Cognitive Behavioral Therapy techniques focus on altering maladaptive thoughts and behaviors linked to negative outcomes.
Cognitive behavioral therapy is one of the best therapeutic techniques for mental health. It is used for the treatment of conditions like anxiety, substance abuse, relationship problems, and mental illness.
Cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT involves recognizing unhelpful thinking patterns and motivating them to change.
One can expect sessions lasting up to six months, although some can expect a longer treatment timeline. A therapist needs to employ CBT techniques to help the individual achieve their goals. It’s not a shapeless client-led treatment but an association where the therapist acts like a guide.
What are the principles of cognitive therapy?
If you want to know which principles underlie cognitive therapy, then you must know that the main principle of CBT is that your thinking patterns impact your emotions and behaviors. For example, CBT focuses on how negative thinking can result in negative actions and feelings. But when thoughts are reframed positively, it results in positive feelings and good behaviors.
The therapist teaches you how to bring in changes that you can execute. These are the skills that you can continue using for your remaining life. Based on the issues you are managing and your goals, there are many ways to approach CBT. No matter the approach taken by the therapist, it includes actions like
- Identification of specified issues in daily life
- Being aware of unnecessary thoughts and how they affect life
- Recognizing the negative thinking and restructuring it in a way that changes the way you feel
- Understanding new behaviors and practicing them
After discussing and knowing about the issues you need help with, the therapist will decide on the best approach to CBT.
Cognitive behavioral techniques
- Therapeutic journaling: This practice involves writing down what’s in your mind and has a definite purpose. You need to record all your thoughts and recognize harmful patterns. Maintaining a thought record is a kind of therapeutic journaling. It involves recording all your thoughts and feelings whenever you face any specified situation.
- Cognitive rearranging: Cognitive rearranging is a popular CBT technique after journaling. Once you recognize the thinking patterns in the thought records, you will be asked to evaluate their prudence and challenge them with proper thinking. This process is the main technique of CBT and is approached for maximum issues.
- Conducting behavioral experiments: This is a good technique for combating anxiety. Being anxious one might hesitate to do some activities as they fear what will happen. Typically, their fears are not grounded in reality. In this therapy, the individual will be asked to predict what might happen and then encouraged to experiment and try it. Most likely the outcome will be more positive than expected and they will be motivated to take more risks in the coming days.
- More exposure: It is one of the standard CBT techniques and is suitable for the treatment of anxiety, OCD, etc. The main principle behind this technique is anxiety cannot be avoided but instead confronted to know that it’s not going to harm them. Most therapists recommend an increasing exposure process so as not to overwhelm the person, even if some issues might indicate the need for flooding approaches.
- Relaxing: This technique is used for decreasing anxiety but is also a good stress buster. The easy and common one is deep abdominal breathing like one done in yoga. One such technique is progressive muscle relaxation which is a kind of prevention exercise for keeping the baseline anxiety down.
- Role-playing: It’s a traditional CBT technique for assisting someone in preparing for any situation where they feel unsure about something and anxious. Here, the person has to enact a similar behavior that they will encounter to make themselves ready to face it in the real environment. Role-playing is one of the cognitive behavioral therapies that can be used for anything, from practicing for any difficult confrontation to learning how to cope with phobia.
- Problem-solving techniques: It’s not a CBT technique only, and you might have used it in school or at work as a way to come up with some ideas. The vital part of the problem-solving technique is there is no judgment. Consider any ideas where it might work or might not work. After brainstorming or problem-solving, you can evaluate all of your choices. This technique is a step-by-step process that assists anyone who has made all wrong choices.
- Discovery under guidance: Here, the therapists familiarize themselves with all of your viewpoints. Then, they might ask questions designed to challenge all your beliefs and widen your thinking. You might be asked to provide evidence that backs all your assumptions and evidence that does not. In this process, you can view things from others’ outlooks, especially ones that you might not have considered. This assists you in selecting a helpful path.
- Scheduling of activity and activation of behavior: If there is any activity that you tend to put off or you are avoiding because of anxious feelings, putting it on your calendar can assist. When the burden of your decision is gone, you might likely follow through. Scheduling activities can assist in establishing good habits and offer the opportunity to put what you have learned into practice.
- Behavior experiments: These are the CBT techniques that are used for the treatment of anxiety disorders that include catastrophic thinking. Before starting any tasks that give you anxiety, you might be asked to predict what can happen. Later, you can talk about whether or not the prediction comes true. Over time, you might start seeing that the predicted catastrophe is not likely to happen. You can start with low anxiety work and build up from there on.
Conclusion
Cognitive behavioral therapy is one of the well-structured, efficient kinds of therapy. It relies on the connections between your thinking, behaviors, and emotions and how they influence each other. There are so many cognitive behavioral therapy techniques. Based on the issues you want assistance with, your therapist can help you determine which CBT techniques are best for your specific requirements.
