CBT Triangle: A Map for Understanding How to Feel Better
The CBT triangle (or cognitive triangle) is a model for illustrating the relationship between thoughts, behaviors, and emotions. This model acts as a map for understanding the relationship between these three points (thoughts, behaviors, and emotions), and how we can make changes to habits of thought and behavior to help us feel better. This model forms the foundation of cognitive-behavioral therapy.
On each point of the CBT triangle are thoughts (cognitions), behaviors, and emotions (hence: cognitive-behavioral therapy). Each one of these points influences the other two. Therefore:
- Thoughts influence behaviors, and behaviors influence thoughts
- Behaviors influence emotions, and emotions influence behaviors
- Emotions influence thoughts, and thoughts influence emotions
When thoughts, behaviors, and emotions influence each other, this creates something akin to exponential growth where these habits reinforce and perpetuate. This can be a very good thing, but it can also work against us. For example, a cognitive distortion such as a negative overgeneralization such as, “nobody likes me,” might lead to a negative behavioral habit, such as social withdrawal, as well depressed mood. The depressed mood may trigger additional negative thinking — rumination, perhaps, which may then cause additional negative behaviors, such as spending the day in bed . . . and the vicious cycle continues. This is one example of how mental illness can develop and sustain itself.
The CBT triangle also illustrates how we can combat mental illness: by following this same model, while making positive changes.
Using the CBT triangle to treat mental illness
When thinking about making a change to one of these points on the CBT triangle, the point we are most interested in, naturally, is that of emotions. I’ve never heard anyone say, “All I want in life is to go to the gym twice a week!” I have, however, heard plenty of people say, “All I want in life is to be happy!” We are emotional beings, and most of us view the arrival at a positive emotional state as a life-long ambition.
Going to the gym twice a week, eating a healthy diet, keeping a gratitude journal . . . these are things we are willing to do to feel good. They are not, for most of us, ends in themselves.
We cannot directly change our emotions
The catch is that of these three points on the CBT triangle, the one we are most interested in — emotion — is the only one of the three that we do not have direct control over. If we could control our emotions, we could simply say, “I’m going to be happy from now on,” and, just like that, we’d never feel sad, angry, or afraid ever again. Obviously, that’s not how it works!
Therefore, the theory of CBT is that, while we cannot directly change our emotions, we can improve our emotional states by harnessing the control we do have over our habits of thought and behavior.
Many of our thoughts and behaviors are outside of our control. We have thoughts that occur automatically or lie so deep within our subconscious that they escape our awareness. When something startles us, for example, a word or phrase might immediately come to mind. We did not choose to think this — it just happened. These are the sorts of thoughts we cannot control. Similarly, we may harbor beliefs about ourselves, others, or the world at large that we cannot quite seem to articulate.
Many of our behaviors are outside of our control, also. We have automatic behaviors (i.e., reflexes), such as kicking our knee when the doctor taps it with a rubber mallet, or instinctively jumping when something frightens us. Additionally, we also fall into habits of posture, body language, and routine which can evade our conscious awareness.
We can change certain thoughts and behaviors
So, we have to make do with the limited control we do have over our thoughts and behaviors. The good news is that this limited control has proven to be enough to make significant improvements to our emotional states.
The treatment of mental illness from a CBT perspective is centered around exploring and identifying negative habits of thought and behavior. Once we have identified the problematic habits, they we will begin to work on finding healthier replacements for these habits.
Addressing problematic thought and behavior habits concurrently will maximize the efforts of each, as the effects of each change will begin to work their way around the CBT triangle to emotional states. For example, if a person suffering from depression is spending long periods of daytime in bed, lost in rumination, some early behavioral changes in the therapeutic process might be to:
- Take a shower, get dressed, and go out for a fifteen minute walk each morning.
Early cognitive changes might including:
- Log your mood at certain intervals each day, identify any specific thoughts occurring at the time that may be influencing this mood, and then identify alternative perspectives to these thoughts that may be healthier and more realistic.
When we make these changes, the influence of these changes will work their way around the CBT triangle to all of its points, including our emotions. The CBT triangle gives us a roadmap to positively changing our emotional states without having direct control over them.
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