The myth of cognitive restructuring
Some wounds do not heal because we finally found a better thought.
Today I spent an hour lying on my back, crying with my body psychotherapist, processing feelings of neglect, abandonment, and abuse that began when I was a baby and toddler and continued thereafter.
Feelings I have carried for a very long time.
Feelings that have shaped how I show up in the world and how life feels from the inside.
And it struck me again:
A great deal of psychology still overestimates how much deep change can be achieved just through thinking.
We can identify the “distorted thought.”
Challenge it.
Replace it with a better one.
Sound insightful.
Understand our history.
And still feel, in our bones:
alone
unsafe
ashamed
too much
not enough
braced for abandonment
Why?
Because much of what most deeply shapes us was not learned as language in the first place.
It was learned earlier than that.
Procedurally.
Somatically.
Emotionally.
Relationally.
Before we had words to explain it.
Before we could “frame” it, let alone “reframe it”.
Before cognition was really in charge at all.
So if my wound was experienced pre-cognitively, why would I expect cognition to heal it?
This is not an argument against insight.
Insight matters.
In the right place.
But insight is not the whole of change.
Some forms of suffering need more than reinterpretation.
They need to be felt.
Processed.
Regulated.
Held in relationship.
Grieved.
Updated in our body.
Practised differently, repeatedly, over time.
That is deeper work.
And it is often more humbling than cognitive work, because looking articulate about our pain is not the same thing as transforming it. This kind of work doesn’t look pretty and can feel almost unbearable; that’s why it needs a courageous, empathically attuned therapist to co-regulate it.
Sometimes what we might think is “doing the work” is still happening at the surface.
Real change often asks for more than explanation.
It asks for contact:
with our feelings,
with our body,
with our younger self who had to carry what was never meant to be carried alone.
That is why deep change is rarely just cognitive restructuring.
It is often emotional processing, somatic work, co-regulation, grief, repetition, and the slow building of new internal capacities.
Not only learning to think differently.
Becoming able to feel differently.
Stay differently.
Feel different.
And live different.