Cognitive psychotherapy pays little attention to a person’s childhood memories, focusing on current problems, his inner world, thoughts, desires and fantasies. This is the main difference between this method of treating mental disorders and other popular types of psychotherapy: psychoanalysis and behavioral therapy.
The founder of cognitive therapy is Aaron Beck. Initially, he was engaged in psychoanalysis, but gradually became disillusioned with it and began to look for new methods of treating depression and affective disorders. Beck argued that the world around us is not bad, it is negative views of it that shape negative emotions and actions. Distortion of external circumstances in consciousness leads to the development of mental pathology, for example, depression.
Albert Ellis, the developer of the method of rational-emotive psychiatry, which has much in common with cognitive psychotherapy, worked independently of Beck. Today, cognitive therapy is a component of the cognitive-behavioral (behavioral) theory used by psychotherapists in their practice.
Fundamentals and objectives of cognitive behavioral psychotherapy
Cognition is a person’s ability to perceive and mentally process external events in accordance with their beliefs.
From childhood, a person acquires a number of rules and habits - both healthy and harmful, which interfere with life. Cognitive behavioral therapy is a branch of psychology based on the principle that thinking and behavior depend on a person’s habitual response. What does it mean? A certain person subconsciously reacts to external stimuli in a certain way that is unique to him.
How do we usually react to a disturbing event? We worry, are afraid, or feel unable to influence the situation. If you are under the influence of such negative emotions for a long time, this will inevitably lead to mental disorder. But you can give up such a “bad habit” by learning to perceive events differently in order to more easily cope with difficulties and avoid stress.
The main task of the CBT psychologist will be to teach the patient how to correctly work with his thoughts and a new attitude towards difficult situations that arise. This therapy is carried out in several stages and gradually forms life-affirming stereotypes of consciousness. Ultimately, the patient masters techniques aimed at reducing the level of anxiety and overcomes situations that frighten him without the usual panics and fears.
CBT will help:
- identify disturbing thoughts that contribute to the emergence of fears, depression, phobias, panic attacks;
- review your lifestyle and transform it into a healthy norm (for example, avoid overload, change your daily routine, get rid of bad habits);
- consolidate new thinking and correctly confront emerging negative situations in the future;
- overcome shame for your weaknesses and anxieties, learn to share problems with loved ones and gratefully use their support.
Everyday exercises to develop cognitive abilities
These exercises can be done without interruption from the natural course of life, adding new, sometimes piquant conditions. They train terrain orientation, balance, all types of perception and, as a bonus, increase memory capacity.
- Designate a day of darkness: shower, eat, clean without light.
- Watch videos without images or with images but no sound.
- If there is a child, check his homework (+1000 stamina).
- Give each video you watch a title. Summarize the whole meaning in one word. Come up with names for the shops and establishments you walk near. Don't repeat yourself.
- Navigate around the city without a map, invent unfamiliar routes.
What are the benefits of CBT?
The most important advantage of using CBT is the sustainable long-term results. After undergoing cognitive behavioral psychotherapy, the patient is able to monitor, diagnose and treat complex conditions himself and becomes his own psychologist, so relapse is practically excluded.
In addition, CBT has a number of other advantages:
- high efficiency, proven by many clinical trials;
- short-term – usually about 10-15 consultations are required;
- provides a high-quality scientific basis, since the approach is based not only on psychology, but also on psychophysiology, neurobiology and other scientific movements;
- an action plan that is clear to the patient and therapist;
- pursues specific goals and solves specific problems that are discussed at the beginning of the sessions;
- recognized at the level of insurance companies, that is, the costs of CBT in some cases are covered through health insurance.
Exercise to develop taste and olfactory perception
Exercises involve the lower part of the parietal lobe, and also affect the limbic system, which regulates emotions and memory. So in the process of doing it you will get not only new neurons, but also a good mood.
- Come up with and prepare a dish that contains the maximum number of ingredients and which you have not tried.
- Order an unknown dish in a cafe and guess the ingredients: first by the smell, then by the taste. If you like liquid states, order a cocktail and repeat the procedure.
- Go outside and smell objects that you have seen but not smelled: a fence, a sign in a cafe, a kettle in the office. Relate in your head the smells of inanimate nature with already familiar smells of any nature. Then smell the plants, animals, birds. Do this if you are not allergic and you are confident that it is safe to interact with wildlife.
- Give as many definitions of the smells of common things as possible: onions - bitter, pungent, disgusting, etc.
- Compare the smells of objects from the same species group: perfume with perfume, herbs with herbs, cats with cats. How are they different? Find a large number of differences.
Basic principles of CBT
What is the basis of cognitive behavioral psychotherapy?
The main principles of the new thinking will be:
- Your experiences are only your personal vision and personal assessment of a specific situation, and not the result of past experience.
- You can radically change your assessment of the event and thoughts associated with it.
- Your negative beliefs, although they seem plausible, are not the truth. And it is from these beliefs that you experience psychological discomfort.
- Your anxious experiences are a pattern of thinking to which you have become accustomed. You have the power to change your way of thinking and check for errors in your usual beliefs.
Basic principles and concepts of the cognitive approach
The cognitive approach is based on knowledge, or more precisely on the processes of its representation, storage, processing, interpretation and production of new knowledge. This is a kind of step through which people can overcome barriers. They occur in relation to people who speak and think in different languages.
One of the basic principles is that people's ideas about the environment do not always correspond to reality. This is all directly related to a person’s past experience.
If we take into account schoolchildren and their acquisition of knowledge, the following principles apply in the cognitive approach:
- the principle of using internal motivation;
- the principle of improving speech units;
- the principle of using personal experience.
Basic concepts in the cognitive approach:
- Thought process and decision making ability.
- Features of understanding.
- Processes of growth and development.
- The ability and course of pattern recognition.
- Speech.
- Attention.
- Imagination.
- Memory.
- Natural and artificial intelligence.
When will cognitive behavioral therapy help?
Cognitive behavioral therapy is successfully used by psychologists to overcome and correct in patients:
- anxiety disorders;
- schizophrenia;
- depressive states;
- types of addiction;
- eating disorders;
- phobias;
- obsessive-compulsive disorders;
- sleep disorders;
- antisocial behavior;
- psychosomatic diseases.
In addition, recently psychologists have proposed using CBT methods to help patients with chronic diseases. However, the effectiveness of this approach does not yet have strong evidence. But there is already a list of diseases for which CBT can successfully complement a medical treatment plan. These are bronchial asthma, hypertension, acute psychosis, irritable bowel syndrome, and unpleasant symptoms of menopause.
Summarizing the capabilities of the CBT technique, we can say that such therapy can be effectively used to correct psycho-emotional disorders and neurological disorders, and in some cases can become a good addition to the standard treatment regimen for chronic diseases. Therefore, knowledge of the CBT approach is recommended for those wishing to become a psychologist, practicing psychologists and psychotherapists of any direction, doctors and senior students of psychological and medical faculties. We offer everyone who is interested to take a distance learning course that will help them acquire the sought-after profession of psychologist or improve their existing knowledge.
Imagination exercises
Imagination distinguishes us from animals. This is what biologists say: seals deny this fact. Develop your imagination to be able to navigate different points of view, experience subconscious experiences, and think creatively.
- Imagine in your head how you play the piano. How are your fingers positioned? At what speed are they moving? What melody is being played - hear the sound, catch the rhythm, try to move to the beat. Think of a story - why this composition was born, what feelings it is associated with. Do the exercise in silence.
- Print out several copies. On each one, complete the picture in accordance with the random theme that arose in your head (animals, body parts, accessories, etc.).
I mentally drew the girl. And you?
- Name associations with the numbers 12, 7, 4, 56, 11. When these numbers run out, come up with new ones and repeat the exercise.
- Look at the picture. Imagine the music with which she is associated. Write down a story that, in terms of dynamics (cheerful, cheerful, sad, etc.) repeats the composition in your head.
Radcliffe as a corpse in The Swiss Army Knife
- Think about the last movie you watched. Transfer the script to another era: how will the plot be transformed, will the characters’ characters change, will the ending be the same?
Methods and techniques of cognitive behavioral therapy
In their sessions, CBT psychologists, depending on the key problem, use a variety of techniques to help identify, analyze and correct a person’s anxious perception of the situation. Often a person is afraid in advance of what he has prophesied for himself; on a subconscious level he expects bad things. This is how panic begins. With the help of CBT techniques, a person changes his thinking and significantly reduces the effect of negativity on his psycho-emotional state.
Let's look at the main existing CBT techniques:
- One of the most common methods is Socratic dialogue
. The therapist asks the patient questions in such a way that he himself can find the source of his established rules. The specialist listens to the answers and draws the client’s attention to logical contradictions. Next, the arguments for and against are jointly discussed, the meaning and influence of thought on the psychological state is explored. As a result, the patient shows a willingness to reconsider his beliefs, comes to new conclusions and, accordingly, to new behavior. - Therapy according to the Beck method
. According to the founder of this method, individuals who are susceptible to negative emotions and suffer from low self-esteem more often suffer from neurotic conditions. Such people are aimed in advance at a bad outcome of any situation. For example, a boss makes a remark to an employee based on the results of the work performed, and the employee thinks: “Now I will definitely be fired, I won’t be able to find another job, I won’t have anything to feed my family,” as a result, despondency sets in. The Beck approach is a series of quick questions and answers to identify negative thoughts, during which an understanding of the problem and ways to relieve the dangerous state of depression comes.
- Ellis's Rational-Emotive Approach Technique.
REBT is a psychotherapeutic technique that effectively trains thinking skills and rational behavior. It is aimed at ridding the patient of rigid frameworks and established stereotypes in order to form a more flexible and positive worldview.
To summarize all of the above, it can be argued that cognitive behavioral psychotherapy provides a clear understanding of the origin of negative reactions and negative emotions of a person and offers specific routes to normalizing the emotional state. The CBT psychologist shows the client that nothing is impossible, and even in the most difficult situation you can enjoy life and control your fears.
Methods of cognitive psychotherapy
The methods of cognitive psychotherapy include the fight against negative thoughts, alternative strategies for perceiving the problem, secondary experience of situations from childhood, and imagination. These methods are aimed at creating opportunities for forgetting or new learning. In practice, it was revealed that cognitive transformation depends on the degree of emotional experience.
Cognitive psychotherapy for personality disorders involves the use in combination of both cognitive methods and behavioral techniques that complement each other. The main mechanism for a positive result is the development of new schemes and the transformation of old ones.
Cognitive psychotherapy, used in its generally accepted form, counteracts the individual’s desire for a negative interpretation of events and themselves, which is especially effective for depressive moods. Since depressed patients are often characterized by the presence of thoughts of a certain type of negative orientation. Identifying such thoughts and defeating them is of fundamental importance. For example, a depressed patient, recalling the events of last week, says that then he could still laugh, but today it has become impossible. A psychotherapist practicing a cognitive approach, instead of accepting such thoughts unquestioningly, encourages studying and challenging the course of such thoughts, asking the patient to remember situations when he overcame a depressive mood and felt great.
Cognitive psychotherapy is aimed at working with what the patient tells himself. The main psychotherapeutic step is the patient's recognition of certain thoughts, as a result of which it becomes possible to stop and modify such thoughts before their results lead the individual very far. It becomes possible to change negative thoughts to others that can obviously have a positive effect.
In addition to counteracting negative thoughts, alternative coping strategies also have the potential to transform the quality of the experience. For example, the general feeling of a situation is transformed if the subject begins to perceive it as a challenge. Also, instead of desperately trying to succeed by performing actions that the individual is not able to do well enough, one should set oneself as the immediate goal of practice, as a result of which one can achieve much greater success.
Cognitive psychotherapists use the concepts of challenge and practice to confront certain unconscious assumptions. Recognizing the fact that the subject is an ordinary person with inherent flaws can minimize the difficulties created by an attitude of absolute striving for perfection.
Specific methods for detecting automatic thoughts include: writing down similar thoughts, empirical testing, reappraisal techniques, decentering, self-expression, decatastrophizing, targeted repetition, use of imagination.
Cognitive psychotherapy exercises combine activities to explore automatic thoughts, analyze them (which conditions provoke anxiety or negativity) and perform tasks in places or conditions that provoke anxiety. Such exercises help reinforce new skills and gradually modify behavior.
Listening exercises
The nuclei of the eighth nerve, located on the border of the medulla oblongata and the pons, are responsible for auditory information. They receive information from the right and left ears, after which it is compared and processed. The main work of deciphering sound occurs in the cerebral cortex. Exercises will help develop reaction speed and will also prevent age-related deafness.
- Work in pairs. Let the interlocutor read the text in a quiet, monotonous voice at a distance of 3–4 meters from you. He should stop every three minutes: during this time, retell the essence of what you read.
- The interlocutor at the same distance pronounces words in reverse. Your task is to hear and name correctly. Next, practice with long phrases and paragraphs.
- The interlocutor reads the poem with expression and changes intonation in the right places. Repeat exactly. The poem can be read from a page - the main thing is intonation.
- Group exercise: isolate yourself from your friends with a screen. Each of them must walk back and forth. After the end of the fashion show, guess which steps belonged to whom.
- Watch videos of foreigners and memorize their manner of speaking, intonation and other sound features characteristic of the nation.
I specifically do not give exercises for visual perception, since it is best to choose them to your taste. There are hundreds of apps for this. For example, CogniFit with the ability to take neuropsychological tests and personal training.
