Aha! Well that's a discovery! Curiously, I've always thought CBT was divided this way:
1. Identifying the root causes of the unhealthy behavioral patterns,
2. Reversing the narratives / limiting beliefs about the self, which needs to be accompanied by images and emotions extracted from our own life events, which our confimation bias bypassed. By experience, finding proofs in our history has been much more effective and hopefully irreversible with consistency than the "affirmations". This part would be responsible for moving from our insecure attachment style, aka the bond we've been building with our caregivers and erroneously confusing with genuine love, to the secure one.
3. Destroying the limiting beliefs about the world by diagnosing whether they violate even one Universal Principle. We all have this natural constitution (our original center, our core part, the spirit) that was merely numbed by our lifetime of conditioning and with which we can reconnect at any time during our self-awareness serious exercises until our distorted center(s) could gradually be replaced by the "Universal Principles" again!
The beauty about this part is that, unlike the former group requiring tons of repetition (the way of learning of the subconscious program), some beliefs about the world can be instantly broken. It's correlated to the level of pain and shame it triggers. This was the case for my very first algorithm which I detailed here, should it feel worthwhile:
Interestingly, unleashing the authentic self and principled servant leader in us may take place while we are still dealing with the first group of limiting beliefs about ourselves, it seems to me! Our residual unhealthy patterns (the rescuer has been the trickiest one to understand and unfold, so far, for me!) does not prevent us from showing up consistently and doing the principled and right thing daily even at our expense thanks to having drastically enlarged the gap between the stimulus and our response, I suppose!
Appealingly, I love Stoicism life philosophy specifically for its emphasis on the last part: LIVING VIRTUOUSLY NO MATTER WHAT!
In summary, I am agreeably realizing thanks to your brilliant essay that I have practiced CBT on myself during the first year following my re-birth; in other words without caring to understand the root causes (which I used to think was part of the therapy process), and I can confidently say it was effective. It wasn't until last year that I discovered the truth that made everything become crystal clear and activated my unsuspected savior pattern (the hard times I was sharing with my Swedish friend in the story you read!)
Thank you for sharing this informative and beautifully written article, my friend!!!
