Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is an evidence-based and widely practiced counselling methodology that is rapidly gaining favour as the most effective therapy for a wide range of social and personal issues. In my opinion we should be teaching it to school children, as well as basic personal financial requirements like how mortgages and loans work, to prepare them for the rough and tough world out there. I know a lot of people who, as teenagers growing up, had very ineffective coping strategies for the changes taking place in their life, and today I present a short summary of the theory of CBT for my loyal readership.
How does it work? CBT’s basic principle is that the way an individual thinks about events profoundly influences how they then feel about events. Understanding thoughts and beliefs provides insight into why we think and act the way we do.
For example, you are anxious about speaking publically and avoid it even though it’s an integral part of your job because you fear people will judge you a failure if you are less than perfect.
Thus armed with this insight, it’s possible to decide whether to change your viewpoint to one which is likely to bring better results in life. For example deciding that although you find public speaking painful, you recognise that many people share this worry and overcome it by practice and actually getting on with it, and that not being perfect is not the same as failing.
The essential CBT model runs like this:
A – Activating event – you fail to complete some work on time
B – Belief – “I couldn’t do this work because I’m not as clever as my colleagues”
C – Consequence and emotion – depression and inability to focus on the next task
Most people usually fast track between A and C without ever analysing whether it’s possible to think differently about a situation and to understand that events do not decide our emotional state, we do. Understanding what’s in your control and what’s outside of it and accepting that difference.
For example like many people I once worked for a person who was instinctively critical of my work performance and that of my colleagues. I became de-motivated. If I was shouted at I would tend to “shut my ears” and not listen. I used the CBT model to realise that although the criticisms hurt, I did actually agree with some of them in relation to my work performance. By separating my emotional reaction I was able to critically evaluate the feedback and benefit from it. In this way I took some positive from the negative.
There is a huge amount of literature on this and therefore I won’t recommend any particular book (although I have read a lot from the authors Windy Dryden (great name) and Michael Neenan) but I would encourage you to read more on this theory and the other methods and strategies based on this principle.
Instead I will leave you with a quote from Hauck which I keep in my wallet to cheer me up on sorry days:
“You never fail as long as you are trying. Each trial teaches you something if you study your behaviour. You’re getting valuable feedback from each effort and this information is a small segment of success. Don’t knock it. If you repeat the trials often enough, you add up little successes until they become noticeable. The upshot is that you are failing only when you are not trying, never otherwise.”
If just one person sees this blog and takes up the chance to read more on CBT then it will have been worth writing. Its goal orientated and results based focus has changed my life for the better.
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