Cognitive behavioral therapy techniques was developed by Dr. Aaron Beck around 1976, it is also known as solution based psychotherapy.
The Concept:
The premise of CBT is that our thoughts cause feelings and emotions, positive thoughts are followed up with positive emotions and negative thoughts are followed up with negative emotions. However the interpretation of an event as a positive or negative event is a personal choice and sometimes the person may interpret events negatively which may lead to unhealthy and negative emotional reactions.
The mind cannot interpret every event accurately and your thinking can lead you to attach extreme meanings to relatively minor events.
When you attach a negative meaning to an uncertain event, you’re very likely to experience an unhealthy negative emotion.Linden method is becoming a sensational hit in treating these anxiety disorders along with CBT.
The role of the therapist in CBT is to teach the person to identify and eliminate negative mental filters.
By understanding these negative distortions, the patient is led to the awareness that “feelings aren’t necessarily based on the truth but based more on interpretation of the situation”
Even though emotions appear true and valid in the moment, many actions that result from it may cause you regret and guilt in the future,
David Burns in his book (Feeling good therapy) points out that , “Unpleasant feelings merely indicate that you are thinking something negative and believing it.” This is why, he suggests, “depression is such a powerful form of black magic.”
There are certain patterns of thinking that are identified as distress causing, these negative forms of thinking are called thought distortions. David burn identifies 10 types of thought distortions:
1) All Or Nothing Thinking: You see things in black and white categories. An average or above average performance is not acceptable, this form of thinking develops mostly from school and media pressure to be perfect and high performing achievers, while this kind of thinking maybe helpful when an individual selects a particular goal and goes after it, it can be disastrous when the individual seeks perfection in every area of life. If the performance falls short of perfect, the person sees himself /herself as a total failure.
2) Over generalization: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat. The person thinks that a failed job interview or low performance in an exam means the end of the world and that they are no longer capable of achieving anything worthwhile.
3) Mental filter: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors the entire beaker of water. This type of thinking usually destroys relationships with other people. The person tends to have an eye out for the negative aspect in every situation and they can ignore all the positive aspects in their life, this kind of thinking robs their personal energy.
4) Disqualifying the positive: You reject positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count” for some reason or other. You maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences.
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5) You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion.
Mind reading: You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you and don’t bother to check it out.
The Fortune Teller Error: You anticipate that things will turn out badly and feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact.
6. Magnification (catastrophizing) or minimization: You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else’s achievement), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow’s imperfections). This is also called the “binocular trick.”
7. Emotional reasoning: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: “I feel it, therefore it must be true.”
8. Should statements: You try to motivate yourself with shoulds and shouldn’ts, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. “Musts” and “oughts” are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct should statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment.
9. Labeling and mislabeling: This is an extreme form of over-generalization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: “I’m a loser.” When someone else’s behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him, “He’s a damn louse.” Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded.
10. Personalization: You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event for which, in fact, you were not primarily responsible.
These elements were discussed in great detail by Dr. David Burns in his book, Feeling Good Therapy, Cognitive behavior therapy adopts most of these principles to help the patient overcome their negativity, depression and anxiety.
There is accumulating evidence for the effectiveness of CBT, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and PET scanning have shown increases in blood flow and metabolic activity in the frontal cortex, limbic structures, caudate, and thalamus, with a trend toward right-sided predominance which means that it increases the patients thinking skills and also their intuition.
Patients that undergo cognitive therapy feel good about themselves and develop a healthy self-esteem, they are able to view life events objectively and make good decisions. CBT usually lasts for 10-12 sessions. In some case CBT may be combined with anti-depressant medication to achieve the desired results.
If you’re suffering from anxiety attacks and would like to take control of your anxiety with cognitive behavioral therapy techniques, then take a minute and check this resource which will provide you with detailed information on the various treatment methods.
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