2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
What is CBT?
Take the situation when we go to the theater and see people there who look and behave differently. Someone puts on their best outfits for this evening and looks really inspired, while someone shuffles into the hall in completely ordinary clothes, sits on an armchair and sighs heavily.
Looking at all this from the outside, it seems to us that the actions of these people are so automatic that we cannot distinguish each individual element from this action. And when we look at this one big action under a magnifying glass of a lens and look at its small components, then we can see the relationship between our thoughts, emotions, behavior and our bodily (physiological) reactions.
What we see will help us get an understanding of what is happening and, as a result, regain control over our thoughts.
In this case, cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy (CBT) is the magnifying glass of the lens with which we can see us "in detail."
One common opinion about CBT is, “You change my thoughts, you make me think positively,” and this is not correct. It might seem like it looks like a thought surgery, very harsh, directive and forever. But the point is that the thoughts that we seem to "think" are just a very small surface of a large iceberg, which is hidden almost completely under water. If you feel fear of something, you say to yourself, "I cannot do this, I am afraid, I am afraid." But that is not all! A CBT therapist can help you understand what is really behind all your thoughts. These will be the so-called "automatic thoughts" that originate from your "rules of life", which come from your deepest depths, from "deepest beliefs." This will be what happens in CBT!
If our thoughts are the visible part of the iceberg of the mind, then our assumptions are below the surface of the water on which the iceberg floats. These are kind of ideas like "If I do this something bad will happen", or "If I get scared and start shaking with fear, I will look very stupid." We are so confident in this kind of outcome of our actions, because we have lived with these beliefs for a very long time and do not even think that it could be otherwise. These beliefs have been cultivated in the lands of our experience and abundantly fertilized by similar experiences with other people we know, reinforced by the books we have read, the stories we have heard. Over time, these beliefs become rigid and begin to sound like "I am constantly unlucky", "The world is dangerous", "Everyone is against me." We believe in this and do not notice the other side, we do not believe that we can be lucky, we do not see that the world is safe and secure, we are used to not noticing support and care for us. Our filter through which we look at the world will be faulty in this case.
The cycle of thought - emotion - behavior - bodily reactions.
Our deepest beliefs are the basis of our assumptions that feed our thoughts. Our thoughts are related to our sensations in the body and our behavior and emotions.
People who rarely fly on a plane before boarding a flight may find themselves thinking in images of plane crashes and speculations about the possible disaster of this flight. Fastening the seat belt and listening to the flight attendant talk about putting on an oxygen mask during the depressurization of the plane, we willy-nilly start to get nervous, squeeze into a chair and freeze, start looking out the window and calm ourselves down, or play a game on the phone.
This simple example shows the very relationship between our thoughts, actions, emotions, body.
Thought - our plane will crash. Emotions are fear. Actions are compensatory behavior. Body - tension, muscle tone, nausea, headache.
What does CBT do?
With the help of cognitive behavioral therapy, we can replace one cycle (fear of a plane crash) with another cycle (waiting for arrival on a long-awaited vacation). This is not a question of replacing a negative cycle with a positive one, it is not. The point is that we can be aware, we can look at the events happening around us objectively and not try to solve or eliminate problems even before they appear. We can understand that planes fall very rarely, that the probability of a plane crash is negligible, we can understand that an airplane is the most reliable mode of transport and that nothing threatens us. With this understanding, we can safely travel and enjoy the beautiful views through the frost-covered window.
Such behavior is the result of understanding oneself, understanding the causes and effects in one's actions, training in a state of awareness and a desire to live in harmony with oneself, others and the world.
Anyway, CBT is worth trying than reading about it.
