Cognitive De-structuring

The approaches to psychotherapy known as "Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy" and "Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy" are said to be methods of "cognitive restructuring."  You identify your irrational thoughts and see how they lead to painful emotions like fear, depression, anger, etc.  You then notice how those irrational thoughts and their resulting emotions lead to actions that cause even more pain for yourself and others. 

Thought = Emotion = Behavior.  Therefore, if we want to change our emotions and behavior we need to work on changing our thoughts.  This is where cognitive restructuring comes in.  We replace our irrational, unhealthy thoughts with rational, healthy ones.  We "challenge" our unhealthy thinking.  Healthy thinking will lead to healthy emotions that result in healthy behavior.  Everything becomes so healthy!  OK, now I am being sarcastic. 

So, how does The Work of Byron Katie and other forms of nondual inquiry differ from this approach?  My partner is always saying that The Work is just a re-packaged form of REBT.  I have been telling him over and over again that this is not so.  However, I have been having a hard time explaining how it differs.  I have done much thinking about this and have finally figured it out.  At least I think I have. 

I know that I am not the first one to put it this way.  I have recently been reading The Sacred Mirror: Nondual Wisdom and Psychotherapy.  There is a chapter in this book called "Deconstructing the Self: The Uses of Inquiry in Psychotherapy and Spiritual Practice" by Stephan Bodian that specifically refers to The Work along with other methods of inquiry.  He essentially says the same thing that I have realized.  He calls it "deconstructing" to distinguish it form "reconstructing."  In Emptiness Dancing Adyashanti says it in his own way.  He refers to the difference between "re-framing" and "de-framing."  Along with those terms ("deconstructing" and "de-framing") I would like to add a third - "cognitive de-structuring."

That little prefix "de" means "undoing."  That other prefix "re" means "repetition of a previous action; back to an earlier state or condition; again; contrary."  De-construction, de-framing and de-structuring, therefore, have to do with undoing our mental constructs, frames of reference, and thought structures.  We are not repeating the same old process of creating mental constructs - no matter how "healthy" they might be.  We are not going back to an earlier state.  We are not doing again what has failed us in the past - i.e., constructing thoughts to explain reality.  We are not creating thought forms that are contrary to the way things are.

The process, using The Work, is something like this:  We identify our unhealthy thinking.  We inquire into the truth of these thoughts.  We see the suffering that results from believing thoughts that we do not know are even true.  We get a glimpse of what life would be like without these thoughts and we then turn them around.  All of this results in our thoughts loosening their grip on us.  We do not change them.  We do not stop them.  We question them, and they let go of us.  The thought structures are seen as just that - thought structures.  They are not reality.  And, as Eckhart Tolle says in A New Earth, "all structures are unstable."

Someone might say, "Well, this undoing of thought forms will result in someone who can not stand for anything - someone who is spineless - someone who will be taken advantage of.  Plus, it is not possible to exist free from thinking."  My response to that would be, "Can you really know that's true?"  My experience has been that the more I question my thinking the clearer I become.  I seem to become more sure of "myself" instead of less sure.  The result of inquiry seems to be different from the expectation. 

I am having a hard time explaining what I mean by this result - perhaps because I am still "new" to all of this.  I have not been doing The Work as long as some have.  Therefore, I am attempting to explain something that probably can not be understood intellectually.  It can only be experienced.  Perhaps that is why my partner keeps saying The Work is nothing but REBT.  He only knows about it from me.  He has not done it himself.  He will not know until he knows.  The same applies to me...