In our practice, many individuals come in feeling utterly defeated by their emotions. They often believe their anxiety, sadness, or stress is just a permanent part of who they are. They might say, “I just am a worried person,” or “The world is just too much for me to handle.” There is a key insight […]
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In our practice, many individuals come in feeling utterly defeated by their emotions. They often believe their anxiety, sadness, or stress is just a permanent part of who they are. They might say, “I just am a worried person,” or “The world is just too much for me to handle.”
There is a key insight that can transform this feeling of helplessness: The source of much of emotional struggle isn’t the world outside, but a powerful, silent architect working inside our mind—cognition, or simply, our thoughts. Cognition is the way our mind takes in information, remembers it, and, most importantly, interprets it. It’s the personal filter we wear every single day. Understanding this filter is the greatest step one can take toward gaining genuine emotional freedom. It’s the powerful, foundational idea behind Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).
Imagine a simple event happens to you today: Your friend doesn’t reply to your text message for five hours.
The event itself is neutral, but your mind immediately jumps in to give it meaning. Observe how two different filters change the outcome:
| Your Cognitive Filter (Interpretation) | What Your Mind Says | Emotional Outcome |
| Filter A (Balanced) | “She must be busy. I’ll catch up with her tomorrow.” | Leads to calm and patience. |
| Filter B (Negative) | “She’s ignoring me. I must have annoyed her. She doesn’t like me.” | Leads immediately to anxiety and sadness. |
The situation is exactly the same, yet your two possible interpretations create two completely different realities. Our emotional pain usually comes not from the event, but from the automatic, unexamined story we tell ourselves about the event.
Within your daily stream of thought, there are sneaky, often incorrect thoughts that pop up instantly and derail your mood. These are called Automatic Negative Thoughts (ANTs).
ANTs are immediate, non-conscious judgments that jump into your head without you even inviting them. They are often rigid and harsh. Think of phrases like:
Because ANTs appear so quickly, we accept them as true facts. We don’t realize they are often just guesses or distortions of reality.
In therapy, the first step is learning to identify these ANTs and treating them not as harsh rules to live by, but as hypotheses to be tested. Just because you think something doesn’t mean it’s true.
We often talk about the CBT Triangle because it is the master map of your inner world. It shows how three elements—Thoughts, Feelings, and Behaviors—are constantly linked and reinforce one another.
The biggest discovery of the CBT Triangle is that it’s a vicious cycle. Your thoughts don’t just cause your feelings; your feelings reinforce your thoughts, and your resulting behavior locks the whole painful pattern in place.
Let’s see this cycle in action:
Notice that the initial Thought is often the engine that drives the entire negative experience. Trying to tell yourself “Just stop feeling anxious” is nearly impossible. The key is to intervene where you can have control, more easily: the Thought (Cognition) corner.
Now, let’s explore what controls those ANTs: your Cognitive Schemas, also known as Core Beliefs.
If your daily thoughts are like the conversation happening in your kitchen, your Core Beliefs are the foundation of the entire house. These are deep, often subconscious, rigid rules we developed early in life based on significant experiences.
They are the fundamental convictions you hold about yourself, others, and the world:
A Core Belief acts as a perpetual, biased filter. When a neutral event happens, the Core Belief instantly triggers an ANT that serves to confirm the Core Belief, even if the ANT isn’t true.
The ultimate goal of deep cognitive therapy is not just to correct the surface thoughts, but to gently uncover and restructure these old, rigid Core Beliefs that keep you trapped in patterns of low mood and anxiety.
Emotional freedom isn’t about being happy all the time; it’s about gaining psychological flexibility—the ability to notice a rigid thought and deliberately choose a different, more balanced response.
This begins with Metacognition: the ability to think about your own thinking.
In our work together, we invite your inner architect to pause and ask your thoughts tough, compassionate questions:
By slowing down the automatic flow of your thoughts, you create a precious moment of space between the event and your emotional reaction. In that space, freedom resides. This fundamental shift—changing the inner attitude—is the greatest pathway to the emotional freedom you seek.