Mr. Doug Garner has been using Cognitive Behavioral Health (CBT) for
many years and finds it very effective therapy to use with his
clients, especially for anxiety and depression.
Cognitive
behavioral
therapy
is instruction-based
therapy
, which teaches the patient to begin to think critically and dialectically
about thoughts and behaviors arising during difficult situations.
Difficult situations may be defined in diverse fashion. A person who gets
panic attacks after talking to family members would evaluate what thoughts
appear to be contributing to panic, and how rational, logical or truthful
these thoughts are. Using
worksheets,
patients learn to rate their emotional state, (panic, anger, depression,
or others) before analyzing their thoughts, and then to rate it again
after questioning their thoughts.
Once a person has learned the basic method of
cognitive
behavioral
therapy
, they review work with a therapist, usually once a week. This review
focuses on the work done, and looks toward more work that can be done in
order to be able to create a more thinking approach to high emotions and
difficult situations. The end goal is to use thinking to unlearn and
replace negative emotions, thoughts and reactions with more positive ones.
HOWEVER:
There is only so much that can be accomplished with
cognitive
behavioral
therapy
. Even those who become skilled at evaluating how learned behaviors or
thoughts of the past make situations worse, may not always be able to
control these behaviors just by thinking about them and trying to replace
them. People with true mental illness such as depression, panic
disorder or bipolar conditions may need additional support of medication.
CBT alone can make matters frustrating, because even with logical parsing
and questioning of ideas, a person may not be able to fully rid themselves
of extremely negative emotions that are chemically based.
