Basic Relational Frame Theory (RFT)

The human capacity to relate concepts arbitrarily

To understand why we suffer the way we do, it is essential to understand the theoretical basis on which this model is based: the Relational Frame Theory (RFT).

This theory postulates that what distinguishes human cognition is our ability to establish relationships between stimuli that are not linked by their physical properties, but by arbitrary social and verbal convictions.

While an animal needs direct experience to learn (e.g., it must touch fire to know that it burns), humans can learn and react emotionally through language and deduction.

Let's imagine an everyday example: if you receive a registered letter with the logo of the tax office, your heart rate may instantly accelerate before you open it. Physically, it's just paper and ink; there's no real biological threat in that envelope.

However, your mind has established an equivalence relationship between that logo and concepts such as "fine," "loss of money," or "legal trouble."

Through relational framing, we connect a neutral stimulus (an envelope) with a life threat, provoking a real fear response.

This capacity is wonderful for civilization, allowing us to plan and build, but it comes at a high cost: our warning system is constantly activated in the face of dangers that are purely symbolic.

The omnipresence of suffering through bidirectionality

Human language possesses a property called bidirectionality. If I show you that the word "fire" represents the physical flame, when you see the flame you will think of the word, and when you hear the word you can imagine the flame and feel the danger.

This means that we can bring suffering into the present moment with the mere mention of a word or a thought.

An animal may be sad if its young are taken from it at that moment, but it does not suffer in anticipation that three years from now it might lose it, nor does it get depressed on a Tuesday thinking about what it lost last Thursday. Humans, thanks to language, break the barriers of time.

We can be sitting on a comfortable sofa, in a safe, air-conditioned room, and yet be experiencing an inner hell because our mind is relating the present moment to a job failure ten years ago or to the imagined possibility of being alone in old age.

This ability to relate "everything to everything" makes psychological suffering ubiquitous.

We do not need the painful event to be physically present; it is enough for our mind to establish the verbal relationship for the body to react with the same chemical and emotional intensity as if the event were occurring here and now.

Summary

Relational Frame Theory postulates that human cognition is distinguished by its ability to establish arbitrary relationships between stimuli through language, without the need for direct experience.

Through these links, we connect neutral stimuli with threatening concepts, eliciting real emotional responses to purely symbolic dangers, activating our warning system through simple words or associations.

This bidirectionality of language allows us to bring suffering into the present, linking the "here and now" with past or future pains, making psychological discomfort ubiquitous and constant.