Cognitive Therapy Basics

Discover the Best 7 Counseling Methods to Eliminate Your Anxiety-From Huntley and Mount Prospect, IL

Social anxiety disorder can stem from a variety of reasons and understanding the causes can help with overcoming social anxiety and shyness.The following are some of the causes that lead to social anxiety.Causes of Social Anxiety DisorderGenetic Causes – People with a close relative suffering from social anxiety disorder are likely to have it too. Psychological Causes – Some people have a mental conditioning that does not allow them to be comfortable in social situations and even experience aggressive symptoms of reaction. They might harbor feelings of low self-worth and may panic greatly in such situations.Past Social Experiences – In most people who suffer from SAD, the social experiences that they have had in their past life play an important role. Social anxiety patients might have suffered from uneasy situations with their peers or at school. Submissive methods might have been used in their behavior modification such as using corporal punishment to train them or using comparison or humiliation techniques by their parents or teachers. They might have had some social accidents before, such as being called on stage to say something and failing at that. Such past social experiences can leave indelible marks on children and grow with them as they grow, developing into social anxiety disorder.Treatment of Social Anxiety Disorder

There are two treatments for panic attacks – medication and psychological therapies. Some people advocate the former while others support the former; some insist on a combination of the two. It all gets a bit confusing so how do you know which treatment course to follow?

First of all, there is no single approach that suits everybody when it comes to panic attacks and anxiety disorders. A cornerstone of effective therapy is that it is individually tailored to the person after a detailed study of the symptoms and when they occur. This should apply regardless of which panic attack treatment you choose to follow – and, in the end, it is your choice and you have to feel comfortable with it.

One of the most effective psychological approaches is that of cognitive behavior therapy or CBT. Studies have shown CBT to be more successful in the long run than medication. To be more specific, more people who were treated with CBT remained panic free six months after treatment stopped than those who were on medication. A further study showed that while medication may be effective in treating the symptoms of panic attacks, the benefits stopped when the medication stopped. That is, people had to keep taking the drugs which then lead to unpleasant side effects.

CBT therapy requires work and commitment by the therapist and, more importantly, by the person seeking treatment. It’s not as easy as taking drugs a few times a day and the effects are not seen so quickly, but if you compare a drug free life free of panic attacks to taking medication for the rest of your life, then the advantages are obvious.

The focus of CBT is getting you to solve the problem yourself so you feel in control of your life again. This is very important as one of the biggest fears of those suffering from panic attacks is that they have lost control over themselves, often to the extent that they feel they are losing their minds. The ‘cognitive’ part of the therapy means changing the way you think through a very gradual desensitization process.

For example, let’s say your first attack occurred in a crowded room, at a party perhaps. Because the feelings were so intense and you were so frightened, you never want to experience it again. So, you go out of your way to avoid that situation – you make up excuses so as not to face a reoccurence. But this means that you are sitting at home by yourself when everyone else is at the party having fun. Not an ideal situation.

So, desensitization means taking very small steps firstly to get you used to the idea of going to a party (cognition) and then getting you there (behavior). Your first step might be getting dressed as if you are going. That’s it. Just dealing with the feeling that you are going is enough for one day. This may go on for several days until you feel comfortable with the thought that you are going to a party. When you are ready, you take the next step which may be getting dressed and then opening the front door as if you are on your way out. That’s it for the second step. When you’re ready, the third step is getting dressed, opening the front door and closing it. And so on.

While you are going through these steps at your own pace, you are also taught how to deal with the conflicting feelings you have. Controlling your breathing is instrumental here. Rapid breathing is often the catalyst for the other symptoms you experience during a panic attack so if you have techniques for keeping your breathing rate steady then this could be the difference between a slight twinge of anxiety and a full-blown  attack.

Many therapists agree that 10-12 sessions are sufficient for most people to be able to manage their problem on their own. After the first five or six, improvement can be seen and the person begins to feel confident that they can regain control of their lives.A final step in the treatment process is to teach management techniques in case panic threatens to rear its ugly head in the future. Armed with this knowledge, it’s a very real possibility that panic attacks are a thing of the past.

Have you ever wondered how your thoughts and emotions have affected your behaviour? Or whether thoughts and behaviour are inter-related? Is it possible that what you think consciously or unconsciously can actually influence your life and even the lives of those around you?

Often the problems that we face in our lives are because of negative or faulty thought patterns that manifest themselves in our day to day behaviours and we are unable to recognise it. Thus we are trapped in the vicious circle of negative thoughts leading to negative behaviours which again causes negative thoughts. So how do we correct these faulty thought patterns and make life better? The answer lies in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy.

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy is a form of psychotherapy which emphasizes the importance of thinking and how it affects our emotions and actions. It is based on the idea that our thoughts influence our actions, our moods, our feelings and our emotions. External things like people, situations, and the environment are not the cause of our problems. Thus if you correct your way of thinking and make a change in yourself you can cope better with the same people and situations and function better in the same environment.

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy is one of the shortest forms of therapy available, in terms of time and effective results. An average of 16 sessions or lesser is required depending on the problem. The whole therapy process is structured and goal-oriented.  The therapist and the client collaborate on the goal of the therapy, and the decision to terminate the therapy when it has been achieved. What makes it very effective is the fact that each session has a goal which is decided by the therapist and the client. They have to work on the techniques in that session to reach an outcome, and proceed likewise in each subsequent session. Therefore in each session the therapist guides the client towards his goal by teaching him alternative or new ways to think and behave to achieve what they want.

Often our behaviours and thoughts are learnt, so we need to unlearn the faulty thought patterns and relearn the correct thought and behaviours. The therapist educates and aids in this process. Once the person understands why and how he is doing a particular action the sooner he can change it and learn a new action. This can be a time-consuming process thus we have a feature unique to Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, known as the Homework to speed it up. At the end of each session the therapist assigns the client to practice the techniques taught in the session and give some additional reading and exercises to be done. This helps in reaching the goal faster.

Empirical evidence has shown this therapy to be effective in problems ranging from Anxiety, Depression, Eating Disorders, Stress, Marital problems, Relationships etc. So Cognitive Behaviour Therapy is an effective therapy to solve your problems by yourself, make a change and enhance the quality of your life.