I’m reworking my rhetoric of cognitive behavioral therapy for depression and OCD arguments. If a patient learns to modulate dysphoria or anxiety through CBT . . . they come to accept that the cause of depression (say, sibling rivalry) is not actually cause for depression, or the cause for alarm (doorknob) is not really cause for alarm.
They have to assimilate paradoxes:
sr = depression (feeling) and sr =/= depression (knowledge)
dk = alarm (feeling) and dk =/= alarm (knowledge)
Thus they come to realize that objects are withdrawn from them (the wholesomeness of the doorknob, the value of germs, etc.), and that they are withdrawn from themselves (they are not the sum of their depressive or OCD symptoms). They have leverage in access to knowledge about themselves, other objects, and how they relate to other objects . . . all of which are withdrawn.
This is true of mindfulness in general.
This is not to privilege one norm or the other . . . but rather to focus on the processes by which patients arrive at states which they find more agreeable. Lots of science here (see my MS *Rhetoric and the Plastic Brain* posted on my website of the same name).
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