|
Clinical evidence indicates that cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) can assist individuals to move through their life situations, rapidly leaving them feeling more confident and relaxed. CBT is in general an effective form of psychological therapy with much to offer people who suffer from CBT anxiety, panic attacks and depression. What is CBT? It is a way of talking about how you think about yourself, other people and the world. It looks at how what you do affects your thought process and how it affects your feelings and behaviour. CBT can help you to change your thinking patterns (cognitions) and what you do (behaviour). It focuses on the difficulties here and now and looks for ways to improve your state of mind now. This results in helping you to feel better. How can CBT help? CBT can help to make sense of overwhelming situations by breaking them down into manageable parts. This makes it easier to see how they are connected and how they can affect you. How you think about a situation can affect how you feel physically and emotionally. There are helpful and unhelpful ways of reacting to most situations, depending on how you think about it. The way you think can be helpful or unhelpful. What a therapist who is experienced in CBT looks like; It is important to have a mutual relationship with a client; this will build up a relationship of trust, allowing the therapist to reinforce the clients' enthusiasm for change and commitment to the healing course of action. The key qualities to enable the therapist to support this are knowledge, credibility, warmth and empathy. Involving the client in the healing process in an empathic manner is a guiding principle of a CBT therapist; it allows the person to take control of their problems and life. The counsellor's role is to open up new opportunities for exploration, by asking questions, or giving information that may lead the client into previously unexplored areas. Believing the therapist understands your circumstances and having the skills to help you will give you confidence to participate in your own healing process. Together you will look at your thoughts, feelings and behaviours to work out if they are unrealistic or unhelpful and how they affect each other, and you. The therapist will then help you to work out how to change these unhelpful thought patterns and behaviours. The therapist will recommend homework on how to practise the skills and techniques of CBT in your everyday life. This can be in the form of thought records, mood questionnaires and journal writing. The purpose of a person developing the skill of self-monitoring is to enable them to deal with their problems in the future. Anxiety, panic and depression are unpleasant, they can seriously affect your ability to work and enjoy life. CBT can help you to take control of the symptoms. With the assistance of professional therapy, you should be able to identify the triggers that maintain your problems; you will be trying out new ways of being, thinking and acting and most of all enjoying life.
Related Articles -
Cognitive, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Therapy, Therapies, Therapist,
| 
