The Consistency Model 🏝️

LIFE ON URTH - Episode 087

Mental Health

At the beginning of my psychotherapy training, I felt intimidated by the complex classification of mental disorders. While attending different therapies as an observer during my medical onboarding, one question kept occupying my mind: What are we actually treating here?

Only after a few weeks did I find a model that gave me a sense of orientation. In a depression group, we discussed the “CBT triangle,” consisting of thoughts, feelings, and behavior. All three constantly reinforce each other. I wrote down at the time: Mental disorders are negative, self-stabilizing patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behavior.

The group concluded that thoughts and feelings are harder to change than behavior. From this, the central goal of building positive activities was derived. Looking back, I find this a bit sneaky—because that very discussion in the group already nudges thoughts to change as well. 🤓

That psychotherapy works is well established. What exactly makes it effective was the central question for Klaus Grawe (1943–2005), whose psychotherapy research led to the “Consistency Model.” Grawe focused on the foundation of mental health—not which technique works, but what therapy ultimately aims at.

His conclusion is surprisingly simple: mental health means being in alignment.

Problems arise when goals, needs, and impulses within us are active at the same time but don’t fit together. We want closeness and pull away. We long for rest and constantly push ourselves. Grawe calls this state inconsistency.

The CBT triangle describes how symptoms stabilize—and how to best interrupt patterns. The consistency model explains why they arise in the first place.

Grawe describes that inconsistency doesn’t arise at just one point. It can occur on three levels—and these often reinforce each other:

The level of basic needs
The level of goals and motives
The level of concrete experience: thoughts, feelings, and behavior

The Four Basic Needs

Grawe summarizes them in a few very fundamental categories. Which one is most prominent changes with life stage and biography:

orientation and control
attachment
self-esteem
pleasure seeking and pain avoidance

Orientation and Control

We need a minimum level of predictability—the feeling that we understand what’s happening and can influence our lives. When this need is violated, helplessness, powerlessness, and chronic stress emerge. Many symptoms can be read as desperate attempts to regain control.

Attachment

Humans are social beings. Closeness, belonging, and reliable relationships are not extras—they are biologically wired. When attachment is missing or is experienced as unsafe, the system goes into alarm. Loneliness doesn’t hurt by accident; it’s an ancient warning signal. For a long time, exclusion meant death.

Maintaining and Enhancing Self-Esteem

We need to feel okay with ourselves. Not perfect, but acceptable. When self-esteem is chronically threatened, shame, inner pressure, and the urge to prove oneself or hide arise. Many performance and adaptation patterns can be understood from this need.

Pleasure Seeking and Pain Avoidance

Our system orients toward approach or withdrawal. We want more of what feels good and less of what feels bad. That’s functional. It becomes problematic when pain avoidance turns into the dominant principle—when short-term relief costs long-term freedom.

Motivational Schemas

When basic needs are violated, inconsistency and inner tension arise. Our psychological system responds by forming goals and motivation—not abstractly, but very practically: What do I need to do to reduce this tension?

Grawe distinguishes two fundamental directions of movement.

There are motivations that move us toward something, driven by interest, curiosity, or a desire for growth.
And there are motivations that mainly want one thing: to get away from something.

Approach on the left, avoidance on the right. Which side feels better?

An avoidance goal might be: I don’t ever want to be as stressed as I was last year.
The same thing as an approach goal: I want to experience more calm in my daily life.

In the consistency model, approach goals are considered the healthier form of orientation. They are more concrete, positively phrased, and give the system a clear direction. While avoidance goals only define what should no longer happen, approach goals describe what is allowed to grow instead. That makes them more specific, more testable, and more grounded in everyday life—“SMART,” in the classic sense. Most importantly, they generate motivation through interest rather than fear.

Avoidance goals typically arise where needs have been repeatedly violated—where closeness became dangerous, safety fragile, self-esteem threatened.

The system then doesn’t primarily learn: What’s good for me?
But rather: What must never happen again?

The problem isn’t avoidance itself. In the short term, it’s often highly effective—like running from a lion. Fear drops, tension eases, control returns. In the long run, however, avoidance goals narrow our range of action. Life becomes organized around risks instead of values.

At this level of motivations and goals, patterns emerge that manifest as symptoms in experience: withdrawal, perfectionism, tension. Not because something is “going wrong,” but because the system is consistently trying to prevent further need violations.

Motivational schemas are the director.
Thoughts, feelings, and behavior are the stage.

Our Experience

The visible surface of psychological dynamics consists of thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Here we experience inconsistency as symptoms: rumination, withdrawal, overwhelm. They can be understood as attempts to regulate tensions from the other levels.

The CBT triangle shows how these patterns stabilize themselves. Thoughts evaluate situations, feelings color these evaluations emotionally, and enacted behavioral impulses confirm the system. Those who withdraw experience less correction. Those who avoid learn short-term relief. Stable loops form and, over time, become familiar.

To interrupt entrenched patterns, we first need attention—then courage. We can only change automatisms we notice. The interruption will feel uncomfortable at first, which is why engaging with new experiences requires courage.

Suffering emerges on the level of experience—but not its cause. Thoughts, feelings, and behavior are not random disturbances. They are understandable responses to underlying goals and needs. If those remain untouched, change stays fragile.

Which basic need is most central in your current phase of life?
Are you orienting yourself more toward avoidance goals or approach goals?
How does that show up in your experience?

✒️ Quote of the Week: “When you come to see you are not as wise today as you thought you were yesterday, you are wiser today.” -Anthony De Mello

🎧 Song of the Week: Hällas - Bestiaus

📺 Video of the Week: The Most Dangerous Mindset I See as a Therapist

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Adrian / Urth

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