What is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?
What is cognitive behavioral therapy? This is a straightforward approach supported by research and often recommended for people struggling with ADHD, Autism, depression, anxiety, and OCD. Cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, is based on the idea that is not what happens that makes you feel the way you do, it is the thoughts you make about what happens that generates your emotional response.
Let’s say, for example, it begins to rain. You could think, “No, it can’t be raining, this is going to ruin my plans.” So you could feel upset about the rain all day. Or, you could think, “This is great, it will be so good for my grass and flowers.” So you could feel great about the rain all day. Same event in either case. The rain. Different thought, different feeling.
While you likely have no power or control over the event, the rain, you do have some power over which thoughts you make, which thoughts you focus on, which thoughts you believe. This is where your power lies. Your brain is making thoughts all the time. Some are true, some are not. You can notice these thoughts, choose your thoughts, talk back to thoughts, replace unwanted or untrue thoughts with more accurate, better feeling thoughts. So you are not your thoughts, you are the observer of your thoughts as well as a creator of thoughts.
In cognitive behavioral therapy, you learn categories of thinking errors. These may be called cognitive distortions because they are inaccurate or illogical. For example, overgeneralization, “I never do anything right.” If you believe the thought, this is the reality you have created for yourself, probably you will feel bad, even though it is not possible you don’t do anything right. If you recognize this thought as an overgeneralization, an error, you don’t believe the thought. You can replace the thought with a statement that is more accurate, and feels better. “Sometimes I make mistakes, everybody makes mistakes. This is how I learn and grow.”
To summarize, cognitive behavioral therapy involves learning categories of thinking errors, carefully observing your thoughts, and replacing errors with smarter better feeling thoughts. I use a “thought record” document to help clients document, word-for-word, what their thoughts were, especially before and during an unwanted emotional event. We can then put into practice examining if the thoughts fall in a thinking error category, and identify the more accurate and better feeling thoughts you can make instead.
How I explain what is cognitive behavioral therapy to kids and teens
I like to say this is a way to learn how to use your smart brain in even smarter ways, so you can be smarter and feel better more often. By way of invitation I may ask, “Would you be okay with being smarter and happy more often?” Most people will not say no to such an invitation.
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https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/patients-and-families/cognitive-behavioral
https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/cognitive-behavioral-therapy/about/pac-20384610
