Cognitive Behavioural Therapy For Dummies. Rob Willson

This icon is a cheerful, if sometimes urgent, reminder of important points to take notice of.

      

This icon marks out specific things to avoid or possible traps to keep your eye open for in your quest for better emotional health.

      

This icon highlights information that may be interesting but isn’t essential for understanding the topic at hand. You can skip these bits if you like.

      

This icon alerts you to stuff that has a bit of a philosophical basis and may need some mulling over in your spare time.

      

This icon indicates a CBT technique that you can try out in real life to see what results you get.

Beyond the Book

      We made a ‘cheat sheet’ that sums up the key points in this book; you can use it a handy reminder or give it to anyone who might benefit from its tips.

      Go to www.dummies.com and search for ‘Cognitive Behavioural Therapy For Dummies Cheat Sheet’ and commence cheating!

Where to Go From Here

      This book is written in a rough order to help you progress from the basics of CBT on to more complex techniques and ideas. However, you can read the chapters in any order you like or just hit on the ones that cover subjects you think you want to know more about.

      We’d really like you to read everything in this book and then post positive reviews all over the Internet, get t-shirts printed with the title (and maybe design yourself a CBT For Dummies tattoo), make the cover your profile pic on social media, and scream about its virtues to random people you meet on the street. Too much? Well, failing that, just use this book as your reference guide to CBT, dipping in and out of it as and when you need to.

      Have a browse through the table of contents and turn to the chapters that look as if they may offer something helpful to you and your current difficulties.

      When you’ve used the book in one way or another, you may decide that you want to get stuck into CBT treatment with a therapist. If so, consult Chapter 23 for more advice on getting treatment.

Part 1

      Introducing CBT Basics

IN THIS PART …

      Get to grips with what CBT stands for and why it’s the ‘weapon of choice’ among mental health professionals.

      Understand how your thinking about events leads to how you feel (and how negative feelings also lead to more negative thinking).

      Discover how to recognise and tackle your negative thought patterns.

      Gain some tips about exerting control over your attention.

Chapter 1

      You Feel the Way You Think

      IN THIS CHAPTER

      

Defining CBT

      

Exploring the power of meanings

      

Understanding how your thoughts lead to emotions and behaviours

      

Getting acquainted with the ABC formula

      Cognitive behavioural therapy – more commonly referred to as CBT – focuses on the way people think and act to help them with their emotional and behavioural problems.

      Many of the effective CBT practices we discuss in this book should seem like everyday good sense. In our opinion, CBT does have some very straightforward and clear principles and is a largely sensible and practical approach to helping people overcome problems. However, human beings don’t always act according to sensible principles, and most people find that simple solutions can be very difficult to put into practice sometimes. CBT can maximise on your common sense and help you to do the healthy things that you may sometimes do naturally and unthinkingly in a deliberate and self-enhancing way on a regular basis.

      In this chapter we take you through the basic principles of CBT and show you how to use these principles to better understand yourself and your problems.

Using Scientifically Tested Methods

      The effectiveness of CBT for various psychological problems has been researched more extensively than any other psychotherapeutic approach. CBT’s reputation as a highly effective treatment is based on continued research. Several studies reveal that CBT is more effective than medication alone for the treatment of anxiety and depression. As a result of research like this, briefer and more intense treatment methods have been developed for particular anxiety disorders such as panic, anxiety in social settings or feeling worried all the time.

      As scientific research of CBT continues, more is being discovered about which aspects of the treatment are most useful for different types of people and which therapeutic interventions work best with different types of problems.

      Research shows that people who have CBT for various types of problems – in particular, for anxiety and depression – stay well for longer. This means that people who have CBT relapse less often than those who have other forms of psychotherapy or take medication only. This positive result is likely due in part to the educational aspects of CBT – people who have CBT receive a lot of information that they can use to become their own therapists.

      More and more physicians and psychiatrists refer their patients for CBT to help them overcome a wide range of problems with good results. These problems include the following:

       Addiction

       Anger problems

       Anxiety

       Body dysmorphic disorder

       Body image problems

       Chronic fatigue syndrome

       Chronic pain

       Depression

       Eating disorders

       Gender identity and sexuality issues

       Obsessive-compulsive disorder

       Panic disorder

       Personality disorders

       Phobias

       Post-traumatic stress disorder

       Psychotic disorders

       Relationship problems

       Social anxiety

      We discuss many of the disorders in the preceding list in more depth throughout this book, but it is very difficult to cover them all. Fortunately, the CBT skills and techniques in