Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Depression: A Comprehensive CBT Beginner's Guide to Overcoming Depression, Bipolar Disorder, Severe Anxiety, Panic Attack, and Maintaining Mental Health

By Cathrine Kowal

Are you suffering from anxiety, depression, panic attacks, or any other psychological disturbances that influence behavior? Or perhaps you have a friend or relative that may be suffering from these things? CBT or Cognitive Behavior Therapy could very well be the psychotherapeutic treatment your mind needs!

This book a

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cathrine Kowal
• Release date: Jun 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9781088161654

Book preview

Introduction

Do you know anyone suffering from depression, anxiety, panic attacks, or any psychological disturbances that influence behavior? 

With the level of stress that seems to bombard everyone from all directions, it seems normal that anyone at one time or another may experience any of these. By adopting Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), you will be aware of your thoughts, emotions, and behavior and be able to master them.

CBT is a type of psychotherapeutic treatment that will help you understand thoughts and feelings which influence behaviors and is commonly used in the treatment of a wide range of disorders including depression, bipolar disorder, severe anxiety, panic attack, and maintaining mental health.  It is also used to treat phobias and addiction.

This type of therapy is generally short-term in nature and focused on helping sufferers deal with a very specific issue.  While in the course of treatment, sufferers learn to identify and alter destructive and disturbing thought patterns which have negative influences on behavior and emotion of the sufferer.

One of the primary focuses of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is on altering the automatic negative thinking that contributes largely to emotional sufferings along with anxiety and depression.  Such negative thinking which can come forward anytime and are believed to be true tend to affect the person’s mood negatively.

With CBT, you are to examine these thoughts and are encouraged to look at pieces of evidence from facts which could either support or refute these thinking.  In doing so, you tend to be more objective and realistic in your outlook and be more engaging in healthy mental activities.

This book aims to provide you a definitive guide to understanding Cognitive Behavior Therapy and combat the negative effects of psychological disturbances and disorders including:

Depression

Bipolar Disorder

Severe Anxiety

Panic Attack

Understand Cognitive Behavior Therapy and overcome life’s major difficulties!

Chapter 1

Understanding CBT

What is CBT?

Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) is a type of talk treatment that involves focusing on emotions, thoughts, and behavior of an individual while teaching them skills to cope with various challenges and issues in life. It is based on the idea that how we think (thoughts), feel (emotion), and act (behavior) are closely interrelated.

This type of treatment combines examining thoughts (cognitive therapy) and things a person does (behavior therapy). The underlying concept behind CBT is the fact that human thoughts and emotions play a significant role in their behavior.

Negative and unrealistic thinking can bring us stress which causes us to get distressed or depressed.  This ultimately becomes a problem if not given attention.  Once a person suffers from psychological distress, the way they see thinks become twisted and distorted and can have a negative impact on their actions.

To illustrate, a person who spends a lot of time watching horror movies and reading books about suspense and thrillers are more likely to be afraid to sleep alone or without lights on.  They can easily get paranoid over nothing.

It is CBT primary aim to let people became aware when they are into this situation – e.g., making negative interpretations and likewise making them aware of an existing behavioral pattern that reinforces this negative thinking.  CBT helps us develop alternative ways of thinking to reduce psychological distress brought about by negative and unrealistic thinking.

The goal of the treatment is to teach us that while we don’t have much control over some situations we come across to, we can take control of how we interpret and deal with them.

Simply put, CBT teaches you to take charge of your thoughts, emotions, and behavior for a better experience.  By targeting your responses and reactions to situations, CBT can help you react more effectively to challenging issues and situations.  This way, you will learn how to feel better when situations become uncontrollable.

Cognitive Behavior Therapy is gaining increasing popularity among health consumers and treatment providers in recent years due to its affordability.  Because it is generally a short-term treatment, it more cost-efficient compared to other types of therapy.

Psychological Issues Where CBT Can be Applicable

Pieces of evidence suggest that CBT can be used for an effective treatment for a wide range of psychological issues and disorders including:

Chronic Anxiety

Phobias

Panic attacks

Borderline personality disorder

Anger issues

Depression

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PSTD)

Drug and alcoholism

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)

Psychosis

Sleep problems

Sexual and relationship issues

Eating disorder

Schizophrenia

CBT can likewise help you discover new ways to cope with physical health issues such as:

Chronic pain

Chronic fatigue syndrome

Habits

Facial tics

General health problems 

Where Did CBT Originate?

Cognitive behavioral therapy talks about how our thoughts influence how we feel. I’m sure you can relate and think of several examples where you’ve thought of something and it instantly changed your mood.

Beck proposed that how we think influences how we feel and how we feel determines how we behave. And how we behave influences how we live our daily lives and the choices we make in it.

How we think influences how we feel; how we feel determines how we behave; and how we behave influences our choices and how we live our lives.

A perfect example of this would be to consider any phobias you may have. How have those phobias influenced your behavior and your choices? What’s unfortunate is that what we fear limits us. If you have a fear of insects, it isn’t likely that we’ll spot you outside in the jungles of the Amazon hiking. If you have a fear of flying, you’re probably going to travel mostly by car, right?

In many cases, this fear can become debilitating and limit our quality of life. For that reason, we might want to work with someone to get over this paralyzing fear. They want to be able to push past their fear and regain full quality of life.

It’s for this reason that people seek therapy. They want help from a professional who has the answer to help them release their fears. One of the ways of working with anxiety including depression is cognitive behavioral therapy.

It’s for this reason that people seek therapy. They want help from a professional who has the answer to help them release their fears.

The Theory Behind

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is based on the idea that the way an individual thinks about a certain situation can affect the way he feels and behaves.  So if you have this tendency to interpret a situation in its negative point of view, then this can lead you to experience negative emotions.  These negative emotions will eventually affect your behavior.

Emotional problems were recognized to stem from irrational beliefs. So if you are experiencing negative emotions such as unhappiness, anger or rage, it is because of irrational beliefs.  Ideas that are faulty becomes real because we believe they are the truth. 

Take, for instance, there are children who hate their parents because they believe that their parents favored other siblings more than them.  It could not be the reality but because they believe them, they perceive this negative as reality.  As a result of these misconceived ideas due to faulty beliefs, these children grow up developing bitterness and hatred in their heart towards their parents and siblings. 

When a person has ill feelings, the behavior likewise becomes negative and so the development of a behavioral disorder that needs to be treated.  In such a case, the person has to see the value of seeing a therapist.

In accepting the fact that something in you needs to be changed, you must work hard to counteract irrational beliefs, dysfunctional feelings, and bad behaviors. In other words, you have to be responsible for making the change yourself and practicing the new behavior until it becomes second nature.

Irrational Ideas from the CBT Perspective

Irrational ideas lead to self-defeating behavior. For example, you yearned for the approval, love, and attention of significant people in your life.  However, it does not necessarily follow that all these people will give you what you yearn for.  In fact, there are those who will never give you their attention and approval and much more with their love.  This may be unlucky of you but this is life.  We can’t have all in life.  We can’t get everything we want. 

How logical is it that everybody will love our approval of you. It isn't. There are people who will never give you their approval. That's life. People have to get used that idea so as not to be negatively affected when rejected.

Another example is when you believe that you need to perform perfectly everything that you will be doing.  This idea can stem from your childhood when you have perfectionists parents who kept on telling you to do or behave perfectly.  This kind of idea has long been ingrained