Here I am thinking about the type of beliefs much discussed in  clinical psychology,  such as the following “irrational” beliefs  identified by Albert Ellis:

• It is a dire necessity for adult humans to be loved or approved by virtually every significant other person in their community.
• One absolutely must be competent, adequate and achieving in all important respects or else one is an inadequate, worthless person.
• People absolutely must act considerately and fairly and they are damnable villains if they do not. They are their bad acts.
• It is awful and terrible when things are not the way one would very much like them to be.
• Emotional disturbance is mainly externally caused and people have little or no ability to increase or decrease their dysfunctional feelings and behaviors.
• If something is or may be dangerous or fearsome, then one should be constantly and excessively concerned about it and should keep dwelling on the possibility of it occurring.
• One cannot and must not face life’s responsibilities and difficulties and it is easier to avoid them.
• One must be quite dependent on others and need them and you cannot mainly run one’s own life.
• One’s past history is an all-important determiner of one’s present behavior and because something once strongly affected one’s life, it should indefinitely have a similar effect.
• Other people’s disturbances are horrible and one must feel upset about them.
• There is invariably a right, precise and perfect solution to human problems and it is awful if this perfect solution is not found.

These “beliefs” are not believable as beliefs. I doubt the Ellis list of irrational beliefs would ever be spontaneously provided in response to an open-ended question.  Sure, a lot of us may endorse weak versions, like “I have a hard time meeting my responsibilities and often avoid them” – but then weak versions cease to be irrational – they’re simply proclivities. Ellis uses the absolutist, hyperbolic and unforgiving language of 19^th century preachers to create strawman beliefs that are obviously irrational but which no one holds.

All sorts of beliefs  may be articulated when queried* but few beliefs exist sentence-like in the head, or exist at all  before being elicited in some way.  Beliefs in general are emergent phenomena – that is, they emerge from the interactions of multiple and distributed micro-events in the brain, becoming a coherent thing only when presented to self and/or other. They emerge when something brings them out: a question or questionnaire/ an imaginary or real act of communication. Such beliefs emerge as they are put into words.

We put things into words to communicate: to ourselves or others, in our heads or in the world. Communication is a form of behavior: it is doing something to achieve a goal. So when someone says something obviously exaggerated and irrational, how much of that is expressing a true belief and how much is a behavior?  When I’m furious at a guy and complain to a friend that “all men are assholes”, do I truly believe that?

Consider such venting as a behavior:  what I am trying to accomplish with the behavior? What’s the pay-off? Perhaps an attempt to become reconciled to being wronged, or to feel the exhilaration of righteous indignation, or to exhaust the feeling through excess or to solicit commiseration? And even if I believe the sentiment in the heat of the moment, do I truly believe it?  Is it a transient belief, just passing through? Or is it a sleeping-dog belief that is quiescent most of the time, but comes to the fore with the right trigger? (But always “there”, deep-down).

Reference

Ellis, A. (1994). Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy, NY: Birch Lane Press

In the last post I said that anxiety and fear are more responses to the absence of comforting beliefs than the presence of uncomfortable beliefs.

It’s like with attachment theory, where so much hinges on whether the toddler perceives the caregiver as a safe haven. A toddler that lacks such faith in the caregiver copes poorly with stress and uncertainty. A toddler who is securely attached to the caregiver is freer to explore new environments, confident there will be a secure base to return to.

Secure attachment provides a foundation for resilience and a sense of control. A secure toddler can always return to home base, where she will be safe and loved. Or at least she will  have faith that the caregiver will return. That certainty encourages exploratory behavior – going where baby has not gone before – which in turn increases tolerance of uncertainty and a willingness to power through anxiety….resulting in a succession of discoveries and delights, setting the stage for more confident explorations.

Of course, early experience is not destiny.

Reference:

Ainsworth,  MD (December 1969). “Object relations, dependency, and attachment: a theoretical review of the infant-mother relationship”. Child Development. Blackwell Publishing. 40 (4): 969–1025. doi:10.2307/1127008

Anxiety and fear are fed more by the absence of belief than its presence. Cognitive psychologists often see psychological dysfunction as a matter of “irrational beliefs”. And they point to evidence of such beliefs from self-report questionnaires that consist of forced-choice questions: do you believe ‘x’ or not? Problem is, the essence of “belief” is faith – certainty.   Yet certainty is often a matter of degree:  it’s not either you have it or you don’t – it’s how much of it do you have.

If an opinion is less than certain, it is not a belief.

What lets fear in is the uncertainty, not the belief.

Uncertainty without the compensation of belief – that ultimately it will work out, that there is a secure harbor, despite the presence confusion – creates a vacuum that is filled by alarm.

“Bad things will happen” is not the language of fear. “Bad things might happen” is.