Cognitive Therapy
HealthCognitive therapy – abbreviated as CT – is a kind of talk therapy with no use of medications. Cognitive therapy is based on a cognitive model according to which the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors all are connected.
If an individual can identify the pattern of unhealthy or unhelpful thoughts, and troublesome emotional responses, then it’s possible for that individual to cope with or overcome these behavioral problems.
Cognitive behavioral therapy
Principles of CBT
1. Defective thought patterns:
- It means that many psychological problems arise from unhealthy ways of thinking
2. Unhelpful learning patterns:
- In some cases, psychological problems result from the unhelpful behaviors that have become learned thought patterns.
3. Reversal is possible:
If someone is capable to identify the problem he or she is suffering from and has a better understanding of it, he or she can surely be able to cope with the condition.
They can make their lives better if they can relieve the disturbing symptoms of psychological problems and can lead towards a better quality of life.
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How cognitive behavioral therapy works?
- Recognition of distortions
- Improved understanding
- Implementation of problem-solving skills
- Improvement in the self-confidence level of an individual
- Facing the problems
- Role-playing techniques
- Learning to stay calm
1. Recognition of problem
A problem can’t be treated in a better way if an individual does not have a better understanding of that problem.
Thus, if an individual can understand the distortion that is present in his or her thought patterns he or she can surely be able to cope with it.
2. Better understanding
- If a person has a better understanding of the behaviors, motivations, and thought patterns of other people around him, he can adopt those healthy patterns to make his life better.
3. Implementation of problem-solving skills
- Problems can better be solved if you have good problem-solving skills especially in the case of behavioral issues problem-solving skills can play a major role in overcoming or coping with such problems.
4. Improved self-confidence
Low self-esteem or lesser self-confidence can be a reason for several distorted behavioral problems.
Improvement in self-confidence can help an individual in coping with the problems arising from these minor yet powerful mental issues.
The more a person builds self-confidence in his or her abilities, the more there are chances for him or her to overcome the psychological issues.
5. Facing the problems
Facing the problems rather than hiding from them can give better results. Some people have certain kinds of fears and are unable to face them.
Rather they prefer to avoid them as much as possible. When a person dares to face the fear instead of avoiding it, 90% of his fear dies after facing it once.
6. Role-playing techniques
If a person has a problem with the interactive episodes with other individuals, there is a way to cope up with this problem.
The role-playing method is a method that can be helpful in such cases and a person finally becomes able to face the problematic interactions with people around him.
7. Learning to stay calm
Mental and physical irritation and restlessness can result in worsening of conditions.
The more a person learns to stay calm building an inner peace of mind, the more he can overcome the behavioral problems.
Not all the above-mentioned techniques need to be applied in all cognitive-behavioral therapies. Different situations demand different techniques and it solely depends upon the behavioral pattern of a client and the strategical procedure of the psychiatrist.
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Types of cognitive therapy
Types of CBT techniques
“Thought patterns of an individual can have a serious impact on the emotions, that finally modify the behavioral patterns of that individual.”
For example:
Cognitive-behavioral therapy explains that if a person is consistently having some negative thoughts, it results in building up negative emotions and finally the actions.
Thus, a negative trigger can stimulate further negativities and it messes up one’s whole life. Positivity is the key factor involved in the application of CBT techniques.
Identification of the main issue in someone’s routine life
Understanding the distorted and unhelpful thoughts and their effect on someone’s life
Identification and understanding of the negativity and then exchanging it with the positive energy for better outcomes
Trying to learn the behaviors of the people surrounding you and positively adopting them making them a part of your life.
- Unwinding cognitive distortions
- Cognitive reshaping
- Journaling
- Exposure to trigger and response prevention
- Interoceptive exposure therapy
- The implication of stress-reducing techniques
- Guided discovery
- Behavioral experiments
- Roleplaying
All of them have been explained one by one:
1. Unwinding cognitive distortions
Things cant be treated until one has a better understanding of them. This technique of CBT involves the understanding of disturbing thought patterns and their outcomes in your daily life.
Once an individual has learned to understand or identify the main trigger, it would be easy for him to handle it in a better way.
When you learn to identify the main culprit thoughts with your therapist’s help, it becomes easy for you to reframe or reconstruct them from moving to more positivity.
2. Cognitive reshaping
Restructuring the cognitive distortions is the main goal of the cognitive-behavioral technique. The best thing about this strategy is that you don’t always need a psychiatrist for the implication of this technique.
You can do it by yourself in a much better way once you have unveiled the problem. You can fight an enemy after you recognize him and the same is the case with this CBT technique.
First, you must be aware of the distortion that most commonly affects you, and then you can reframe it. In short, first, you will be identifying the harmful and unhelpful thought patterns and then you will be challenging them.
For instance:
“He ignored me and didn’t talk to me. He doesn’t need me anymore” can be in this way “ He ignored me maybe he is so much indulged in something disturbing that he forgot to give me due attention. It would be better for me to wait until he comes out of his phase”.
3. Journaling
Journaling is a very helpful technique to help us identify the changes in our thought patterns and the triggers behind them.
Writing down the times of a specific mood and the events behind that mood can help an individual to better understand the reason for distortion in thoughts.
Your therapist can give you home assignments to note down the negative thoughts that attacked you in between the therapy sessions and the factors that triggered those thoughts.
He can also ask you to note down all the positive thoughts that you can adopt in those situations. In this way, you will be able to understand the problems and their solutions in a better way.
4. Exposure to trigger and response prevention
People often have certain types of phobias that make their life difficult. For example, hydrophobia, claustrophobias are the things that are associated with a lot of triggering responses.
Some people have obsessive-compulsive disorder and surely their lives are not the same as others. This technique of CBT is mainly for such kinds of people.
In this technique, you have to expose yourself to a specific trigger and learn to refrain from the usual response to the possible extent.
You can note down the changes in both responses, with or without refraining – for a better understanding that how it helped you out.
5. Interoceptive exposure therapy
This CBT technique is mostly used for people who have some panic disorders. Panic disorders and anxiety disorders are the main forms that are treated by interoceptive exposure therapy.
This technique intends to make an individual realize that the panic situation that he or she is afraid of is not so painful although it’s disturbing.
Once a person is exposed to a panic disorder or anxiety situation and learns the outcomes with alert consciousness, he or she will end with a result that situations are not as painful as they used to be.
6. The implication of stress-reducing techniques
Several techniques have used that help to reduce the stress and these techniques may involve:
- Deep breathing
- Muscle relaxation
- Visually descriptive language
All these ways are used to reduce the stress and relax the nerves and are the main techniques for CBT.
7. Guided discovery
Guided discovery is the CBT technique in which your therapist familiarizes himself with the viewpoint you have for a better understanding of your actual thought pattern.
After this, the therapists start a questioning session with you to challenge the believes that you have and to modify your thought pattern, and also broaden it.
If you have some kind of assumptions, the therapist can ask you to prove those assumptions or disprove them with the evidence.
This kind of therapy session is very helpful in modifying the particular thought patterns and assumptions that a patient may have.
When you get familiar with and adopt this CBT technique, it becomes quite easy for you to view things from other people’s perspectives.
It broadens the thinking and helps a person choose a more helpful way leading to betterment.
8. Behavioral experiments
A unique yet interesting technique of cognitive-behavioral therapy is behavioral experiments. This technique is mostly applied to patients who have anxiety disorders.
Catastrophic thinking is the main feature of anxiety disorders and behavioral experiments deal with this kind of thinking.
The process of this CBT technique is before you indulge in a task that usually brings anxiousness and distress, the therapist will ask you to predict the situation that can occur.
When the task concludes, you’ll talk about either the prediction that you initially made came true or not.
With time, you finally start to realize that the worst predictions that you made were not true. Patients are encouraged to start with low-anxiety tasks and move towards the high-anxiety tasks.
9. Role-playing technique
Role-playing techniques in cognitive behavioral therapy help you to get rid of several behavioral problems in relatively tough circumstances.
When you learn to play out various possible situations, it results in less fear and helps to lead you towards betterment in the following ways:
It helps you to improve problem-solving skills
It helps to improve the communication skills and makes the practice of social skills relatively easy for you
Helps to remain confident in various situations
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Frequently asked questions
There are several questions that people ask to satisfy their queries about cognitive therapy. Some of them have been answered in this section:
1. What is an example of cognitive therapy?
Cognitive therapy is a kind of talk therapy aimed at changing the distorted thought patterns of an individual to move from negativity towards positivity.
For example, if a person has a thought pattern that narrates “I’ll never get a permanent job” can be narrated as, “None of my previous jobs have lasted very long. If I reconsider my acts and behavior towards the jobs I will be able to get a long-lasting job.”
2. What is cognitive therapy used for?
Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is a form of psychological treatment that doesn’t involve the use of medications and longer sessions. Most of the time, the patient goes for a self-therapy session once he learns how to do it.
Cognitive therapy has been used for the treatment of a wide range of problems such as phobias, anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, drug abuse, marital issues, multiple eating disorders, and several mental problems.
3. What is the main focus of cognitive therapy?
The main focus of cognitive-behavioral therapy is to identify, understand, and then change the way of thinking, behaving, and talking of a person if it’s not normal.
The main role of therapists in CBT is to help the clients to understand the distorted thought patterns, triggers behind them and then controlling the outcomes of such distorted thoughts.
4. Can you do CBT on yourself?
Yes!
CBT is a kind of psychotherapy technique that an individual can do by himself once he learns to do it by his therapist. A lot of studies support this evidence that a self-directed CBT has been very effective.
Self-help is the best way of understanding and then coping up with the problems and it significantly reduces anxiety and depression if CBT techniques are used and applied properly.
5. What are the benefits of Cognitive behavioral therapy?
There are a lot of benefits associated with cognitive behavioral therapy and some of them have been listed below:
It helps to self-support as multiple people cope with the problems by using self-help CBT techniques
It helps to raise the self-confidence and self-esteem of an individual
Helps to get rid of anxiety and depressive disorders
Helps getting rid of negative thought patterns building up healthy thoughts
Helps in anger management
Improves the skills to communicate with others
Helps to visualize the aspects from other’s point of view
6. What are the four steps of cognitive reconstructing?
Cognitive restructuring means once an individual learns to identify the cognitive problem and then reconstruct or reframes it to be a better version of cognition. Some steps involved in this CBT technique are given as:
Be relax and focus on the ongoing thought patterns for better recognition of the problem
Try to identify the situation and then analyze your mood condition
Try to recognize the thoughts that are not in your control and are quite automatic
Learn to find objective supporting evidence.
7. How much does CBT cost?
CBT is a kind of therapy just like other physical therapies. The difference is that cognitive-behavioral therapy is psychotherapy, so if you have health insurance that covers the medical bills or other hospital expenses then the cost of psychotherapy is also covered in it.
But if you have no health insurance and you have to pay it on your own, it may differ for different therapists and the severity of the problem that you have.
8. How can I change my cognitive thinking?
There is an easy way to change cognitive thinking if an individual learns to identify the problem. Some methods are given as:
Learn to notice the cognitive distortion and focus on one kind of distortion at one time.
Try to track the precision of that specific thinking
Find the evidence in support and not in support of that distorted thought pattern
Tey to change it by moving from negative ones to positive ones.
9. How long is CBT training?
Cognitive therapy training Is not so long and it may last from 5 hours to 8 hours during which the patients/clients are taught the main elements and when the individual is safe to go onto the next, he or she learns to cope up with the problems.
10. Is cbt good for anxiety?
Cognitive-behavioral therapy – abbreviated as CBT - is at present the most widely used psychotherapy to treat anxiety and mood disorders.
It has been effective in treating eating disorders, several panic disorders, social anxiety disorders, several kinds of phobias, and GAD.
Conclusion
Cognitive therapy – which is abbreviated as CT – is a kind of talk therapy with no involvement of medications. Cognitive therapy is based on a cognitive model and according to that model, the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors all are connected.
If an individual learns to identify an unhealthy or unhelpful thought pattern, and troublesome emotional responses, then it’s possible for that individual to cope with or overcome these behavioral problems.
Some common points that are focused on all kinds of CBT techniques are given as:
Identifying the main issue in someone’s routine life
Identifying the distorted and unhelpful thoughts and their effect on someone’s life
Understanding the negativity and then exchanging it with the positive energy for better outcomes
Learning the behaviors of the people surrounding you and positively adopting them making them a part of your life.
Different strategies that are used in cognitive therapy or cognitive behavioral therapy are given as: • Recognition of distortions in thought patterns of an individual
• Improvement in understanding the problem
• Better implementation of problem-solving skills as a part of self-help by an individual
• Betterment in the levels of self-confidence and self-esteem of an individual
• Learning to face the problems such as several phobias or anxiety issues in certain conditions
• The implication of the role-playing techniques for overcoming the cognitive issues
• Learning to stay calm by using several techniques such as deep breathing and muscle relaxing.