“Whether you think you can or you can’t, either way you are right. -Henry Ford
What is Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT)
Cognitive Behavior Therapy known as CBT (Aaron Beck, Albert Ellis) is a widely used theory in counseling and psychotherapy. It assumes that mental health issues are caused by what you think. For example, something happens and it is your interpretation and perception of the event that causes anxiety, stress, or depression. Your thoughts cause your feelings, which cause you to react in a certain way. Further, many people with depression and anxiety have pessimistic or negative thoughts that produce those feelings. CBT helps raise awareness of these distorted or “irrational” beliefs (Ellis, 1955).
Some common distorted thinking includes:
Catastrophizing– Blowing something out of proportion in a negative direction. For example, you are told that your daughter is struggling with math. You think “this is terrible, she is going to fail, I should have worked with her more”.
Mind Reading– Making negative assumptions about someone else’s behavior. For example, your friend does not respond to your voicemail message in a few hours and you assume “she is angry with me” (when actually she is in the hospital).
Overgeneralization– you draw a conclusion based on one or two examples. You may interact with one doctor and say “all doctors are bad” or interact with a person from a different culture and assume “they are all like this”.
In sum, CBT is a widely used theory that has shown to be effective in counseling and therapy. It has been shown effective for depression and anxiety and other psychological disorders. I have found it is helpful to use this theory in conjunction with others such as EMDR or clients with depression. It assumes if you can recognize your automatic thoughts you can change them. If you can change your thoughts and how you interpret events, it will change your feelings toward the event and you will feel better.