticed that his patients tended to get themselves caught in this feedback loop in which irrational negative beliefs caused powerful negative feelings
-this seemed to drive patients’ reasoning, motivating them to find evidence to support their negative beliefs
-Beck noticed a common pattern of beliefs, which he called the “cognitive triad” of depression
Ex. I’m no good, my world is bleak, and my future is hopeless
-many people experience one or two of these thoughts fleetingly, but depressed people tend to hold all three beliefs in a stable and enduring psychological structure
-Psychologists call such structures schemas
-Schemas refer to patterns of thoughts and behaviors, built up over time, that people use to process information quickly and effortlessly as they interact with the world
-depressed people have schemas about themselves and their paths through life that are thoroughly disempowering
***Beck’s great discovery was that it is possible to break the disempowering feedback cycle between negative beliefs and negative emotions
-if you can get people to examine these beliefs and consider counterevidence it allows for relief from negative emotions
-if you release those negative emotions then you are more open to questioning their negative beliefs (it does take a bit of skill)
-depressed people are very good at finding evidence for the beliefs in the triad
-it takes time, but a disempowering schema can’t be disassembled in a single moment of great insight
-Beck’s method is to train people to question their automatic thoughts on their own, every day
-with repetition, people can change their schemas and create different, more helpful habitual beliefs
Ex. I can handle most challenges, I have friends I can trust
***with CBT, there is no need to spend years talking about one’s childhood
9 most common distortions that people learn to recognize in CBT:
-Emotional Reasoning: letting your feelings guide your interpretation of reality
-Catastrophizing: focusing on the worst possible outcome and seeing it as most likely
-Overgeneralizing: perceiving global patterns of negative on the basis of a single incident
-Dichotomous thinking: known as “black and white” thinking, or “all or nothing” thinking,” or “binary thinking” (Ex. I get rejected by everyone, or No one likes me)
-Mind Reading: assuming you know what people think without having sufficient evidence of their thoughts
-Labeling: assigning global negative traits to yourself or others
-Negative Filtering: you focus almost exclusively on the negatives and seldom notice the positives
-Discounting Positives: claiming that the positive things you or others do are trivial, so that you can maintain a negative judgment
Blaming: focusing on the other person as the source of your negative feelings; you refuse to take responsibility for changing yourself
-it’s easy to see how somebody who habitually thinks in such ways would develop schemas that revolve around maladaptive core beliefs, which interfere with realistic and adaptive interpretations of social situations
-everyone engages in these distortions from time to time so CBT is useful for everyone
Ex. we learn to share responsibilities for a conflict
Ex. we can talk about politics civilly and it can be more productive
Ex. we can stop making sweeping generalizations or labeling and look at the individual
Ex. Can make compromising easier
College Campuses:
-learning about cognitive distortions is especially important on a college campus
-today’s students habitually engage in emotional reasoning, overgeneralization, dichotomous thinking, and simplistic labeling
-the task of the professor in this situation is to gently correct such distortions
***a good college education should improve the critical thinking skills of all students
-the concept of critical thinking should have students’ commit to connect one’s claims to reliable evidence in a proper way (this is the essence of CBT)
Ex. it is how we can recognize and defeat “fake news”
“Colleges should teach scholars to challenge one another within the community that should share norms of evidence and argumentation and hold one another accountable for good reasoning, claims get refined, theories gain nuance, and our understanding of truth advances.”
But—---professors are encouraging students to use the distortions instead
Microaggressions: The Triumph of Impact over Intent
-A [rime example of how professors and administrators encourage mental habits similar to the cognitive distortions is their promotion of the concept of “microaggressions” popularized in 2007 by an article written by Derald Wing Sue, a professor at Columbia University's Teachers College
***Micro-aggressions are defined as “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people of color. (note: used to be applied to people of color but now applied much more broadly(
-many people from historically marginalized groups continue to face frequent acts of bias and prejudice
-sometimes people make thinly veiled bigots remarks
-the speaker is expressing hostility or contempt (tone of voice can be a microaggression)
-if aggressive act is minor or subtle, then the term “microaggression” seems well suited for the situation
-aggression is not unintentional or accidental
Ex. if a person bumps into you on accident it was never meant to cause harm so is not an act of aggression, but if the person who is bumped into sees it as a microaggression because it was a white man who bumped into a black woman who felt slighted by the man by not seeing her and not bumping into her and the only reason she got bumped into was because he dismisses seeing a black woman
-it may not be an act of aggression although the other misperceives it as one
-”unintentional slights” are defined entirely by the listener’s interpretation
-people are encouraged to to engage in emotional reasoning
-to start with your feelings and then justify those feelings by drawing the conclusion that someone has committed an act of aggression against them
***It is not a good idea to start by assuming the worst about people and reading their actions as uncharitably as possible
-this is the distortion known as mind reading and if done habitually and negatively it is likely to lead to despair, anxiety, and a network of damaged relationships
Sue’s article on “microaggressions" focused on white people who hold negative stereotypes so it is okay to see their actions and words as justified in suspecting that bigotry is behind every motivation.
Ex. white woman clutches purse closer when passing by a black male
Ex. a taxi driver doesn’t stop for black person but then stops for a white person
Ex. a white person asking an Asian person to teach him words in “native language”
Ex. a white person saying that “America is a melting pot”
Ex. a white person saying a person of color is not qualified and should not get the job
Ex. a white person saying “I believe the most qualified person should get the job”
-many of the examples Sue provides do not necessarily reveal concrete discrimination, but it allows the person to choose to interpret the motivation so it makes a way for them to feel insulted or marginalized
Sue states that the Asian person may have an assertion of the language questions as an insult that “you are a foreigner.”
A Latino student could take the “melting pot” comment as in injunction to “assimilate/acculturate to the dominant culture
A black student could interpret the “most qualified person” comment as an implicit statement that “people of color are given unfair advantages based on their race.”
-people can certainly interpret everyday questions and comments in this way, as tiny acts of aggression, rebuke, or exclusion (And in some cases this may be true)
“If a student feels a flash of offense as the recipient of any statement, is he better off embracing that feeling and labeling himself a victim of a microaggression, or is he better off asking himself if more charitable interpretation might be warranted by the facts.”
***charitable interpretation does not mean that the recipient of the comment must do nothing; rather, it opens up a range of constructive responses
-a charitable approach would be “I’m guessing you didn’t mean any harm when you said that, but you should know that some people might interpret that to mean…..
-we can all be more thoughtful with our words, but it is unjust to treat people as if they are bigots when they harbor no ill will
-in Sue’s logic, CBT itself can be a microaggression because it requires questioning the premises and assumptions that give rise to feelings
Questions like:
-Do you really think your problem stems from racism?
-Can you search out evidence to justify interpretations?
-Can you find a realistic appraisal of events that will lead to the most effective functioning in a world full of ambiguities?
Unwise Teaching:
-teaching people to see more aggression in ambiguous interactions
-teaching people to take more offense, feel more negative emotions, and avoid questioning their initial interpretations
***this is contrary to the usual goals of good psychotherapy
-students need to freely engage with one another rather than keeping their thoughts hidden
-students may choose the wrong words to express themselves
-students may miss subtle social cues
-with all this diversity, there will be hundreds of misunderstandings on campuses each day
-there is potential for unlimited offense-taking
***we must teach students to engage with one another in the most productive and beneficial way
Not the way:
-giving students microaggression training and encouraging them to report microaggressions whenever they see them
Harmful:
-along with this type of training, administrators st up a bias team charged with investigating reports of bias, including microaggressions
Needed:
-teach students how to be polite and avoid giving accidental or thoughtless offense in a diverse community
-train students to give one another the benefit of the doubt
-train students to interpret everyone’s actions in ways that elicit the least amount of emotional reactivity
***the microaggression concept reveals a crucial moral change on campus: the shift from “intent” to “impact”
-in moral judgment = intent is essential for assessing guilt
-generally, we do hold people morally responsible for acts that they intended to commit
Ex. Maria poisons her husband and he dies so Maria is accused of murdering her husband
Ex. In domestic abuse, morally it is not good to beat your wife and on the other side people ask why the wife stays?
-most people understand concepts related to racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of bigotry
-these concepts we can focus on intent because there is concrete evidence that the person wishes them ill will and intends to do them harm
-the blurred lines of being labeled a bigot is when a person unintentionally or inadvertently says or does something the group finds as offensive
-the person may just be clumsy or insensitive and an apology may be justified but not the label of being a bigot
***A faux pas does not make someone an evil person or an aggressor
Today:
-activists say that bigotry is only about impact, intent is not even necessary
-if a member of an identity group feels offended or oppressed by the action of another person, then according to the impact-versus-intent paradigm is applied, so that person is guilty of an act of bigotry
***” In the end, what does the intent of our action really matter if our actions have the impact of furthering the marginalization or oppression of those around us?”
-Good: it is crucial to teach students to be thoughtful in their interactions with one another
-Confusion: ”political correctness” is just an effort to promote polite and respectful interactions by discouraging the use of terms that are reasonably taken to be demeaning
-Bad: if you teach students that intention doesn’t matter, and you also encourage students to find more things offensive leading them to experience more negative impacts
-Bad: telling students that whoever says or does the things they find offensive are “aggressors” who have committed acts of bigotry against them
-Bad: fostering feelings of victimization, anger, and hopelessness where students see the world as a hostile place where things never seem to get better
-Bad: create an environment of perpetual anger and intergroup conflict
-Bad: teaching students to use the least generous interpretations possible is likely to engender precisely the feelings of marginalization and oppression that almost everyone want to eliminate
-Good: teach students that you have control over outcomes because it starts internally within themselves
-Good: internal locus of control leads to greater health, happiness, effort expended, success in school and success at work
***an internal locus of control has even been found to make many kinds of adversity less painful
Disinvitations and the Ideological Vetting of Speakers:
-another way that emotional reasoning manifests itself on college campuses is through the “disinvitation” of guest speakers
“The logic is used if a speaker makes some students uncomfortable, upset, or angry, then that is enough to justify banning the speaker from campus entirely because of the “danger” that the speaker poses to those students.”
-students pressure the organization that issued the invitation, or petition the college president or relevant deans, demanding that someone rescind the invitation
-the threat is made (implicitly and explicitly) that if the speaker comes to campus
-there are loud, disruptive protests in an organized effort to stop the talk from taking place
-students use strategies like blocking entrances to the buildings, and shouting expletives or Shame, at anyone trying to attend
-students banging loudly on doors or windows from outside the room
-student fill the room with protestors who shout or chant for as long as it takes to prevent the speaker from speaking
***The idea is that the mere presence of a speaker on campus can be “dangerous” has spread more widely along with disinviting speakers becoming more common
2013: the art of provoking “mild rage” sharply rose
2013-2014: speakers faced disinvitation efforts at a more aggressive level
2016: the dynamic of troll versus protestors became more common
-in 2013, changes started happening on many campuses
-the idea that college students should not be exposed to “offensive” ideas is now a majority position on campus
-In 2017, 58% of college students said it is “important to be part of a campus community where I am not exposed to intolerant and offensive ideas.” (63% liberal students; 43% conservative students)
-the notion that a university should protect all of its students from ideas that some of them find offensive
***Socrates stated that his job was to sting, to disturb, to question, and thereby provoke his fellow Athenians to think through their current beliefs, and change the ones they could not defend
Zachary Wood, Left-Leaning African American student at Williams College:
-led an “uncomfortable learning” series
-Wood wanted to expose students to ideas that they would otherwise not encounter
-Wood wanted to spur them into better thinking
-in October 2015, Wood invited Suzanne Venker, a conservative critic of feminism and an advocate for traditional gender roles
-Wood wanted to have her as part of a series
-Wood’s co-organizer, Matthew Hennessy stated, “we chose Venker because it’s important to get an understanding of difficult thoughts, so we can challenge them and better understand our own behaviors and our own thoughts.”
But
-the response from William’s students was so ferocious that ultimately Wood and Hennessy decided they had to cancel the event
-one student wrote on social media:
“When you bring a misogynistic, white supremacist men’s rights activist to campus in the name of “dialogue” and “the other-side,” you are not only causing actual mental, social, psychological, and physical harm to students, but you are also paying for the continued dispersal of violent ideologies that kill our black and brown (trans) femme sisters….Know, you are dipping your hands in their blood, Zach Wood.” (who ironically is black)
***The response clearly illustrates the cognitive distortions of catastrophizing, labeling, overgeneralizing, and dichotomous thinking. It is also a textbook example of emotional reasoning, as Wood himself put it when explaining the decision to cancel the lecture.
“When an individual goes so far as to describe someone as having blood on their hands for supporting the idea of bringing a highly controversial speaker to Williams, they are advancing the belief that what offends them should not be allowed on this campus precisely because it offends the and people who disagree with them”
–Should a student saying, “ I am offended,” be sufficient reason to cancel a lecture?
-What about objections by faculty that may be offended?
-it all depends on what you think is the purpose of eduction
“Education should not be intended to make people comfortable; it is meant to make them think,” Hanna Halborn Gray, the president of the University of Chicago from 1978-1993.
-president of William’s College had a different philosophy and personally intervened to cancel the later invitation made by another controversial speaker
-in doing so, he implicitly endorsed Misopono’s dictum that “uncomfortable learning” is an oxymoron
He may have well put up a sign: Education should not be intended to make people think; it is meant to make them comfortable
Summary:
-what really frightens and dismays us is not external events themselves but the way in which we think about them
-CBT is a method anyone can learn for identifying common cognitive distortions and then changing their habitual patterns of thinking
-emotional reasoning is among the most common of all cognitive distortions
-the term “microaggressions” refers to a way of thinking about brief and commonplace indignities and slights communicated to people of color (and others)
(the definition includes accidental or unintentional offenses so the word “aggression” is misleading)
-using the lens of microaggressions may amplify the pain experienced and the conflict ensures (very different from actual intentional acts of aggression and bigotry)
-encouraging students to interpret the actions of others in the least generous way possible leads to students engaging in emotional reasoning and other distortions while setting themselves up for higher levels of distrust and conflict
-when interpreting microaggressions as innocent (maybe insensitive), but making a positive interpretation leads to better outcomes for everyone
-as the number of “disinvite” speakers increase the increase of students who believe that the speaker will cause harm to students by just their words
***Students will not understand the concept of “antifragility” where education should not be intended to make people comfortable, but challenge them to think
