Non Cognitive Psychotherapy: Some Basics

I said last time that Non Cognitive Psychotherapy (NCP) assumes the link between adverse events and mood (complex emotional state) is informative even if the mood is unpleasant.

Hence, you are not being irrational or illogical in feeling what you do if your pet dog dies and you're in grief (sadness, anger, even fear and depression) about its demise. That's what normal people experience when they undergo significant losses. Furthermore, the attempt to disconnect relevant moods from corresponding events may lead to our becoming less functional in our lives because of the denial of reality.

In Hoover's reckoning the therapeutic task is mood replacement as well as mood reduction.

Irrationality does play a part in emotional discomfort Hoover readily concedes. But more so 'in our attempts to overcome' (p. 25) our distress. That is, often attempts to downplay our moods and the instruction they provide are irrational. (Of course we also suffer from irrational/illogical thoughts and thinking in our malaise but these are symptoms of the adversity not causes of our mood.)

Acknowledgement to Age Newspaper

So we must not attempt, he says, to change our moods in any old fashion but in ways which remain tuned to the nature of the adversities we face.  Without the ability to feel the relevant mood to (say) earthquake possibility we might become apathetic to the threat they pose if we live in an earthquake-prone area. Next time, we will move on to Part One of Hoover's book entitled, The Mechanics of Mood.