Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, is a treatment for many different mental health disorders that creates positive, controlled connections between thoughts and emotions.
Our thoughts influence our emotions and our emotions influence our actions. Hearing a positive message and believing it will change your emotions about stressors, and your actions will reflect that.
What if our thoughts are distorted? What if we don’t have time to think about a situation, causing us to react impulsively, in a negative and harmful way? What if there are harmful beliefs deep within our subconscious that we aren’t aware of?
Many people with mental health disorders struggle to stay in control of their thoughts. Cognitive behavioral therapy helps to alleviate that struggle by giving us helpful tools that challenge our negative thoughts.
What is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a form of talk therapy that aims to create a positive connection between someone’s thoughts, emotions, and actions. It’s one of the most well-researched and widely used forms of psychotherapy.
CBT helps patients identify the negative distortions they believe and restructure them. This approach is particularly effective because it addresses the harmful thoughts that are at the root of unhealthy behaviors.
By identifying and challenging these negative distortions, individuals can achieve a healthier, more balanced perspective. This new perspective contributes to long-term mental wellness by improving coping skills, behaviors, and emotional regulation.
The History of CBT
Most people attribute Dr. Aaron Beck as the father of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in the 1960s. Although, the foundations of his theories may have begun as early as 1913.
Due to its age, CBT is a well-researched form of psychotherapy. Over time It’s been proven to be an effective treatment for not only mental health issues, but also for some physical ailments such as chronic pain.
The CBT Triangle—Understanding the Connection Between Thoughts, Emotions, and Behaviors
The connection between thoughts, emotions, and behaviors makes up the cognitive triangle. This triangle is the essence of CBT. Connecting thoughts, emotions, and behaviors creates a healthy strategy of gaining control of reactions you may have once thought were uncontrollable.
Thoughts
The first point of the triangle is thoughts. To begin retraining, it’s important to understand your thoughts. This step involves verbalizing what goes through your mind in targeted situations.
Usually these targeted situations are the anxiety-inducing scenarios that trigger symptoms of certain mental health disorders.
Emotions
The second point is emotions. The connection between your thoughts and your emotions will become more apparent. Negative thoughts lend themselves to negative emotions. Likewise, positive or even neutral thoughts can lead to positive emotions.
Behaviors
The third point is behavior. After targeting what goes through your mind and what emotions you feel in these targeted situations, you can begin to identify exactly how they are influencing your negative behaviors.
Read our related article to learn why psychoeducation is important in CBT.
Three Areas of Thinking— Understanding Automatic Thoughts, Core Beliefs, and Cognitive Distortions
CBT approaches thoughts from three different areas:
- Automatic thoughts
- CBT core beliefs
- Cognitive distortions
These are considered areas of cognition, and they influence us in different ways.
Automatic Thoughts
This area of cognition includes unpremeditated thought. It’s what your brain tells you in the moment. How we perceive an event like getting ignored by a friend or getting cut off while driving is important. During each of those events, it’s easy to assume negativity. And those negative thoughts can bring down our moods and affect our behavior.
If we’re able to reprogram our negative automatic thoughts into positive thoughts, we’ll be able to process events more healthily. Even if we can acknowledge that some thoughts are automatic and intrusive, we can learn that they were momentary lapses that don't define us, and we can create new positive thoughts.
CBT Core Beliefs
During CBT sessions, you and your therapist might also work on identifying any core beliefs that are self-sabotaging.
Where automatic thoughts influence us during certain events, core beliefs influence us in a host of ways. They affect how we view ourselves and our reality.
Similar to our automatic thoughts, negative core beliefs can be challenged and changed.
Cognitive Distortions
Another area your therapist may want to work on is any cognitive distortions. These are fallacies that may have existed in your thinking long before any symptoms of a mental health disorder surfaced.
Some of these distortions include:
- Shoulds: developed when a person has a hard set of rules about how everyone should behave
- Heaven’s Reward Fallacy: sacrificing self will eventually pay off
- Always Being Right: feeling a need to put others on trial to prove your opinions are absolutely right
- Emotional Reasoning: believing that your emotions are considered fact
Incorrect perceptions of ourselves, others, and situations cause the emotions that lead to the behavior that a CBT patient wants to change.
Read our related article to discover how to combat negative self-talk.
What Does Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Treat?
CBT can help anyone that’s struggling with unwanted, unhealthy thoughts and behaviors. It’s a powerful therapy modality with a wide range of applications.
Some of the most common mental health issues that CBT can treat include:
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Addiction
- Sleep Disorders
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
- Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
CBT is also effective at helping someone deal with grief, stress, and relationship issues. Even without a formal diagnosis of a mental health or behavioral disorder, CBT can help individuals create healthier thoughts and behavioral patterns.
Read our related article to discover the 4 types of trauma responses.
How Does Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Work?
CBT is usually broken down into four distinct steps:
- Identify and understand thoughts
- Connect thoughts to emotions
- Connect emotions to behaviors
- Adapt healthy behaviors
Over time, this therapy helps people gain control over their thoughts, which in return leads to positive emotions and healthier behaviors.
Goal-Oriented Therapy
CBT is highly goal-oriented. You and your therapist will work together to find real achievable goals to work towards. This could be to change a specific reaction, or to react differently to specific situations and triggers.
Building momentum as you work toward a goal is a motivating aspect of CBT.
With its goal oriented approach, CBT is a short-term method of therapy. CBT is not an evergreen treatment, and patients should expect to end CBT at some point. That doesn’t mean all the work is done, however. Patients use tools they’ve learned in CBT long after they’ve “graduated” from it.
Read our related article to discover what to expect from therapy.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Exercises
While participating in CBT, your therapist may give you some exercises to practice in between sessions as “homework.” These exercises will help you through your therapy sessions but are also helpful for daily life, as they help you boost mindfulness and reduce anxiety.
Journaling
Journaling is a helpful technique to gather thoughts and feelings. Keeping a ledger of general events and any thoughts connected to those events is a great way to find any distorted cognitions or negative thinking that can be challenged and adapted.
A CBT-specific journal may include particular information including:
- Time
- Mood
- Situation
- Intensity of emotion
It’s a bit more structured than freewriting, but that added structure can help identify areas of improvement
Play the Script Until the End
Using CBT for anxiety is a helpful way to understand underlying fears. Playing the Script Until the End is a helpful exercise for people struggling with anxiety.
This exercise involves thinking through a stressful scenario and thinking through the worst-case scenario. By doing this, you may find that the outcome is not as made as your anxiety is making it.
Breathing Techniques
Oxygen is an important ingredient our bodies need to function properly. Frequently taking deep breaths is a helpful way to dump more oxygen into our bloodstream.
Practicing good breathing has many benefits, and can be practiced in a number of ways. The most common form of breathing exercise is box breathing.
Read our related article to learn the differences between individual therapy vs. group therapy.
CBT at Sequoia Behavioral Health
At Sequoia Behavioral Health we take a holistic approach to mental health treatment. Located in Mesa, Arizona, we offer inpatient treatment based on individualized needs. We aim to inspire healthy change by equipping people with the tools to enhance resilience and engage in a life of meaning.
Schedule a call today to see if Sequoia Behavioral Health is right for you.