Can you tell me more about "rigid patterns?"   You used it in your

> info piece. Thank you."

>

You are referring to the practice information page, where I talk about a special interest of mine.

Rigidity means that something is inflexible and hard to bend. 

Cognition means thinking. 

"Cognitive rigidity" as a temporary state has to do with the effects of stress and crisis. 

Stressful events set in motion old, automatic habits of thought, emotion, and behavior. This is a typical occurrence in just about everybody. We differ in terms of which stresses set us off, and which old patterns we each learned to go back to.  Otherwise we are the same.

There is lots of research on this, and with brain imaging we can actually see two circuits:  one for routine conditions and one for emergency, for a fast response.  Of course, when the stress is social, a fast response is not always the best one.

It interests me because, once a way is found to interrupt these old, rigid patterns, then most people act and feel the way they would prefer. So, whether I'm working with cognitive focus, anxiety, depression, self-confidence, or communication problems, it will usually include this perspective.

As a psychologist, when you work on the stress-changes that people go through, you tend to fall through the theoretical cracks. A cognitive-behavioral therapist might think I was a humanistic therapist or even a psychoanalytic therapist compared with them, but a humanistic therapist would think I looked like a behavior therapist. 

I call the model "bimodal" because of the two "modes" or ways the mind works: more flexible as pleasure and relaxation increases, and more rigid as stress increases. 

Comparing this to the dominant model these days, the cognitive therapists are correct that thoughts often determine emotions, because of the way that our feelings are created by what we think is happening.  On the other hand, feelings determine thoughts too because we are bimodal. So, I'm just not one-way about the relationship between feelings and thoughts. 

Of course, this all matters a lot because our thoughts and feelings both finally create our actions.  You cannot make changes without them.