CHAPTER 1 - UNDERSTANDING CBT

Cognitive behavioral therapy is not something that you try on yourself. It's just not going to happen. You have to work with a trained therapist or counselor. While you do the heavy lifting as far as your personal beliefs and your responses to the outside world go, you need expert guidance. You need somebody who knows what they're doing and who knows what to instruct you. They must have been around the block a few times so they know what to anticipate.

This is a one common misconception about cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT for short. A lot of people think that if they just read a book on CBT, they would know the ins and outs of this alternative therapy system, and they can pretty much treat themselves.

There's more to recovery through CBT than just buying a book and learning techniques. You have to actually put them to use. This is the difficult part. You have to keep using these techniques no matter how inconvenient they can be. You have to keep practicing them no matter how busy you get. 

Given these logistical considerations, it's no surprise that a lot of people think that you need specially trained counselors or psychiatrists to go through a CBT program. Most of the time, the main value these professionals bring to the table is they give you a formal structure for CBT. You can still do it yourself-you just have to give yourself the time, the space, and you need to commit to doing CBT consistently.

It's very hard to get out from under your mental habits if you are trying to do CBT alone. You need to be under the proper guidance of an experienced therapist who not only understands how it works and how its principles can be tweaked to apply your personal situation but who also knows how to measure success.

You have to understand that this is a results-based therapy. You don't just undergo CBT because you're just trying to "feel better". Who knows what that means? It's too subjective.

When you're working with a trained cognitive behavioral therapist, you are made aware of how your interpretations of things happening in your life impact your feelings, your interpretation of reality and, ultimately, your behavior.

The main goal of cognitive behavioral therapy is not just to feel good or feel at peace. Medication can do that. Being with the right people can do that.

Instead, CBT aims for something higher. It seeks to teach you how to effectively interpret life in such a way that you remain positive, empowered and in control. In other words, with the proper guidance, CBT would help you handle your life in a very different way.

People who normally seek cognitive behavioral therapy feel that their life is spiraling out of their control. They feel that they're stuck. It's as if they're watching a movie of their life, and they really can't do anything about it except just sit back and let things happen.

Properly implemented, cognitive behavioral therapy enables you to reclaim your personal power over your life. Believe it or not everything that happens in your life is your responsibility ultimately. A lot of people try to run away from this truth. In fact, to a lot of people, this is quite inconvenient and uncomfortable.

Unfortunately, regardless of how we feel, the truth is still the truth. We are always in control of how we respond to the world and this response is never neutral. It always has an impact on what we feel and, ultimately, what we do.

Cognitive behavioral therapy focuses on how people make sense of their world in terms of their interpretation. This is the foundation of cognitive behavioral therapy.

When you change the interpretation, you change how people emotionally respond to things, and this can lead to a profound impact on how they do things.

For example, somebody who is suffering from low self-esteem issues usually looks at any situation from a perspective of doubt. They don't think they're good enough. They don't think they're good-looking enough. They don't think people would like them. They don't think they would belong, so on and so forth.

Since this is how they interpret the signals people and situations give them, it is no surprise that they tend to miss out on opportunities or avoid social settings. They doubt themselves so much. They feel that people would not like them. They feel uncomfortable.

This is not just happening in their heads because when somebody has such a low self-esteem, and they're doubting themselves all the time, this can have physical effects... You can physically feel like you're about to throw up. You feel like you're shaking. You want to curl up into a ball or assume the fetal position.

Unfortunately, people with low self-esteem think that this is natural. They've responded to the world this way for so long they think that it's part of them. Some even say it's just who they are. It's port of their personality. No, it's not.

Cognitive behavioral therapy goes to the root of the problem. The root of the problem is not that feel that you're ugly or that you assume that you are going to screw things up the moment you are given any kind of responsibility.

Instead, it goes straight to the issue - your low self-esteem. Why is that? Why do you automatically feel that people are not going to like you? Why do you automatically fear social settings or any kind of opportunity you learn? How are you looking at your situation? Are there any alternative interpretations?

A crucial part of CBT beat is the identification of negative thought patterns. They have to be clear about their thought process.

CBT doesn't assume that there's something wrong with you. Instead, you are first walked through the process of clearly describing how you view yourself, how you interpret reality and how you find yourself in certain situations.

There's no right or wrong answer here. The focus is objective truth. In other words, it's all about accuracy.

The next step is to look at the thought patterns involved and understand that it's just one possible train of thought.

For example, if you go into a bar and you see a very attractive member of the opposite sex turn around, look at you and laugh. If you have a low self-esteem, you would automatically assume that person is laughing at you. Are there alternative interpretations?

A CBT therapist will step you through the alternatives and help you process that memory in such a way that it doesn't lead to negative thoughts and, ultimately, negative actions.

Maybe in that memory there was somebody cracking a joke behind you or making some faces. Perhaps that good-looking person was looking at that person behind you. It doesn't have to be you.

As long as the alternative interpretation are supported by facts, the CBT therapist can help you come up with a healthier approach to processing social information so you get out from under your social phobia.

Speaking of phobias, CBT is quite effective in this field. Take the case of an individual with dental phobia. This person is just deathly afraid of visiting the dentist. We're not just talking about root canal here. We're talking about just regular cleaning.

A CBT practitioner would ask this person about their past experience going to the dentist. The patient would then go through story after story until they get to the traumatic incident that led to an unhealthy association of the dentist with pain. It may have happened when the patient was five years old.

The therapist would then work with the patient to cut that mental connection between dentist and pain. In other words, they help the person realize that what happened in the past can stay in the past. Just because they had a traumatic experience that one time doesn't necessarily mean that all people going to dentists always suffer the same experience. They may just have been unlucky that day.

Oftentimes, the further we are from the memory, the more we blow it out of proportion. We exaggerate. It may turn out that when the patient was a kid, they just experienced slight pain, but as they got older, they remember the pain as something far worse.

An expert cognitive behavioral therapist can help patients go through this process successfully.

Understanding Anxiety and Depression

Experiencing intermittent anxiety is common and a normal part of life. Nevertheless, individuals with anxiety disorders often have excessive, intense, and persistent fear and worry about everyday circumstances and events. Usually, anxiety disorders involve recurrent episodes of unexpected feelings of intense fear, terror, and nervousness that reach the peak within minutes, also known as panic attacks.

Warning Signs and Symptoms of Anxiety and Depression

You may pinpoint the cause and origin of depression if it is tied to a life event, for instance, the death of a loved one, end of a relationship, or job loss. Sometimes we feel depressed and cannot identify a clear reason. Either way, symptoms and signs of depression ought to be taken seriously.

The symptoms of depression may vary in different people. We will many different types of depression with some being more serious and severe than others. We will look at the symptoms of common depressions that affect a larger population.

Major depression can be devastating. Some individuals have a single major depressive episode while others may have several. Major depression may last for two weeks or more. The main symptoms of major depression include:

• Low mood
• Suicidal thoughts or attempts
• Loss...