[Shorts] What the heck is a CBT?
What is CBT? Sounds like a company.
CBT stands for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
By now, if you’ve encountered any kind of mental health treatment or know of someone who has, you may have come across this term.
It’s widely use by clinicians and therapists today in combatting things like depression, anxiety, troubles sleeping, OCD, and many more.
CBT was created by a nice gentlemen named Aaron Beck, who in his practice realized the connection someones internal thoughts and dialogue, their emotions, and ultimately, their behavior. He also noticed that this happened cyclically.
Dr. Beck found through his practice that something in the environment would trigger or elicit a thought, any thought. Automatic thoughts, as he would call them.
“My wife isn’t talking much, I wonder if she’s mad at me?”
“I know I’m going to get fired today because I haven’t been given any assignments today”
We have thousands of these a day. Most of the time, these thoughts are fleeting. But for some, it elicits an emotion. For the first example, the range of emotions a person could feel after thinking something like that could be: fear, sadness, anger, resentment, curiosity, confusion, and the like. You can imagine what the second example might elicit.
Emotions then drive behavior. The things you would engage in, simple or large, can be mitigated by how you feel. When you’re excited or happy, you may be more inclined to participate in activities. When you’re depressed or anxious, probably not as much.
What get’s us in trouble is when these automatic thoughts are distorted views of the reality, or what he would call, cognitive distortions.
A classic example:
Imagine you’re walking down a hallway and you see a group of people point in your direction and start laughing.
What’s your first thought?
What are you feeling?
What do you end up doing?
Majority of the time, people would reply:
“They’re laughing at me”
“I feel shame and embarrassment”
“I walk away the opposite way of the group”
Most answers would be similar, with some variance. I would then ask, “Where were the people pointing?”
Most would reply, “at me!”
Now go back and re-read the prompt.
The actual answer is, we don’t know where the people were pointing. People just assume that the people are pointing at them. This distortion then begins the cycle of eliciting mood and behavior, which often confirms and may even expand on the original thought, the people are laughing at me. It’s a vicious cycle. And we all do it.
Now why are we predisposed to have certain assumptions and automatic thoughts? From our experiences and interactions with the world, we start developing core beliefs.
Core beliefs are the very essence of how we see ourselves, other people, the world, and the future. Sometimes, these core beliefs become ‘activated’ in certain situations. — Center for Critical Intervention
Through our experiences, we develop these core beliefs, and it guides how we think, feel, and behave. They become engrained in us so much so that it generally drives how we interact with the world.
And if someone is sitting in the chair across from me, they are more than likely to have a negative view of themselves, their world, and their future.
CBT helps challenge these distortions, one by one, in hopes of ultimately altering the core beliefs.
It takes time though!
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Steve is a program director at a residential facility in Southern California. He is aspiring to become a fighter of stigma in mental health, by sharing personal stories, stories of others, and what he (believes) he has learned through his work.
