One experiences that one does not have to be a victim of old thought patterns and negative programming that may have arisen from previous difficult situations or the unchecked adoption of beliefs of parents or society. With the methods of CBT one can systematically determine what kind of thoughts produce what kind of experienced reality. For many people it is a surprise at first to realise through how many filters (unconscious beliefs), which coloured every perception, they have looked at themselves and the so-called reality. The individual concepts of reality, the ideas of how the world, life, God, oneself and everything else supposedly "simply is", were largely adopted from our social environment at a stage of our personality development when the reality testing function of the more mature later ego was not yet developed. Many of our ideas and belief systems therefore have their roots in the socialization process of our childhood and have been further consolidated by corresponding later experiences ("self-fulfilling prophecies"). Some of them prove to be useful for our further development, others are rather obstructive.
The aim of CBT is to first show the correlation between thought contents, the resulting moods and feelings and the resulting actions. Furthermore, it is explored to what extent possibly unfavourable mental programming causes psychological suffering, illness or social problems. These can be replaced, depending on individual goals, by consciously self-chosen beliefs. A greater degree of conscious self-control should open up a greater number of positive behavioural options. Through increasingly experienced self-efficacy*, negative feelings of learned helplessness* decrease significantly (*key concepts in the context of research and treatment of depressive and anxiety disorders). The initiated behavioural changes lead to more positive experiences, increased motivation and thus a more positive view of oneself, one's own environment and the future.