Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

a type of psychotherapy treatment that helps people learn how to identify and change the destructive or disturbing thought patterns that have a negative influence on their behavior and emotions.

identifying negative thoughts

• It is important to learn what thoughts, feelings, and situations are contributing to maladaptive, unhelpful, or harmful behaviors.

• This process can be difficult, however, especially for people who struggle with introspection (the skills of understanding yourself). But taking the time to identify these thoughts can lead to self-discovery and provide insights that are essential to the treatment process.

Practicing New Skills

• In cognitive behavioral therapy, people are often taught new skills that can be used in real-world situations.

  • What is going on in your head when this is happening. What's another way that you can look at that? Why does that person have so much power over you? 

• For example, someone with a substance use disorder might practice new coping skills and rehearse ways to avoid or deal with social situations that could potentially trigger a relapse.

  • Once behavior is changing the mind will catch up with that. 

  • Change the way you think - a party does not mean drinking or getting high. Change thought process and behavior. 

Goal setting

• Goal setting helps you to make changes to improve your health and life. During cognitive behavioral therapy, a therapist can help you build and strengthen your goal-setting skills.  

• This might involve teaching you how to identify your goal or how to distinguish between short- and long-term goals. It may also include helping you set SMART goals (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based), with a focus on the process as much as the end outcome.

  • Help change faulty thinking and open their mind’s to the proper solution and goals. 

Problem Solving

• Learning problem-solving skills during cognitive behavioral therapy can help you learn how to identify and solve problems that may arise from life stressors, both big and small. It can also help reduce the negative impact of psychological and physical illness.

problem-solving in CBT often involves five steps

1. Identify the problem

2. Generate a list of potential solutions

3. Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each potential solution

4. Choose a solution to implement

5. Implement the solution

Self-monitoring

• Also known as diary work, self-monitoring is an important cognitive behavioral therapy technique. It involves tracking behaviors, symptoms, or experiences over time and sharing them with your therapist.

  • Recognize behaviors 

• Self-monitoring can provide your therapist with the information they need to give you the best treatment. For example, for people with eating disorders, self-monitoring may involve keeping track of eating habits, as well as any thoughts or feelings that went along with consuming a meal or snack.

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy

•  a structured program of psychotherapy with a strong educational component designed to provide skills for managing intense emotions and negotiating social relationships.

• Originally developed to curb the self-destructive impulses of chronic suicidal patients, it is also the treatment of choice for borderline personality disorder, emotion dysregulation, and a growing array of psychiatric conditions.

Mindfulness

• enables individuals to accept and be present in the current moment by noting the fleeting nature of emotions, which diminishes the power of emotions to direct their actions.

  • You are upset now but you won't be upset in a few minutes, so don’t do anything stupid. Relax and calm down. 

Distress tolerance

• the ability to tolerate negative emotion rather than needing to escape from it or acting in ways that make difficult situations worse.

  • This might be your time to suffer and you need to accept that.

Emotion regulation

• strategies that give individuals the power to manage and change intense emotions that are causing problems in their life.

  • People that have poor emotional regulation get too emotional over nothing. Don't know how to keep emotions in perspective. Start to learn how to look at things differently 

Interpersonal effectiveness

• allows a person to communicate with others in a way that is assertive and maintains self-respect and strengthens relationships. A core principle is that learning how to ask directly for what you want diminishes resentment and hurt feelings.

  • Learning how to make your needs known.

Albert Ellis

developed the first intentionally therapeutic approach to cognitive behavioral psychotherapy, and he initially called it rational emotive therapy (RET).

Ellis ABC model

• A = Activating event

• B = Belief system

• C = Emotional consequences of A and B

  • later added on:

• D = Disputing irrational thoughts and beliefs

  • Your mentality needs to change and stop assuming the worst 

• E = Cognitive and emotional effects of revised beliefs