Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
THE standard in evidence-based psychotherapy
CBT Will Give You Control Over Your Life
Thoughts-Feelings-Behaviors
These are the three components that make up everything in the mental health conversation. Everything about how we cope with our world is one of these three things. Think of a triangle and each of these at one point. Each one affects the other two. Knowing how each aspect affects the other two can help you gain more control over your situation.
CBT is the Tried and True, most popular and most well-researched evidence based form of psychotherapy out there. It is easy to understand and apply. It helps give the mess inside your head and in your life structure. Understanding how these three work in your life gives you a solid foundation to understand why we do what we do and how to move forward with hope.
My Preferred Therapy Since 16
I began thinking about being a psychologist since I was 15 years old. A bit of a geek, I admit. I started studying relationships, how to date successfully. I still have the two books I started off with all those years ago. A year later, I read The Marriage Builder by Larry Crabb. It was not just a book on how to build a good romantic partnership, it also started me on how to see mental health issues from a CBT perspective. Crabb very much followed the basic teachings of Albert Ellis, a pioneer in psychotherapy and developer of CBT. It made sense to me and was a fundamental foundation to the rest of my 10 year college career to become a doctoral level psychologist.
Thoughts: The Key to Better Mental Health and Relationships
In any given situation, we have dozens of different thoughts come into our minds, many of which we are not even aware exist, yet they affect us strongly. Many of these thoughts will be contradictory to each other. Also, I do not care how smart you are, some thoughts will be irrational, or silly, petty, childish, sinful. Some thoughts may be perfectly rational, given a tough situation you find yourself in, but they may not be helpful to continue on optimally in that situation.
These thoughts are learned from a variety of sources. Our parents, and lessons learned childhood shape our thoughts, assumptions and expectations. Our thoughts are also shaped by our early school, social and sexual experiences, our first romantic relationships, and certainly our first breakups and heart aches. Mass and Social Media also play a huge impact on these thoughts.
The evaluations we make about our self-esteem, need for love, fear of abandonment, sense of accomplishment, and purpose in life - all need to be understood. Our mental toughness and ability to handle stress, our moral reasoning, self centeredness and compassion, all are key thoughts that shape our mental health.
We learn to think about life, others and ourselves by all of the above types of thoughts. Problems come up, I believe, because of faulty logic in our thoughts. Everything makes sense to us in the moment, but when we can take a step back, become more self-aware of these little thoughts, we can re-examine them in a healthier light, see the better logic, and get rid of the problematic thoughts that bring us down.
Emotions - Are You Controlled by Them?
Life is emotions. This is a good thing-overall. However, the three primary negative emotions-Depression, Anxiety, and Anger-can make life miserable. These emotions can feel like that control, or ruin, our lives. However, they do not just spontaneously appear and hurt us. It may feel like anxiety just hits. However, you need to understand that emotions are not separate entities that just appear out of nowhere and attack us.
It is our thoughts that cause almost every emotion. In order to feel anger-you must first have a thought come into your mind-one of injustice. Anxiety requires you to have what i like to call an “Oh no!” thought. Depression must first have thoughts of sadness, disappointment, hopelessness to have come about.
This brings us back to the thoughts. If you are having a problem emotion, which is what always brings someone to therapy, then you must first have had some negative thoughts. Find the problem thought, fix the problem emotion.
Our minds will not easily just let go of these thoughts though. They are well entrenched and we think they serve a purpose. It is hard to explain quickly in writing, but there is a part of us that wants to feel depressed, anxious, angry. That is right. Part of you may actually want to feel those bad feelings. We think they serve a purpose and we do not easily want to let go of them.
An additional problem is that once we are emotional, our brains then start changing our thoughts. If we get depressed, we then start looking for everything else sad in our life. The same happens with the other negative emotions. So, we think something negative, we then feel something negative, then we then think even more negative things and it snowballs downhill from there.
Behaviors - How We Live Our Life
How do you behave? Do you over react? Yell? Not take care of yourself well? Retreat into yourself, into self-harming behaviors?
The most common pattern with us humans is that when a situation presents itself, you first analyze it cognitively with thoughts, then react with emotions, and then you act - perform behaviors- based on your emotions. This is normal, but not always healthy.
Instead, your behaviors should be based on solid logical truths, regardless of how you feel at the moment, not your emotions, that can change like the wind.
When you act only based upon your emotions, you are inconsistent and it will lead to many problems. If you only act loving when you feel love, your relationships will fail. When you are only motivated to achieve when you feel like working hard, you will never achieve.
Putting It All Together: Significantly Improving the Quality of Your Life.
You need to understand CBT so that you can learn to have control over your emotions, your actions, your thoughts, thus, significantly improving the quality of your life. Each of these three points play off of each other and affect each other. Understanding how and in what ways they affect each other can make a big difference in how we understand ourselves.
CBT is not hard to understand or apply in your life. It is not weird, New Age type. It is just plain normal common sense.