Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is talking therapies that can help you manage your problems by changing the way you think and behave. It is most commonly used to treat anxiety and depression , but can be useful for other mental and physical health problems.
CBT cannot remove your problems but it can help you deal with them in a more positive way. It is based on the concept that your thoughts, feelings, physical sensations and actions are interconnected and that negative thoughts and feelings can trap you in a vicious cycle. CBT aims to help you crack this cycle by breaking down overwhelming problems into smaller parts and showing you how to change these negative patterns to improve the way you feel.
Unlike some other talking treatments, CBT deals with your current problems, rather than focusing on issues from your past. It looks for practical ways to improve your state of mind on a daily basis. CBT has been shown to be an effective way of treating a number of different mental health conditions. In addition to depression or anxiety disorders, CBT can also help people with obsessive disorder, post phobias, eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia, sleep problems such as insomnia, problems related to alcohol abuse,, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS).
CBT can help you to change how you think (cognitive) and what you do (behaviour). These changes can help you to feel better and breathe better. Once you are de-stressed, there is less cognitive load and your breathing centre in brain is relaxed and less stimulated. It looks for ways to improve your state of mind now.
A situation – a problem, event or difficult situation.
From this can follow thoughts, emotions, physical feelings and actions. Each of these areas can affect the others.
How you think about a problem can affect how you feel physically and emotionally. All these areas of life can connect like this: five areas.
What happens in one of these areas can affect all the others. There are helpful and unhelpful ways of reacting to most situations, depending on how you think about it. The way you think can be helpful or unhelpful.
The Situation: You have had a bad day. You are fed up? Go out shopping. As you walk down the road, someone you know walks by and, apparently, ignores you.
This starts a cascade of thoughts, emotions and action which can range from concern for the other person to actually getting in touch with the other person to find if all is well with him.
The negative way of dealing with it involves being down on yourself imagining the person does not like you, complaining of cramps or illness and finally going home to avoid the person.
The same situation has led to two very different results; depending on how you thought about the situation. How you think has affected how you felt and what you did.
So, in case you thought negatively, you have to change your thoughts and actions, pinpoint the problem, address it and find goals.
Then move towards achieving them. Evidence shows CBT works.
