Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Recently came across a 2023 article by Jon Haidt on his Substack, “After Babel.” He shares how his friend, Greg Lukianoff, a defender of the free-speech rights of college students, made a brilliant connection between policies implemented by American universities and declining mental health. (The irony—the policies were intended to improve mental health.)
Lukianoff had learned to apply Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) while being treated for depression. CBT focuses on thinking patterns, called cognitive distortions, that can be both causes and symptoms of depression. They’re referred to as distortions because they don’t accurately reflect reality. Learning to overcome these habits (including catastrophizing, black-and-white thinking, and emotional reasoning) contributes to psychological healing.
When we catastrophize, we look at a current issue or situation and jump to the conclusion that something catastrophic will happen if we don’t stop it or fix it immediately. I remember when I was learning to drive and the price of gasoline was threatening to skyrocket all the way up to two dollars a gallon. I thought the world would end.
It didn’t.
Most of the things we catastrophize about aren’t nearly as destructive as we imagine they’ll be. Human beings are amazingly resilient, both individually and as groups.
Black-and-white thinking means there are no gray areas. For example, every person is either good or evil and every action illustrates either love or hate. But in the real world each one of us is a mixed bag of thoughts and motivations. Even good people do bad things. Even bad people are capable of doing good things.
My dad used to say, ”Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.” Wikipedia describes this as an “error in which something good or of value is eliminated when trying to get rid of something unwanted.”* Black-and-white thinking often leads to making this mistake.
Emotional reasoning uses feelings, rather than logic, in making decisions. Rational thinking alone can lead to trouble if we don’t take into account the psychological impact that a seemingly logical action can have on someone. (As a nerd, I’ve done this too many times.) But basing decisions solely on emotions rarely leads to the best solution to a problem.
Lukianoff suggested to Haidt that the behavior of many college students and the policies of many college leaders is, in effect, reverse CBT. (I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but you can explore this idea in more detail in their 2018 book, The Coddling of the American Mind.)
Expressing deep concern about microaggressions is catastrophizing. Refusing to allow someone to speak on campus in their field of expertise because of a comment they’d made in a tweet concerning a completely different subject is throwing out the baby with the bathwater due to black-and-white thinking. Emotional reasoning is used to demand the removal of important textbooks from a college syllabus.
Universities are training and encouraging students to think in ways that have been proven to contribute to and prolong depression.
The Serenity Prayer
Then I happened to reread the “Serenity Prayer.” Originally composed in the early 1930s by Reinhold Niebuhr, a Protestant theologian, the prayer opens with, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”
This prayer has been used successfully for many years (most famously by Alcoholics Anonymous) to help people overcome mental health issues and live better lives. But do we value its insights today?
Are we willing to accept that there are some things that we cannot change? Children have been told for at least a couple of generations now that they can do and have everything they want in this life. The message they’re hearing: Don’t accept the idea that there’s anything that you can’t change in order to get your own way.
Those who attract the most attention for trying to change the world often act like bullies or like spoiled children throwing a tantrum. Have bullies or tantruming children ever been considered courageous?
Do we desire wisdom, or would we rather just rush on to the next big thing without taking any time to contemplate whether it’s best to go there? Are we allowing wisdom to die out as we encourage electronic devices and artificial intelligence do more and more of our thinking for us?
Do we value wisdom and courage and the serenity of acceptance anymore?
Rejecting the past
Why is our culture rejecting the proven wisdom of the past? Wisdom that’s led many to better mental health. The fruit of that rejection can be seen in the increasing rates of mental health issues and deaths from despair.
A culture that lives this way weakens itself. (I’m tempted to say that it’s headed for destruction, but that might be catastrophizing.)
We seem to have adopted a definition of progress that means automatically dismissing anything old when something different comes along. No need to evaluate whether to accept the new. It’s always better simply because it’s newer. That’s how evolution works.
I saw this blatantly stated in a book about Robinson Crusoe and its imitators many years ago. (I no longer have the book, so I can’t identify its title and author with certainty.) There are probably other sources that I’m not familiar with that make the same assertion.
C. S. Lewis, in Surprised by Joy, calls this “chronological snobbery … the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited.”
In contrast to this attitude, Lewis writes in The Case for Christianity, “Progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.”
What if we thought more carefully before taking that wrong turning in the first place? If we automatically reject the past, can we even recognize that old right road? Or will we build a new one that takes us even further from the truth?
I’m not saying that there was ever a golden age that we can go back to if we just overcome current ways of thinking and pass the right laws. I’m skeptical of any viewpoint that claims that there was once a time and a place where a majority of people were true Christians.
When Christianity is acceptable and popular, I have to question how many people are actually born again and how many are simply following the current philosophy without thinking it through and without any real repentance and change of heart. Jesus said, “But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matthew 7:14).
And I’m not anti-progress. I’m thankful for the developments in human thinking and technology that have occurred within my own lifetime.
Advances in medicine have led to longer, fuller lives. Personal computers have simplified the writing and rewriting process (thank You, Lord!), among many other benefits. We’re seeing greater equality between the races and the sexes. Pollution has been reduced and cleaned up.
Several decades ago, experts made great strides in understanding and treating mental health disorders. Talk therapies, like CBT. Medications that, when used wisely, can save lives. Now those advances are being replaced by newer ideas. Not because they didn’t work (when applied properly), but simply because they’re older.
Just as certain college policies can be seen as the opposite of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, rejecting the wisdom of the past can be seen as the opposite of progress.
*Recently, other writers have called my attention to some painful examples of how Wikipedia distorts the truth and refuses to change their story when their bias is pointed out to them. With those examples fresh in my mind as I was editing this post, I was tempted to find a different source for the explanation of this expression.
But then I realized that that might be a perfect example of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Should I use Wikipedia for its beneficial articles? Or should I stop referring to it because of the obvious bias in other entries? Does citing Wikipedia in this blog imply that I trust it completely? What if I can’t tell how inaccurate an article is and I accept, and even spread, the false teaching that it promotes without realizing that I’m doing that? I’m still struggling with these questions.
