• a collaborative relationship between client and therapist
• the premise that psychological distress is often maintained by cognitive processes
• a focus on changing cognitions to produce desired changes in affect and behavior,
• a present-centered, time-limited focus,
• an active and directive stance by the therapist,
• an educational treatment focusing on specific and structured target problems
  
  

(A. Beck & Weishaar, 2014)

People contribute to their own psychological problems by the rigid and extreme beliefs they hold about events and situations.

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Cognitions, emotions and behaviors interact significantly and have a reciprocal cause and effect relationship

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Focus on working with thinking and acting rather than primarily with expressing feelings.

encourage clients to be less emotionally reactive

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teach clients to feel sadness and disappointment about life’s adversities rather that by feeling anxiety, depression and shame.

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Blame = core of emotional disturbances, stop blaming ourselves and others

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learn to fully and unconditionally accept ourselves despite our imperfections

show clients how they have incorporated many irrational absolute “shoulds,” “oughts,” and “musts.”

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demonstrate how clients are keeping their emotional disturbances active by continuing to think illogically and unrealistically.

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helping clients modify their thinking and minimize their irrational ideas

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challenge clients to develop a rational philosophy of life so that in the future they can avoid becoming the victim of other irrational beliefs

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Homework is carefully designed and agreed upon and is aimed at getting clients to carry out productive actions that contribute to emotional and attitudinal change.

(1) People’s thought processes are accessible to introspection

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(2) People’s beliefs have highly personal meanings, and

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(3) People can discover these meanings themselves rather than being taught or having them interpreted by the therapist