Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a form of therapy that has been proven to be effective in dealing with a wide variety of issues and challenges. These include depression, anxiety, PTSD, panic disorders, alcohol, marital and relationship problems, eating disorders and other mental illnesses where challenging negative thoughts, re-framing, mindfulness, behavioral activation, goal setting and coping techniques can be applied.
Several studies have shown that CBT has more of an impact than other forms of psychological therapy and leads to significant improvement in functioning and quality of life. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy offers numerous benefits, making it a popular choice for mental health treatment. It helps individuals identify and challenge negative thought patterns, leading to improved emotional regulation and coping mechanisms. CBT is structured and goal-oriented, allowing for measurable progress and providing a sense of accomplishment.
The core philosophy of CBT is that challenges in one’s life are in part due to unhelpful and negative thinking. Individuals dealing with psychological problems can learn techniques to help them think differently. The goal of CBT is to reduce and relieve the presenting symptoms and create stability in one’s life by controlling their thoughts and behaviors.
When inaccurate or negative thinking occurs, applying CBT techniques can assist an individual to view challenging and stressful situations with a new positive perspective and clarity, and respond to issues in a more effectual way.
CBT emphasizes the “here and now,” rather than what caused the individual’s issues. It’s important to address one’s history and why the current thoughts and behaviors have occurred, but the primary focus is on moving forward and applying effective tools and strategies to cope with the stressors of one’s life.
CBT is helpful to address challenges brought on by emotional and stressful events. For example, it may help you to:
- Manage and cope with symptoms of mental illness.
- Assist in the prevention of a relapse.
- Avoid using unnecessary medications.
- Cope with grief or loss.
- Manage emotions.
- Resolve conflicts by learning and applying more efficient ways to communicate.
- Challenge negative or intrusive thoughts.
- Address and confront emotional trauma related to abuse or violence
- Cope with a medical illness.
- Manage chronic physical symptoms.
CBT often includes:
- Learning about your mental health condition.
- Learning, practicing and applying techniques such as mindfulness as a form of relaxation, coping, re-framing, resilience, challenging negative thinking, behavioral activation and stress management.
Your therapist will encourage you to talk about your thoughts and feelings and what’s troubling you. Don’t worry if you find it hard to open up at first, that’s a normal part of the process. Your therapist can help guide the conversation and assist you in gaining insight and confidence and increase the comfort level after a therapeutic alliance has been formed.
CBT usually addresses specific problems, using a goal-oriented approach. As the therapy progresses, your therapist might ask you to do homework or set goals. Sometimes it might even get uncomfortable. This includes outdoor activities if one is experiencing social anxiety, confronting an avoidant behavior, exercise or reading.
It’s normal that during CBT sessions an individual might become upset, cry, or even feel angry because CBT causes you to explore painful emotions and feelings. When applying exposure therapy during a CBT session in a safe and controlled environment, it might require you to confront situations you’d rather avoid. These situations can include placing a phone call, communicating with someone, flying on an airplane, or walking into an elevator or grocery store. This form of therapy is imperative to begin the process of confronting your avoidance and could lead to temporary stress or anxiety.
Steps in CBT
- Identify troubling situations or conditions in your life. These may include such issues as a medical condition, divorce, grief, negative thoughts, anger or the classic symptoms of a mental health disorder. It’s beneficial for you and your therapist to spend some time deciding what problems and goals you want to focus on and what issues you need to confront.
- Become aware of your thoughts, patterns of behaviors, emotions and beliefs about these problems. Once you’ve identified the problems to work on, your therapist will encourage you to share your thoughts about them. This may include observing what you tell yourself about an experience (self-talk), your interpretation of the meaning of a situation, and your beliefs about yourself, other people and events. Often, your therapist will encourage you to journal your thoughts, feelings and goals.
- Identify negative or inaccurate thinking. Your therapist may ask you to focus on your physical, emotional and behavioral responses to different situations. This is to guide you in recognizing patterns of thinking and behavior that might be a contributing factor to your current situation.
- Reshape negative or inaccurate thinking. Your therapist will likely encourage you to ask yourself whether your view of a situation is based on fact or on an inaccurate perception of what’s going on. This step can be difficult. You may have long-standing ways of thinking about your life and yourself. With practice, helpful thinking and behavior patterns will become a habit and won’t take as much effort.
Results
Cognitive behavioral therapy may not cure your condition or make an unpleasant situation go away. But it can give you the power to cope with your situation in a healthy way and to feel better about yourself and your life. Unfortunately, distressing images of abuse to trauma will not go away and that is not the function of therapy. Therapy allows an individual to process the emotions associated with the event and assist in applying techniques that are beneficial in confronting thoughts or images.
In closing, you control your thoughts and your thoughts do not control you; CBT helps you to become the guard dog for your mind.