Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Biblical and THE standard in evidence-based psychotherapy
CBT Will Give You Control Over Your Life
Thoughts-Feelings-Behaviors
Life can be overwhelming. How on earth can you make sense of it all and be able to learn how to live with more peace in your life? I believe that CBT gives you a good framework to help figure out where the root problems are and how to best manage your life, even thought life might be hitting you hard through no fault of your own, or if you are your own worse enemy. There are literally hundreds of different theories in psychology and mental health. They all can be useful and use different metaphors or structures to help you figure out your issues and be happier. However, CBT is one of the oldest and still most popular and best researched evidenced-based therapies out there.
Three things, your thoughts, your feelings, your behaviors, make up everything in your world, in how you live your life, love and relationships. These three components give us a framework to be able to make sense of psychology - how we function in life.
Visualize a triangle with each of these three at the three ends. Imagine an arrow of causality going each direction in between all of them. Each aspect affects the others. Your thoughts cause your emotions, which then affect your behaviors and also goes backwards and affects your thoughts. Knowing how each aspect affects the other two can help you gain more control over your situation.
CBT is THE most popular, well research and Evidence Based form of psychotherapy out there, amongst the hundreds of off shoots and newer, but just repackaged therapies out there today.
A CBT Fan Since 16
I began thinking about being a psychologist since I was around 15 years old. I started studying relationships and how to date successfully way back then. A bit of a geek, I admit. I still have the two books I started off with all those years ago. Beating the Break up Habit, by Dick Purnell, and Dating, Guidelines from the Bible, by Scott Kirby started me teaching basics of how to care for others and communicate effectively. These are points that I still use in therapy today.
A year later, I read Basics Principals of Biblical Counseling and The Marriage Builder by Larry Crabb. These were not just books on how to build a good relationships, but they also started me on how to see mental health issues in light of CBT. Crabb was combined Biblical Christianity and Psychology. He also followed the basic teachings of Albert Ellis, who was a pioneer in developing CBT. It all made sense to me, not just to help me understand myself and others, but also in how to help other people. It was fundamental for the rest of my 10 year college career in becoming a doctoral level psychologist.
Thoughts: The Origin Story of Your Emotions and Behaviors
In every situation you find yourself in, you have a whole host of thoughts, beliefs, and assumptions going on in your head. There are thoughts about yourself, the other people, the meaning of it all, what happened in the past, and what could happen in the future. However, we are not even aware that many of these thoughts are even there, yet they are having a powerful impact on our lives. A primary goal of therapy is to become more mindful of these thoughts.
In one particular scenario, you will have dozens of different thoughts and many of these thoughts are going to contradict each other. That is okay! Accept that they will conflict with each other. You also need to learn to accept that some of these thoughts will be a bit irrational, exaggerated, or at least not helpful. But again, a goal of therapy is to become more aware of these thoughts, primarily these little irrational thoughts. It is these thoughts that lead us astray. You have to accept that they are there. We all have them.
We learn these irrational thoughts from many sources. We learn from our parents. We have expectations of what life and people should be. We have assumptions about how people will treat us. We learn about what our self-worth is.
Our early social life, like our early breakups and sexual experiences dramatically shape our view of the world, often in unhealthy negative ways. High school can be quite traumatic. Mass media and social media can also play a huge role in how we believe are are to think and act towards ourselves and others.
We learn so many little thoughts in our mind that are not healthy and conducive for healthy relationships. Wrong thinking leads to anxiety, depression, and poor relationships. Our thinking always seems logical to us at the time, but once you take out a detailed thought and analyze it to see if it is really helping you, you can get rid of it or modify it to live better.
I do not care how bad life has treated you. You can still learn to cope with what has happened as well as possible and find peace and contentment. Trust me, I worked with hundreds of clients whose lives have fallen completely apart and they have literally lost everything-their spouse, kids, house, job, purpose, ability to drive and even the ability to get to the rest room (nursing home clients). If these people can learn to cope and find peace by changing their thoughts, anyone can.
Of course, looking at Biblical truths and relearning some assumptions about God and your place with Him, is the richest way to examine your thoughts and replace unhealthy ones with healthy ones. God’s truths will guide you to peace and contentment, no matter how bad the storm of life is that you are in.
Learn to Control Your Emotions, Don’t Let Them Control You
Emotions are what living is all about. Some are just more emotional than others. Negative emotions overwhelm us, and end up getting you into trouble, making life seem unbearable and ruining your relationships. You feel helpless to these emotions. They just go wherever they want and take you down with them. However, you are not helpless to them. Depression or Anxiety can be controlled.
Good emotions - love, happiness, joy - make life worth living. However, the negative emotions can destroy us. I like to categorize these negative emotions into three big categories: Depression, Anxiety, and Anger. Understanding each is critical in psychotherapy.
It is very important to know that Depression and Anxiety do not just hit you helplessly, like a car wreck, or cancer. They are caused by the thoughts that you chose to think in your head. You may have been the victim of something terrible that happened to you that indeed was beyond your control. However, how you chose to think about it is within your ultimate control. This is not to blame you, but to give you hope! It may not be easy to do at all, but you can learn to cope with the storms of life much better than you have been. Emotions can be contained!
Thoughts are thus the root cause of your emotions. But these root level thoughts are not easily changed, and it will not be easy for you to let go of the emotions you are used to. While part of you wants to stop feeling badly, of course, you have to realize that there is a part that wants to feel anxious, depressed, anxious. I know, this sounds stupid, but it is true. You want to feel these negative feelings because part of you thinks it will serve some purpose. Exactly what purpose is serves may takes some exploring in therapy to work out. You will then realize that holding on to those emotions are not helping you much.
Behaviors - The Things We Do - Good and Bad
How do you live your life? Do you have bad habits that are getting you in trouble? Let go of your anger and yelling at loved ones. Not doing much of anything? Retreating from the world?
Behaviors, like emotions, do not just happen. They are caused. You have to learn the root cause. How us humans tend to work: We first have a thought, then a feeling results, then we act on our emotions at that moment. However, we should ideally behave based upon true thoughts that we know will help us, not hurt us.
Therapy can help teach you to learn how to not act impulsively or automatically. It can teach you the meaning of the word “commitment.” Commitment can help us learn to act wisely regardless of how we feel at the moment.
Learning the specific thoughts that are behind your desires to act out negatively, is a major part of changing your behaviors. You can then learn to change those thoughts and behaviors, which then in turn make it easier to feel better.
CBT: Giving You A Structured Way to Understand and Improve Your Life.
Psychology, and Life, is very hard to pin down. The concepts are so complex. Medical doctors all get to deal with concrete things such as bones and tendons. But one cannot just easily pin down our emotions and what brings us happiness and good relationships.
CBT is a very easy to understand system. It is very logical, yet still very attuned to one’s wholistic and emotional self.
Each of the three components-Thoughts, Feelings, Behaviors - play off of each other. Understanding how they do is critical to getting better.
I love teaching these concepts and seeing them empower people to gain more control over themselves and more effectively deal with the world around them, even when the world is harsh, toxic, and traumatic… Especially when the world has been traumatic.
CBT is just plain normal common sense.
Let’s Be a Team of Co-Detectives Together
With CBT, we have to uncover the little thoughts that are irrational or not helpful in order to break the cycle and improve your emotions and your actions. Unfortunately, you are not aware of these thoughts. If you did, you wouldn’t be having problems.
I know the little thoughts that people have that get them in trouble. But I do not know you specifically. You and the expert on you! But you cannot see the forest for the trees and do not know what to look for.
That is why we have to work together collaboratively as a team. We have to both combine our knowledge to find better ways of thinking, and thus feeling better.
Want Faster Results? No need for years of therapy.
There are many good therapists out there. But, unfortunately, many go at a slower pace than I usually do. Every case is different, but I try to use CBT principals to educate and then apply those to the client’s situation and will take years to help their clients. I try very hard to get my clients through their trials as soon as possible.