CBT: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Sorry to my readers for the slow start on this blog.  Like I said in the first post of this blog, I don’t want this to be a dumping ground for my unexplored thoughts or emotions.  I want this blog to be my processed history.  I want it that way so it can be helpful to others.  When I started the blog I was just getting back into therapy and realized that I had reached a point in my public blog that I hadn’t processed yet.  So I trusted my emotions and stopped blogging.  I am still not confident about going further with the story of my history yet, but I will as soon as I get the right feeling about it.

One of the ways I am processing my past is by going to therapy.  I started off with a primal therapist, which I might touch on more later, and now I am with a therapist that is CBT, or a cognitive behavioral therapist.  The essence of cognitive behavioral therapy is that thoughts proceed feelings.  CBT holds the theory that thoughts are controllable and feelings are not, so if you want to reduce feelings such as anxiety, you look into the thought as the source, correct the thought and then the feeling will follow.

The reason I chose to go to a CBT was because I experience a high amount of anxiety that is triggered by many different situations.  For example, I used to spend a large part of my day worrying about money.  I kept having disastrous scenarios where I would go bankrupt, lose my relationship with my girlfriend and wander the streets alone.  Of course this is not a rational thought but it was one that occurred many times a day and I felt like I had no control over it.  My therapist suggested that I take control of these thoughts by setting aside 20 minutes a day to focus on my finances.  During the rest of the day, when I had thoughts about money I would gently tell myself, “It’s not time to think about money, we can do that tonight.”  Within a few days I almost completely broke the habit of thinking about money and my anxiety levels were reduced immensely.  With my anxiety under control I was then able to explore more root causes of why I was creating disaster scenarios, if I was truly headed for the streets and what I was really avoiding by thinking about money all of the time.

With the cognitive part of CBT, the focus is on the thoughts.  Since that is a major part of my therapy right now I’d like to go into a little more detail on how that works.  We all have automatic thoughts that have been conditioned into us for many years for a variety of reasons.  Most often these thoughts are fortune telling thoughts.  An example of a fortune telling thought with my situation is that I was convinced that I was headed towards a life of being a lonely bum.  Analyzing my situation in reality, I know that I am managing my debt well and even if the worst case scenario came true and I went bankrupt, I would probably just end up in a smaller apartment.  However I had an automatic thought that told me that I was going to be a lonely bum and I allowed that thought to repeat in my head every day.  Like any habit, it’s very difficult to turn around and that is why it felt nearly impossible to me to challenge it.  Using a tool such as allocating time to think about money helped me manage the thoughts, lessen the anxiety, and give myself room to look at the situation realistically.

I have found it important to keep a journal and put my anxiety, worry and fear to paper.  My thoughts fly around my head faster than I can analyze them, so getting them down on paper helps me to slow down, listen to myself and logically challenge my thoughts.  I more often than not find that my thoughts are far out of proportion to reality and then I am able to think of realistic possibilities for worrisome situations.  After that my worry reduces to more appropriate levels which allows me to come up with solutions to any problem I am having.

Another big lesson I have learned from CBT is that emotions are not going to hurt you.  In fact, they are here to help.  Anxiety, worry and fear are to help you avoid dangerous situations.  Exess anxiety, worry and fear may make you feel like you are in a dangerous situation but when you straighten out your thoughts about the situation, you can have a more realistic feel of any situation which will help you face what you need to and avoid what is really dangerous.

It’s difficult to challenge these thoughts without a therapist.  A therapist can help give you an outside perspective of your thoughts and behaviors.  It was a frightening step for me to actually get into therapy because I was raised to think that therapy was only for insane, broken people.  I realize now that it is just like college with a more personal touch.  It’s a place to go to learn about yourself, improve yourself and take the steps necessary to change destructive patterns from your past.  Cost seems to be one of the biggest barriers for people considering therapy.  With insurance, plus four sessions per month, I pay $340 per month.  This may sound outside of most peoples budgets, but I think it is a much more worthwhile investment than even college.  People take out tens of thousands of dollars in loans each year to go to school without a huge amount of hesitation, yet for a few thousand dollars a year you could really come to understand your life better.  I don’t think there is a better investment than yourself, so if you are hesitant about therapy for any reason just think of it as any other investment.  It’s all for your long term benefit.

If you are interested in therapy, but are unsure where to start, please feel free to send me an e-mail.  I have a lot of experience with the whole financial aspect of it and also searching for a therapist.  I’d also be happy to post some tips in a new post if anyone is interested.

If you are not quite ready for therapy yet, but find the CBT method interesting I suggest you pick up a copy of David Burns books: Feeling Good and When Panic Attacks.  Most of the therapists I have spoken to have suggested those and they go into great detail about CBT.  Also, Christina Molyneux hosted a great talk on CBT at the Freedomain Radio Miami Symposium .  Well worth the price!

If you have any experience with therapy that you would like to share, be sure to leave a comment.

Tags: cbt, freedomain, Therapy