So often when something troubles us, we shove it aside and keep pushing forward. A broken heart, dissatisfaction with a job, stress from any source, anger, fear, all those emotions just get pushed into a corner together. We tell ourselves we’ll deal with it later and focus on things we feel have to be done.… Read More Top Skills Thursday: Recognize what hurts
Through this series we’ve touched on the basics of how CBT works and what to expect if you seek help from a therapist who uses it. The question I always ask when I start working with a therapist is, “How will I know when it’s helping?” With CBT the answer is pretty obvious. You’ll know… Read More Therapy Tuesday: CBT – Seeing Improvements
You’ve worked with your therapist to isolate the thoughts and emotions that are kicking you around in your life. You’ve probably spent a few sessions discussing how you feel, what brings on certain thoughts, and beginning to understand how those drive your actions. Stress about paying bills? Let’s just stack those bills off to the… Read More Therapy Tuesday: CBT – Choosing an action
Now that you’ve worked with your therapist to identify the thoughts you find yourself struggling with, you’ll move forward to identifying the emotions you feel with those thoughts. Using the example I started last week, a fear of public speaking, we’ll look at how this step works.
In a CBT session the focus is on a target area. How a patient thinks, feels, and reacts to a situation or thought is causing problems in their life. There may be multiple target areas, but usually only one is addressed in each session. The first step in CBT is to address core beliefs about… Read More Therapy Tuesday: CBT – Core Beliefs
I’ve had a frustrating realization, and I decided to share it with everyone here. My reason for it isn’t to garner sympathy, but to show how I use the skills I write about. This post may be long, and I’ll put a TRIGGER WARNING here that I’m going to be discussing the ways depression and… Read More Freeform Friday: My battle with depression
It’s such an obvious thing, isn’t it? If you’re having trouble with anxiety or depression, find a therapist. Don’t ask me why, even for those of us who have successfully used therapists in the past, it’s not the first thing we think of. What I’ve learned is that it’s sometimes quite a bit harder than… Read More Top Skills Thursday: Find a therapist
CBT focuses on helping people who struggle with thoughts, feelings, and actions that are unhelpful. That’s a broad group, I realize. When I say “unhelpful” it means things you wish you didn’t do, thoughts that won’t go away, acting in ways that deliver results opposite what you wanted, and so on. It’s still a very… Read More Therapy Tuesday: CBT – The focus area
Kambry Ellis 