Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Jerry Daskoski

Behavioral therapy originated from American “behaviorism. The assumption is that human behavior is learned and can be unlearned or learned anew. Behavioral therapy figures out weather certain behavioral patterns  add definition to your life, such as making it complicated or intensifying your issues.  In the second step one should be working on changing these behavioral habits.

For example, those who have developed a significant level of depression often withdraw from their hobbies. This allows them to experiences a level of unhappiness or isolation. Cognitive therapy helps to identify this mechanism and find ways to become active.

For anxiety disorder, behavioral therapy includes various learning methods. For example, you can learn to reduce anxiety with mindfulness and being more aware of your surroundings. When doing tis, you are now concentrating on other areas instead of bringing attention to your anxiety.

Harmful Thoughts VS. Un-harmful Thoughts

Harmful habits can ruin ones image of them self.

For example: (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0072481/)

Reaction Harmful Neutral
Thoughts “He ignored me – he doesn’t like me anymore.”  “He didn’t notice me – maybe he doesn’t feel well. I should give him a call and find out how he is doing.”
Feelings Someone who thinks like this feels down, sad and rejected. These thought patterns do not cause any negative feelings.
Behavior The consequence of this thought is to avoid this person in the future, although the assumption could be completely false. This thought is a prompt to get back in touch with the person to find out if everything is all right.

How does cognitive behavioral therapy differ from other psychotherapies?

Cognitive behavioral therapy is defines as a problem -oriented strategy. its primary focus is on current problems and finding solutions for them. Unlike psychoanalysis for example, it does not deal with the past. Cognitive behavioral therapy is much more concerned with dealing with current problems. The most important thing is helping people to help themselves.

 

The Efficacy of Cognitive Therapy

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT); it’s a therapeutic approach that is able to be applied to a wide selection of problems, making it a very popular course of treatment for issues such as anxiety disorders, general stress, substance abuse and addiction, and eating disorders.

Developed by Aaron Beck, CBT is defined as the expansion of the scope of behavior therapy to include cognition and research on human information processing, and it includes various techniques. Some argue cognitive therapy’s efficacy lies in the treatments open-endedness, as the course of the therapy is catered to the individual.

Jerry Daskoski

One psychotherapy technique it emphasizes, called collaborative empiricism, involves challenging negative cognitive distortions, which is a procedure in which the therapist conjures up a hypothesis and then assists the patient in testing the validity of that hypothesis.

Rational-emotive therapy, another CBT technique developed by Albert Ellis, is used as a treatment for anxiety and depression, and was designed to challenge irrational beliefs about oneself and the world.

Perhaps the most crucial component of CBT treatment is something called the transference relationship. It is the way in which the patient behaves toward the therapist in which it is believed to reflect early primary relationships. This is used to increase patients ability to experience themselves and other people in a more realistic and integrated way.

Because CBT caters to those receiving treatment on an individual-level, the success of the transference relationship is so important because, essentially, the client and clinician are creating the treatment path together.

Since cognitive therapy can be applied to problems on such a broad spectrum, it’s arguably the most studied course of treatment. Evidence is strong for the efficacy of CBT, specifically in treating anxiety disorders like obsessive compulsive disorder, social anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and posttraumatic stress disorder.

Like most, if not all, psychotherapy treatments, more extensive literature and research is necessary to gaining a stronger grasp on it’s efficacy, despite the enormous evidence base pointing to CBT’s success. However, CBT comes at a cost, a high one, and thus it has not been adopted as a first-line intervention for mental disorders for many countries, including many developed nations.