Basically, I think all the exercises and Socratic questioning and so forth are helpful on their own, in terms of quick symptom relief.
But I think the lasting change comes from people gaining the understanding, on the rock-bottom level that only comes from experiencing it for themselves over and over, that thoughts (and feelings) are not reality, not the self, and not permanent. The self is the pond; thoughts and feelings are ripples on the pond. Just because you feel that something is true doesn't mean it literally is true.
I think a lot of problems stem from or are exacerbated by the belief/feeling that negative feelings last forever an represent the literal truth about one's self and the world. Being sad and scared is terrifying and awful if you think you'll always feel that way, and the fact that you're sad and scared means that something terrible is going on.
But if you've spent a long time looking at and interrogating your thoughts and testing them against reality, you get an intuitive sense that emotions are real, but transient, and may not be based on any sort of literal truth. If you have that sense, you still have negative and dysfunctional thoughts and emotions (hopefully fewer of them), but you can tolerate them way, way better.
In short: I think CT is really about learning to tolerate negative emotional states. It's just easier for lots of people to work on emotions via thoughts than on emotions directly. And once you learn to tolerate negative emotional states, they bother you less, and then you have those states less.
This is the mindfulness-based approach
But I think the lasting change comes from people gaining the understanding, on the rock-bottom level that only comes from experiencing it for themselves over and over, that thoughts (and feelings) are not reality, not the self, and not permanent. The self is the pond; thoughts and feelings are ripples on the pond. Just because you feel that something is true doesn't mean it literally is true.
I think a lot of problems stem from or are exacerbated by the belief/feeling that negative feelings last forever an represent the literal truth about one's self and the world. Being sad and scared is terrifying and awful if you think you'll always feel that way, and the fact that you're sad and scared means that something terrible is going on.
But if you've spent a long time looking at and interrogating your thoughts and testing them against reality, you get an intuitive sense that emotions are real, but transient, and may not be based on any sort of literal truth. If you have that sense, you still have negative and dysfunctional thoughts and emotions (hopefully fewer of them), but you can tolerate them way, way better.
In short: I think CT is really about learning to tolerate negative emotional states. It's just easier for lots of people to work on emotions via thoughts than on emotions directly. And once you learn to tolerate negative emotional states, they bother you less, and then you have those states less.