Posted by Larry Hoover on June 2, 2003, at 9:56:15
In reply to CBT and metacognition » Larry Hoover, posted by mattdds on June 2, 2003, at 1:55:30
> Larry,
>> As I'm sure you can deduce, metacognition is the awareness of your own cognition.
I was unaware of this author, but I totally grock the concept. (Grock, from Heinlein, meaning understand in absolute completeness)
> Wells emphasizes the importance of developing a "metacognitive mode" of processing, in which we become passive observers of our negative thoughts and or symptoms. In this mode, thoughts themselves become just like any other neutral event in the universe, rather than absolute truths. He suggests attentional training and mindfulness meditation to get into this type of mode.
I would expand the concept of metacognition to include positive thoughts as well. Moreover, the attributes positive and negative have no place in metacognition.
Judgmental language, anything that is suggestive of emotive impact, reduces the metacognitive state, IMHO.
You can practice achieving nonjudgment in day-to-day self-talk. For example, if you try something, and it fails, you could say to yourself, "I screwed up", or "I am a screw-up", but the more nonjudmental approach reflects your experience, as in, "That didn't go the way I had hoped." You see, it's the non-realization of an expectation that is the real issue.....becoming emotionally attached to an externality.
I like to summarize non-judgment as selecting descriptive language.
> Once you get into this mode of thinking - this metacognitive mode - it frees up mental resources. It allows you to step back, and be able to see more than one schema, or way of seeing things. It also, according to Wells, allows information that is likely to disconfirm existing destructive beliefs to sink in. Is this sounding like secularized Buddhism yet? To me this is great stuff!Absolutely, according to my own experience. And when you do select a schema, it comes with a peaceful certainty that you've fairly and appropriately accomodated all the factors that entered into your awareness during deliberations (including recognition that, as a human being, there are limits to your awareness).
> He also goes on to talk about rumination, in relation to depression. He led a study which showed that rumination was positively correlated with increased depth and duration of depression. So the idea is to reduce rumination. He also showed that attention training activities can help to reduce rumination, as can mindfulness meditation training.
It all responds to decision-making. Yup.
> The amazing thing is how few therapists are aware of cutting edge things like this. I mean the gap between the scientist and the clinician is HUGE! (Most) clinicians are still practicing CBT of the dark ages. Even worse, some practitioners advertise as CBTers but really are doing some nondirective eclectic mess.Maybe I got really lucky. Or maybe Canadian therapists grock this, but I've gotten ideas like this from many therapists, or at least, the tools to achieve it, whether or not it was an overt goal of therapy.
One such tool was the development of what was called a "narrative dialogue". One way to picture that is to consider a large boardroom table, around which sit all the voices in your head, and you're the chairperson. Everybody's got different voices in their head; when we're ambivalent about something, we're acknowledging more than one voice. There's the voice of societal expectations. There's the voice repeating things your mother said. There's your own "inner critic". There's the voice of your spiritual self. There's the strict logical voice. And so on. By picturing yourself as the chairperson, you're fostering metacognition of the schemas presented by each voice. And, as chairperson, you're not bound by any one schema; you can create a synthesis of schemas.
> I wonder how much better the response rate would be if people were doing REAL CBT? Am I making any sense here?
>
> Take care,
>
> MattYa, you're making sense, if I enter a metacognitive state and bypass the excitement. Heh.
Lar
P.S. Not meaning to blow my own horn, but I help a lot of people in real life. People in crisis call on me all the time, because I can help them sort out the various components of their cognition.
poster:Larry Hoover
thread:230572
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20030529/msgs/230759.html