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Cognitive Behavior TherapyMain techniques used: talking, listening, roleplaying, and completion of assignments. Main goal: unite behaviors and thoughts. Means of achieving goal: revising thoughts. Cognitive therapy or cognitive behavior therapy is a kind of psychotherapy used to treat depression, anxiety disorders, phobias, and other forms of psychological disorder. It involves recognising distorted thinking and learning to replace it with more realistic substitute ideas. It focuses on the thoughts that a youth has. A cognitive therapist incorporates contingency management and reinforcement techniques to teach self-regulation and new ways of coping and problem solving. Youth are taught alternative ways of solving interpersonal conflict and problems through modeling, practice, rehearsal, and role-play. It tries to change some of the patient’s habitual modes of thinking about herself, her situation, and her future. It is related to behavioral therapy because it regards such thought patterns as a form of behavior. Who may benefit from Cognitive Therapy?The cognitive behavior therapy has become the preferred treatment for the following:
What Cognitive Behavior Therapy does?Congitive therapy tries to point out at a number of misconceptions or "cognitive 1) All or Nothing Thinking: You look at things in absolute black-and-white terms. (Example: "I don't think cognitive therapy will solve all my problems, so what's the point in even trying." "There's no point in getting started on this, I'm so far behind I'll never catch up.") 2) Mental Filter: Dwell on negatives and ignore positives. (Example: your boss praises your report but wants a few changes. All you can do is dwell on the criticism.) 3) Overgeneralization: View a negative event as a never ending pattern 4) Labeling: Identify yourself or others with their shortcomings: Instead of "I made a mistake" you think "I am an idiot". 5) Jumping to conclusions:
6) Emotional reasoning: Reason from how you feel: "I feel frightened therefore this must be really dangerous." 7) Discounting the positives: you insist your positive accomplishments "don't count" or are due to luck. 8) "Should statements": criticise yourself or other people based on how you think they "should" act or feel. "I shouldn't have so many cognitive distortions" "I shouldn't be so apprehensive about this". The only "shoulds', "have to" etc allowed are:
9) Magnification or minimization: Blow things out of proportion or shrink their importance inappropriately. 10) Personalization: You blame yourself for something you weren't entirely responsible for or blame others and overlook your own behavior or attitudes. The first step in cognitive therapy is to learn to recognise cognitive distortions. At first you feel like your whole mind is a hypertext document and every thought you click on reveals some cognitive distortion. To say you "I shouldn't have so many cognitive distortions" or "Now that I've recognised my cognitive distortions I should easily be able to change the way I act or feel " are cognitive distortions. To say "I feel stupid and incompetant when I see that I am always making cognitive distortions, therefore I must be a total idiot" is a whole bunch of cognitive distortions. |
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