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Two weeks ago, I was writing about Existential Therapy as a remedy for fear and sadness. Today I’d like to talk about CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy), which includes Cognitive Behavioural Theory presented by Dr Beck and how CBT can help you when you feel blue.
Dr Beck sees maladaptive and disturbed moods or emotions as the result of irrational or inappropriate patterns of thinking that are our automatic thoughts. This means that you react to a distorted reality and, as a result, think and act accordingly to your distorted perception, which hurts your mental health.
For example, suppose you feel worthless because you have been rejected or misunderstood by your relatives, romantic partner or friends. In that case, CBT can help you to change your distorted perception of reality by making you aware of this distorted perception of fact and distorted patterns of thinking (cognitive distortion) and change them by modifying your thinking and acting patterns. The aim is to train you to alter your unhealthy thinking about yourself. This guided self-training should amend negative thought processes and behaviours into positive and healthy ones. Thus, you can find your worth and confidence and improve your self-esteem. CBT aims to alter your negative thoughts about yourself, the world, and the future. Therefore, if you continuously contemplate negative thoughts about yourself, your situation, and yourself as the reason for it, you will eventually believe in it. This should be changed during the CBT sessions.
Furthermore, re-evaluating negative thought patterns may help you improve your emotions and behaviours. Thus, firstly you should learn to accept and then clarify issues and difficulties, set up objectives, and understand their reason and importance of them. Firstly, you should know that if you accept the situation. Yes, I have been rejected, or yes, I have lost my job, or yes, I have lost my health, and I am limited to some extent; I do not like it, but this is my reality; this is not giving up. This is the beginning of healing. Then you can focus on issues and difficulties related to your situation. When you do that, you can set up objectives while understanding why you are setting them and why they are essential to you. This is the whole process, but you are not alone; your CBT counsellor will guide you.
Thus, you must take part in self-management training, assertive exercises, and role-playing that your CBT counsellor leads. This should help you to achieve your goals. Additionally, the above techniques can help you change your negative thoughts and behaviours by implementing new healthy patterns that you can learn through regular practice. Your counsellor should also focus on training around new ways of decision-making and problem-solving and on challenging your irrational thoughts by replacing them with logical ones. For instance, if you feel misunderstood and rejected by your immediate family, relatives, friends, or partner, you should first accept that this has happened. However, also you should recognize the reasons. The therapy will be different if the reason for the rejection is that you converted to another religion and if you have a substance abuse problem. Two different situations and reasons for rejection change the approach to the problem and ways to find two different paths to resolve your problems. These two different realities bring two different types of acceptance of the situation and challenges to your reality. Two different types of issues, difficulties, and objectives, and two different understandings of the reasons and their importance in the healing process. Still, regardless of the scenario, the focus should be on working on your self-worth and self-esteem and that you are enough no matter who you are. Also, it would help if you challenged your negative thought about yourself, the world, and the future, learned how to solve problems and made good decisions. Your counsellor aims to help you to believe in your abilities to make changes to better yourself, your life, and your future.
Moreover, specific exercises/homework must be done to achieve it. Still, remember that if CBT is not enough for you, you should be referred to a different professional. Based on my experience, a good CBT therapist can do wonders, but you must actively participate. Still, remember that everybody is different, and you can act and react differently to me, although we are in a similar situation; thus, what works for you might not work for me and the other way around. Still, it’s worth trying, and if CBT helps you, then great. If not, do not give up and search for a different type of counselling such as Mindfulness, Humanistic or Psychodynamic.
There are also other alternatives, such as yoga, Thai chi, meditation, or Reiki.
You can do one of those or interlink some of them together.
If you are interested in Reiki or yoga and meditation 1-2-1, contact me via raykey21@outlook.com.
I can also contact you with a lovely person and fantastic counsellor.
Here you can find confidential and professional help.
https://www.samaritans.org/donate-now/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIoM2Bgo6B_gIVrQV7Ch0DRgwIEAAYAiAAEgIgfPD_BwE