CBT is revolutionary
The CBT ‘Self-Help’ Revolution So you can see that CBT is different to the traditional ‘talking therapies’… Instead, it is an action-oriented approach to managing our thinking (cognitive), our feeling (emotional), and our doing (behavioural) interactions and disturbances. According to CBT, it is largely our thinking about events that leads to emotional and behavioural upsets. With an emphasis on the present, individuals are taught methods and techniques that show how to examineCBT, (the acronym stands for 'Cognitive Behavioural Therapy'), is the world’s fastest growing therapy - and it’s two founding fathers, Aaron Beck and Albert Ellis, consistently poll in the top 3 of the world’s most influential psychotherapists - generally beating Freud and his traditional ‘Woody Allen’ and ‘Tony Soprano’ style psychoanalysis. In fact, had Tony Soprano been under his care, Aaron Beck says he “could have cured his panic attacks in two sessions. Instead, Dr Melfi kept the Sopranos mob boss on the couch for years with traditional psychoanalysis, delving into his childhood and deconstructing his dreams. She was just following the old road - it's all due to his mother - rather than getting from him what he feels and thinks". and challenge the self defeating thinking and beliefs which cause their unhealthy emotions and behaviours.
CBT theory posits ‘the only thing in this world that can make you anxious, aggressive, or depressed… is YOU! It says that human beings create their own needless suffering of negative emotions through their negative and distorted style of thinking. For instance,
A CBT therapist would work with you to help identify your negative automatic thoughts (eg. ‘I’m boring’, ‘nobody likes me’, I won’t be funny’, They’ll think I’m dull’, ‘they don’t want to be stuck here with me’… and so on) – and will get you to examine the evidence and question the validity of them. ‘So where is the evidence?’ they’ll constantly ask. ‘What are alternative possibilities?’.
Veronica Walsh of the Dublin company CBTandFeelingGood.com goes further, and promotes the treatment as a ‘self-help’ toolbox that clients can take away and use themselves after attending only one session with her. We teach you new coping skills without the time and expense of months of weekly one-to-one therapy. There is of course a place for good therapy, it’s fantastic… but let’s face facts - not everybody has the inclination or the money or the time to take it up, even though they might be very unhappy with the way they think and feel and act sometimes. CBT is wonderful, and it’s simple and user friendly, it has no class boundaries or restrictions. It can be used by everybody, everyday, to improve your life, to help you to ‘feel good’ much more of the time, even if bad situations don’t change. We teach the theory and the use of the methods and techniques in one easy fun interesting session – helping you to help yourself and effectively become your own therapist – taking therapy out of the counselling rooms and turning it into education.” When asked about the difference between traditional psychoanalysis and CBT, Veronica said “There's a joke that says - what if you were out driving and got a flat tyre, and when you pulled into a garage and asked the mechanic to fix it, he said, 'no, it's best if we walk back down the road a few miles and find the nail that caused the problem and discuss it and understand it'.... in CBT we fix the puncture and get you happily on your way!” The basic theory is that we humans tend to let our thoughts run our emotions much more than we realise, needlessly upsetting ourselves over situations inappropriately if those thoughts are off-base. This can cause very real and debilitating problems. It's easy to imagine how an individual susceptible to anxiety or depression could let thoughts like 'I'm a terrible person' or 'my life is hopeless' take over. CBT can help to rewrite that script.
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