Patterns of Thought

Patterns of Thought
While the cognitive content of depression emphasizes the negative view of
the self, the world, and the future, anxiety disorders are characterized by
fears of physical and psychological danger. The anxious patient’s thoughts
are filled with themes of danger. These people anticipate detrimental occurrences
to themselves, their family, their property, their status, and other intangibles
that they value.
In phobias, as in anxiety, there is the cognitive theme of danger; however,
the “danger” is confined to definable situations. As long as phobic sufferers
are able to avoid these situations, they do not feel threatened and may be relatively
calm. The cognitive content of panic disorder is characterized by a
catastrophic interpretation of bodily or mental experiences. Thus, patients
with panic disorder are prone to regard any unexplained symptom or sensation
as a sign of some impending catastrophe. As a result, their cognitive
processing system focuses their attention on bodily or psychological experience.
For example, one patient saw discomfort in the chest as evidence of an
impending heart attack.
The cognitive feature of the paranoid reaction is the misinterpretation of
experience in terms of mistreatment, abuse, or persecution. The cognitive
theme of the conversion disorder (a disorder characterized by physical complaints
such as paralysis or blindness, of which no underlying physical basis
can be determined) is the conviction that one has a physical disorder. As a
result of this belief, the patient experiences sensory or motor abnormalities
that are consistent with the patient’s faulty conception of organic pathology.