What is "Humanistic and Cognitive Psychology?"

Humanistic psychology approaches human behavior from a more theoretical approach and looking as the essence of “being” human. When I use the term humanistic psychology, I am referring to the fact that we are all human and tend to have similar behavioral patterns regardless of the culture, age, ethnic or religious affiliation.

The term cognitive psychology was developed about fifty years ago to refer to that capacity of humans to understand their cognitions or thoughts. The theory is that when we can understand our thoughts, when can make conscious choices differently as we strive to change our otherwise painful behaviors. Basically, I encourage people to begin to accept that there is hope on the horizon, change is something that happens daily whether we want it to or not, and that we can learn to be more proactive in our own behavioral choices as we build trust within our selves to learn to change. A metaphor that I use frequently with patients is that if they have been writing all their life with their right hand, the skills they will learn in psychotherapy are the same as if I was teaching them to write with their left hand. It takes the same kind of focused attention and effort to learn about their new choices for change as it did to learn to write the first time. Another analogy that I often use is to picture holding both hands in front of you where one hand represents how you used to think, feel, and behave and the other hand represents how you want your life to be. It is the job of the cognitive psychotherapist to help you build that bridge to change from how you were to how you want to be. We all have the capacity to learn as long as we can rub two synapses together.