This week’s post on the Two Minds Theory blog is about reframing. It’s a widely used component of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) that involves changing the stories you tell yourself. In our formulation of Two Minds Theory, one’s thoughts cannot directly affect their behavior — the Narrative System simply doesn’t work fast enough. Yet the specifically cognitive components of CBT have empirical support in research. How can both of these things be true? Is CBT’s effectiveness a type of evidence against our theory, or is our current understanding of CBT wrong? Read this week’s blog to find out: https://twomindstheory.blogspot.com/2019/04/changing-narratives.html
Dear Paul,
As I see them, narratives are the stories we tell to ourselves about ourselves. There is accumulated evidence that shows that to change our narratives can change our behavior.
The self-fullfiment prophecy clearly shows that changing our narratives can change our hehavior. Let us suposse that, even though we are not, say, good professors, we tell to ourselves that we are really good professors and form the image that that is the case. Once we form the image that we are really good professors (to change our narrative), it is often the case that change our behavior such that it is consistent with the image we form of ourselves, that we are really good professors.
Consider a second example. A given teacher tells to one of this pupils, Mary, that she is lazy, which is not the case. If this saying continues to be te case, it may happen that Mary does not study much because her teacher, she thinks, will continue to think of her as a lazy sudents regardlees of much she studies.
I hope I has got your post and that this helps,
Orlando
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