CBT-Based Advice for Mental Health: How can you Heal?
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a great first step for many mental health or psychological problems. Restructuring your core beliefs, automatic thoughts, and cognitive distortions can be life-changing.
Disclaimer: I am not a certified mental health professional. I have accumulated a lot of knowledge in the area of psychology over my 4 years of college and I just want to share some tips.
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is probably my favorite psychological treatment because it can be used with an abundance of disorders, including depression and anxiety. CBT is based on the belief that cognitions, thoughts, and emotions interact to produce and change behavior. Therefore, CBT involves changing these cognitions, thoughts, and emotions to be more positive in order to produce adaptive behavior. It also typically includes the teaching of coping skills, emotion regulation, and methods to change ways of thinking. This type of therapy is typically conducted with a therapist, but one can use CBT strategies on their own everyday. I am going to provide some simple activities, strategies, and coping mechanisms that can help you engage with CBT.
Individual Core Beliefs
As seen in the image below, core beliefs are the center, or creator, of our thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Therefore, assessing these and examining how they interact with feelings, cognitions, and behavior is an essential first step to successful CBT.
See below to learn about core beliefs and examine your own.
Now, practice identifying your core beliefs and analyze the sequential thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Write or type your core belief and reaction (thought, feeling, and behavior). Once you can recognize your core beliefs and where they impact your cognitions and daily life, you have a better chance at changing these beliefs.
Cognitive Distortions
One way core beliefs impact us is by enabling us to manifest cognitive distortions, which are maladaptive, negative ways of thinking that impact emotions, perceptions, and behavior. Some examples are: focusing on the negative and ignoring the positive, expecting the worst, believing being wrong is unacceptable, a fixed mindset that does not enable growth, assumes a general rule from one experience, and making large assumptions based on little evidence. One good way to identify and dismantle your distortions is to fill out one of these worksheets when you experience a negative situation, emotion, or behavior.
Automatic Negative Thoughts and Cognitive Restructuring
Automatic negative thoughts (ANTs) are just what they sound like: negative things we automatically think or feel in a situation (e.g. I failed a test so I am stupid and should not try anymore). Challenging these thoughts and replacing the “negative” with “positive” can significantly impact how you view yourself and the world. This process is called cognitive restructuring and it is a primary way to use CBT.
The first step to cognitive restructuring may be to simply analyze your thoughts, including ANTs, and see if they have any true validity. This worksheet allows you to gather evidence for and against your thoughts.
This worksheet gives you space to write any ANT you have and then create a positive replacement thoughts. A second worksheet allows you to identify a specific trigger or event that accompanies an ANT, then afterwards you can restructure it.
Finally, once you practice doing the above, it may be helpful to keep a more extensive daily thought journal where you can identify your situation, emotions, and restructure. A journal may help you further identify your cognitive distortions and core beliefs, which will give you ideas for behavior goals. It may also give you ideas for what emotions you feel versus what emotions you want to feel. Then, you can regulate your emotions by changing your thoughts.
Try to identify and “catch” your ANTs when they occur and use your positive replacements in the moment. You’ll find that this significantly impacts your emotions and behaviors afterwards.
The Behavior
Now that we’ve discussed the “C” of CBT, it’s time to examine the resulting behaviors. While you work on these behaviors, you should continue to examine and restructure your cognitions. First, it will be beneficial to see the behavioral consequences of a situation and your thoughts and feelings. Use this worksheet to write down these factors and see where your problem behavior lies and how you can improve.
To test out new behaviors and ways of achieving those behaviors, check out this behavioral experimentation worksheet.
Another beneficial behavior is to identify, create, and evaluate your coping mechanisms — find ways to cope with the problems you see with your cognitive distortions and core beliefs.
CBT is an ongoing process that takes time. One of many good signs of success is the increase of positive automatic thoughts, so look out for those and give yourself praise where it’s due!
Mindfulness
Mindfulness is often a great technique to add on to CBT. It is overall an important skill to have and it can alleviate some stress. Mindfulness is essentially being fully aware of where you are and what is happening around you while being accepting and nonjudgmental towards these things. Active meditation, yoga, and breathing are prime examples of this practice. This website further describes what mindfulness is, it’s benefits, and how to use it.
Other Sources:
Here are the general websites I used to gain information and worksheets about CBT and mindfulness. Please feel free to explore these yourself and learn more.
Final Disclaimer: This is not a complete guide to CBT, these are just some basic concepts and techniques to get you started! It may be advisable to use CBT with a licensed professional.
