It’s alief vs. belief. It’s one thing to see that, in theory, almost all spiders are harmless. It’s another to remain calm in the presence of a spider if you’ve had a history of being terrified of them.
Desensitization is a process of teaching a person how to calm themselves, and then exposing them to things which are just a little like spiders (a picture of a cartoon spider, perhaps, or the word spider). When they can calm themselves around that, they’re exposed to something a little more like a spider, and learn to be calm around that.
The alief system can learn, but it’s not necessarily a verbal process.
Even when it is verbal, as when someone learns to identify various sorts of irrational thoughts, it’s much slower than understanding an argument.
It’s alief vs. belief. It’s one thing to see that, in theory, almost all spiders are harmless. It’s another to remain calm in the presence of a spider if you’ve had a history of being terrified of them.
Desensitization is a process of teaching a person how to calm themselves, and then exposing them to things which are just a little like spiders (a picture of a cartoon spider, perhaps, or the word spider). When they can calm themselves around that, they’re exposed to something a little more like a spider, and learn to be calm around that.
The alief system can learn, but it’s not necessarily a verbal process.
Even when it is verbal, as when someone learns to identify various sorts of irrational thoughts, it’s much slower than understanding an argument.
Right; that’s the “behavioural” part of cognitive behavioural therapy, right? But the “cognitive” part is an explicit, verbal process.