Cognitive Conceptualization

“You’re not what you think you are, but what you think, you are” -Brian Tracy

Quite complex hah! Hopefully you find this blog helpful in solving this riddle.

Cognitive conceptualization

“Cognitive conceptualization provides a framework for better understanding the problem.”

You begin to construct a cognitive conceptualization from the first contact with client and throughout the treatment. In this sort, the “cognitive model” playing a significant role.

Cognitive Model

Cognitive model helps in hypothesizing the emotions, behaviors and physiology which depends upon the perception about the event.

It is not a situation in and of itself that determines what people feel, but rather how they construe a situation (Beck, 1964; Ellis, 1962).

The way how people interpret and think about the situation directly relate to their behaviors and emotions. Cognitive behavior therapists are specifically interested in the level of thinking that may come out simultaneously with a more obvious, surface level of thinking.

In order for better understanding the client’s thoughts we should clear about the relationship between intermediate beliefs to core beliefs and automatic thoughts.

Core beliefs influence the development of the intermediate beliefs and these two in turn develop the automatic thought. Core beliefs are enduring understandings so fundamental and deep that they often do not articulate them, even to themselves.

Core beliefs

These are the most fundamental level of belief; they are global, rigid, and overgeneralized.

Automatic thoughts

These are the actual words or images that go through a person’s mind, are situation specific and may be considered the most superficial level of cognition.

Intermediate beliefs

Intermediate beliefs that exists between the two. Intermediate beliefs consists of attitudes, rules, and assumptions.

Example

Difference between Inferences and Beliefs.

Beliefs

“The mental acceptance or conviction in the truth or actuality of some idea” (Schwitzgebel, 2010). Beliefs are the evaluation and the interpretation about the event. There is no right and wrong in beliefs. Beliefs are beliefs.

Inferences

“Inferences can be defined as the attribution of the meaning.” Inferences can be right or wrong.

Example:

There is girl named Diana failed in the course in his 2nd year of medical suffering from insomnia, anxiety and loss of appetite. She thought that her parents will not accept her with the failures, her friends will criticized her. This kind of thinking leads her towards the anxiety, insomnia and loss of appetite. She comes up with the statement that she could not pass this course again.

Take a time and find out the inference and beliefs from the above giving situation.

Inference: Her parents will not accept her with the failures, her friends will criticized her.

Belief: She could not pass this course again.

Conclusion

Inferences and beliefs exist side by side while having different psychological disorders. So it is important for the psychologists to be clear about the difference which ultimately help them to concisely conceptualize the problem stated by the client. Conceptualizing a patient in cognitive terms is crucial to determining the most efficient and effective course of treatment. It also aids in developing empathy, an ingredient that is critical in establishing a good working relationship with the patient.