Among the reactions to the death of psychiatrist Aaron T. Beck, was the sentiment that he should have won a Nobel prize. That he didn’t, it is said, reflects our low regard for mental, as opposed to physical, health.
Beck’s claim to greatness was that he invented the form of therapy known as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, (usually abbreviated CBT.) This is a big deal. Among competing talking therapies, CBT is singled out for its effectiveness, so much so that the government funds it through its IAPT* programme. They like the fact that its outcomes are measurable and time limited, and its success rate is good.
As both a recipient and student of counselling, I second that. CBT is focused and specific. Other forms of counselling are considerably less so, often leading to open-ended sessions that meander without getting anywhere. That’s my experience, anyway.
Counselling, in the modern sense, attempts to give humans some of the benefits that they used to get from religion. And the way in which CBT does this is fascinating because it is about belief. Being a secular discipline, its literature usually talks about thoughts rather than beliefs, describing a cycle of behaviour, thoughts and emotions. But in practice, what they call thoughts are indistinguishable from beliefs - and that’s our territory.
CBT is based on the assumption that much of our misery comes from holding irrational and damaging beliefs. The problem is not that we don’t realise that a belief is irrational, it’s that we don’t even realise that we hold the belief, because it is buried in our subconscious. Irrational subconscious beliefs are like a piece of malware running in the background on our computer. The point of CBT is to get us to press Control Alt Delete, bringing up the Task Manager on our brains, so that we can see which beliefs we have running in the background. Having brought these buried beliefs to the surface, the therapist barely needs to point out to the patient that the belief is irrational. Once it is in our conscious, as opposed to our subconscious, mind we see it for ourselves, all too clearly. There's more to CBT than this, but bringing damaging and irrational beliefs from darkness into light is the core of it.
Carrying hidden, irrational beliefs harms us, because subconscious beliefs are still able to get a rise out of our brains and nervous systems. They may be hidden but they are still connected to our brain and body, and so can flood us with stress chemicals and affect our mood.
For example, someone goes on a date that doesn’t go well. This should be nothing more than mildly disappointing. However, hidden in their subconscious is a belief that no one will ever love them because they are unworthy of love. If they were to examine this belief consciously, they would dismiss it as nonsense. But they can’t do this, because they’re not aware that this belief is lodged in their subconscious. The unsatisfactory date reinforces this hidden belief and this triggers a visceral response. It is as though it has been proved that they are unworthy of love and destined to be eternally alone. One bad date leaves them feeling overwhelmed by depressing and distressing thoughts about how unloveable, lonely and desperate they are.
A cognitive behavioural therapist will make this person aware of this hidden belief. Once the belief is brought to the surface, they see how ludicrous it is. This hidden belief dispelled, their subconscious is no longer able to hijack their emotions. The next time they don’t hit it off on a date it will mean nothing more than that. They will experience mild disappointment instead of disproportionate and irrational emotional devastation.
Now, this is obviously very interesting to those of us who are religious. We recognise that Aaron Beck did not invent everything about CBT, he was repackaging an existing religious practice as a secular one.
Being part of a faith community should mean undergoing a continuous version of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, except with reference to our religious beliefs. A couple of illustrations should suffice.
Firstly, many of us believe in God, meaning that the universe is not only purposeful, but its purpose is good, and the one whose purpose it is, has the power to eventually bring this purpose to reality. Intellectually, we say that this belief is not invalidated by bad things happening in the world. That’s because we believe that there is a higher purpose and plan, and even when we can’t understand why suffering has come about, we trust that suffering is only for a time and all things will come good in the end.
And then someone dies, or some other tragedy occurs, and we go to pieces. Our belief in a purposeful, beneficent and all-powerful God ought to buttress us against agonising emotional distress, but it doesn’t. This can be because, unbeknown to us, a contradictory, and in this sense, irrational, belief has snuck into our subconscious. Whatever we might say on a Sunday, our subconscious has secretly accepted that there is no God, and that the universe is a lonely, random and cruel place, in which there is no hope beyond death, everyone suffers, and justice is exceedingly rare.
So, like the CBT specialist, the pastoral leader prompts us to bring to the surface subconscious beliefs that are sabotaging us.
An active faith regularly challenges us to examine what we really believe. Does the belief we profess with our lips correspond with what is in our hearts?
Like the Cognitive Behavioural Therapist, the faith leader aims to make our subconscious and conscious beliefs align. This can save our faith and our mental health, but it’s always a risk because the alignment need not operate in one direction only. Often, we will examine our hearts and dispel the ‘irrational’ subconscious belief; but there is always a chance that we conclude that the hidden belief is actually our true belief, and our faith is lost.
A second example of how CBT is derivative of religion concerns what we believe about forgiveness. Many of us say that we believe in an all-seeing, all-wise, and just God. And yet when we are wronged, we become permanently incandescent. This emotion doesn’t align with our professed belief. If what we believe is really true, then we should pity the person who has sinned against us so grievously, and whose sin is known to God almighty. The exact same principle applies to anyone who believes in karma. If you really believe it, then you should have no doubt that the person who stole your lunch will pay for it in the end.
That’s the theory. But if we examine our beliefs, we may discover that, in spite of our fine words about a loving, just God, our subconscious mind believes that there’s really no justice, because there is no God. Similarly, someone who professes the eternal law of karma may harbour the unrecognised thought that, actually, karma isn’t for real.
And then there’s the half-way beliefs. We proclaim an omnipotent and benevolent deity, but the religious version of CBT reveals that we only sort of believe in God, because we can’t trust Him to do what is right. Or we sort of believe in karma, but as a creaking, unreliable system.
Again, aligning our conscious and subconscious beliefs could go either way. If our spoken, intellectual beliefs about God and his justice, wisdom and might, can take root in our hearts then we will have peace, and forgiving our enemies will be easy - we will simply hand them over to God.
Equally, if karma does what it says on the tin, then the karma will invariably take care of the injustices that we suffer and our hearts need not be troubled. But such self-examination is always a risk. We may have to admit that we don’t really believe this stuff at all.
CBT is an attempt to give secular people something they once got from religion. As such, it does much good - but it’s only a taste of what a mature, lived religious faith can do for you. We could be pointing out to those who benefit from CBT that they are engaged in a religious exercise, and that there’s more where that came from.
And for the religious? CBT can, as I’ve discovered, enrich our faith. It reminds us to do the necessary religious exercise of examining and aligning the beliefs in our heads and in our hearts. Aaron Beck did a fine thing in gifting CBT to the world. He showed us that religious hunger survives religion. He also gave us a way into a conversation with the secular world about what belief can do for you - the conscious and the unconscious, the healthy and the unhealthy, the good and the bad.
*Improving access to psychological therapies.
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