CBT : How to apply it in daily life
By: Lego Writes
Tags: Depression, Anxiety, Cbt, Sad

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is a behavioural correction treatment to fix common issues like anxiety, depression, OCD, agoraphobia and other common illnesses by identifying faulty or maladaptive patterns of thinking, emotional response, or behaviour and substituting them with desirable patterns of thinking, emotional response, or behaviour. After I started employing some techniques of CBT, I instantly felt better in a couple of days after suffering from severe anxiety/depression relapse.

In short :

1. CBT is more about the present than past (childhood) experiences, unlike Jungian Psychoanalysis.

2. It involves self correction of behaviour, where the therapist merely acts as a mediator or a guide, that makes the individual dependant on himself rather than on the therapist.

3. The essence of CBT is learning to change preconceptions about ourselves , about other people and the world at large

4. The situations that make us the most anxious are precisely the ones that we try to avoid and CBT will ask you to do things that will feel counterintuitive, scary and just plain wrong in the interests of helping you break cycles of fear and misery that keep you trapped.

Exercise : Imagine how you felt the last time you felt extremely stressed and depressed. How did you see yourself? How did you see the world? How did you see your future? Contrast that with how you feel on a normal calmer day. Next time, try being aware of how you felt on a calmer day, and convince yourself that you are in a one-off abnormal situation and that it will get better.

First principles

There is always another point of view : Try to detach yourself from the situation and assess it, by writing down the event, or if thats proving to be difficult, asking another person to assess your difficulty and see it objectively. Events don’t cause our feelings : It is our interpretation of events and the way we react to them that ultimately determines their impact upon our mood.

Loses car Keys — -> feels upset CBT : Loses car keys — → Meaning or interpretation : Why does this keep happening to me — — -> Reaction/feelings

3. We all evolve characteristic ways of seeing the world : Unlearning unhelpful habits of thinking can leave us at the mercy of unwanted emotions.

In CBT, assumptions that are rigid, oppressive or narrow-minded and that consequently end up making us unhappy are usually referred to as dysfunctional assumptions. Over time, our experiences and assumptions gradually harden into our core beliefs. These are the bedrock of our internal working model of the world and are usually strongly resistant (but not impossible) to change. We have a set of beliefs and we often find ourselves seeking out experiences and explanations that seek to reinforce existing beliefs , commonly known as conformation bias.

4. It is a two way street : If I think I am ugly, I will be sad or depressed. However, if I am already sad or depressed, I am much more likely to think I am ugly. CBT proposes that because our thoughts, feelings and behaviour are interconnected, changes in one area of the system will inevitably produce changes elsewhere.

5. We are all scientists at heart : We are all theory building creatures, we are constantly generating hypotheses about ourselves and the world often even without being aware that we are doing so.

Even though we become very attached to our pet beliefs and may even distort our way of looking at things in order to defend them, ultimately CBT relies on the fact that we are not unreasonable: we need theories that fit with what we know of the world and that are able to make convincing sense of our lives. Cognitive behavioural therapy exploits this desire by encouraging us:

to look at the way we may be distorting things to uphold our existing beliefs to become conscious of the underlying assumptions that steer our thoughts and reactions and treat them as provisional theories (hypotheses) rather than facts to test out the truth of our beliefs and assumptions against hard evidence from purpose-built behavioural experiments to conduct an objective review of all the relevant information available to see whether this data fits with our existing beliefs or whether those beliefs need to be changed. In other words, CBT exploits the fact that, when it comes down to it, there are few of us who are not open to persuasion by a reasonable argument and the evidence of our own senses.

6. Negative automatic thoughts (NATs): NATs, as first described by Beck, are a stream of thoughts that we can notice, if we pay attention to them. They are negatively framed interpretations of what we think is happening to us and they usually have an impact on our mood and our feelings, that isn’t positive. NATs can lead to self-doubt, depression, anxiety, anger, irritability and low mood.

Thinking errors

Thinking error 1: Catastrophising :

Pessimism with a wildly exaggerated sense of threat. They end up becoming just as distressed by relatively trivial setbacks.

On the scale of all the bad things that have happened in the past or could happen to you in the future, how bad could this event be? If I had no choice but to deal with the very worst thing that could happen in this situation what would I actually do? Think about how you may have dealt with other past difficulties. What helped you then?

Thinking error 2 : Generalization

Things always go wrong for me. Generalization can easily become self-fulfilling prophecies — Someone who believes she is universally unpopular will make little effort to make herself amenable to other people.

Think abt counter examples.

Thinking error 3 : Mind Reading

She thinks I am an idiot — Leaping to conclusions about other people’s motives and attitude on the basis of very little hard evidence.

Directly asking other people what they think abt you. Exercise : Ask 5 people to name one good thing and one bad thing about you.

Thinking error 4 : Polarized and rigid thinking

It’s black or white. For example, in every dispute there is always an oppressor and a victim, every situation in life is either stressful or stress relieving. Expecting other people to abide by your beliefs is a common byproduct of this.

Try to embrace the fact that many concepts are not simply black/white.

Learn to see your values and convictions as a matter of personal choice rather than obligatory for everyone. Expose yourself to other views that don’t fit in with your own.

Thinking error 5 : Emotional reasoning

Sometimes our strong feelings can be treated as evidence for the truth of our negative thoughts.

The antidote to emotional reasoning is that our emotions are not reliable guides when it comes to establishing facts.

Thinking error 6 : Blaming

Blaming is never fruitful in any kind of situation. There will never be winners, and everyone loses.

Thinking error 7 : Filtering and magnifying

Filtering : conformation bias

Magnifying : Exaggerating the importance of events that fit our beliefs.

Try to see the whole picture and build a case for the opposite of what you believe and check if you’re blowing things out of proportion.

Useful techniques in CBT

Look for exceptions to the rule. Downward arrow technique

Start with the negative thought and go downwards, every time asking the question (why does this matter and what does it mean?) until you arrive at the base thought that started all of this(Now try to correct the base thought).

3. Inversion of thought : Invert the thought and try to challenge the inverted thought.

4. See the situation through fresh eyes : Think if a neutral person would agree with your evidence and your conclusions.

5. How helpful is this belief?

6. Say it is so… what can you do about it?

7. I have seen the correct logic, but I am still sad: Negative thoughts run over and over and hence get consolidated. More fragile correct and neutral thought needs to be strengthened by constant repetition before it begins to take hold. Write it in a piece of paper in front of bathroom mirror and repeat it 5 times every day.

8. Use thought record forms on a regular basis.

https://www.getselfhelp.co.uk/docs/ThoughtRecordSheet7.pdf

9. Seeing is believing. CBT employs extensive use of behavioural experiments in helping people address their negative thoughts and feelings.

Sometimes you may be aware of the consequence of the problem and not the problem itself. In this case, you can imagine a world where you dont have the problem and gauge what would be different — what wont you be thinking/feeling/doing then? What are the specific feelings thoughts and patterns of behaviour that stand in the way of you achieving them.

Dealing with depression

Mindfulness : Taking a back seat (detaching yourself from the problem) and letting the thoughts flow. By doing this, we can prevent fruitless rumination. Distraction techniques : Using active strategies to disrupt the flow of negative thinking. Describing in detail what you see around you, the sounds you can hear. Counting back from 100 in 3s, tongue twisters and other demanding activities. Challenge cognitive distortion : Thought records, downward arrow. Problem solving approaches : Volunteering. Behavioural solutions : Tackling the assumptions through experiments, exercise. Say you have irrational fear for a dog, first you can talk to someone who has a dog, and see how they feel about dogs. Second, you can slowly volunteer, and try to forcefully be around dogs, and over time, you can get out of the irrational fear.

Dealing with anxiety

When you are anxious, you take shallower breaths and when you are relaxed you take deep slow breaths. Practising slow deep breathing can mollify anxiety to some extent. Combine #1 with mentally picturing yourself in a beautiful relaxing place. Anxious people have tighter muscles. Relax your body. Imagining the scary scenario and recording it and then simulating it in your head, or watching a video of it. Then once you get anxious, you can use #1, #2 and #3, to get out of it. As you repeat #4 several times a week, over a few months, the anxiety will go down. Healthy diet, sleep, exercise.

Dealing with anger

Spot the nearest exit and get away from the situation. If this is not possible, try to mentally get detached from the situation. Do a quick cost/benefit analysis. Suck on a sweet. Slow deep breaths.

Summary of my learnings from Brilliant Cognitive therapy by Stephen Briers :

https://www.amazon.com/Brilliant-Cognitive-Behavioural-Therapy-Improve/dp/0273724908/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=brilliant+cognitive+behavioral+therapy&qid=1625442119&sr=8-4