What is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?

Cognitive behavior therapy (cognitive behavior therapy ^[1] ) developed by ATBeck in the 1960s is a structured, short-range, cognitive-oriented psychological treatment method, mainly for depression, anxiety and other psychological diseases and irrational cognition Caused psychological problems. Its main focus is on patients' unreasonable cognitive problems, and by changing the patient's views and attitudes towards others, people or things, they can change psychological problems.

Cognition refers to a person's perception and opinion of an event or an object, his own opinion, his thoughts on the person, his knowledge of the environment, and his opinions on things.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy considers that human emotions come from people's beliefs, evaluations, explanations, or philosophical perspectives on the things they encounter, not from the things themselves. As A.T.Beck, the main representative of cognitive therapy, said: "The maladaptive behaviors and emotions stem from the maladaptive cognition."

For example, a person always "thinks" that he is not performing well enough, and even his parents don't like him. Therefore, he has no confidence in what to do, has low self-esteem, and is in a bad mood. The treatment strategy is to help him rebuild his cognitive structure, re-evaluate himself, rebuild his confidence in himself, and change his perception that he is bad.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy believes that the goal of treatment is not only to target external manifestations of behavior and emotion, but also to analyze the patient's thinking activities and strategies for coping with reality, and to find the wrong cognition and correct it ^.

Cognitive behavioral therapy can be used to treat many diseases and mental disorders, such as

Including suffering from hallucinations,

1. ^[5] Many people think that the reason I am in a bad mood is because I encountered an unlucky incident. It seems to be the psychological distress caused by the bad incident. In the ABC theory, due to the cognitive effect, it is not certain whether bad events will cause psychological distress, and may even bring about growth and good opportunities. This is an important concept of cognitive behavioral therapy: it is irrational or misunderstanding that causes abnormal emotions or behaviors, not just the event itself.

2. The relationship between automatic thinking and core beliefs: If mental activity is likened to a tree, then automatic thinking is leaves and core beliefs are tree roots. Unreasonable cognitive methods or automatic thinking come from its deep core beliefs. The formation of core beliefs is related to early experience. Once formed, it will subtly affect people's thinking and behavior. This kind of influence is too hidden, and it is generally not easy to be noticed by people. Therefore, in the life, we often hear the saying that "the authorities are confused and the onlookers are clear." Core beliefs are triggered when something similar happens.

Example: A person who lost her mother at an early age will be hit by adverse life events, such as major test failure, serious illness, or severe difficulties, which may trigger her potential loss, which is manifested by many negative automatic thinking. Under the influence of reasonable ideas, the more and more unable to consider the real situation, the gradual loss of the ability to objectively judge, will ultimately completely confirm the core belief, "I am bad, no one can help me. I failed."

3. Therefore, it is not enough to simply change the automatic thinking. To completely give up some unreasonable cognition, we must start by changing the core beliefs.

(1) Cognitive-behavioral therapy requires identifying irrational cognition in action, replacing irrational cognition in action, and changing core beliefs in action, so action is important.

(2) The therapist will arrange homework, which is required to be done daily. Irrational cognitions are formed over time, and changing them also requires constant practice and practice. Therefore, cognitive-behavioral therapy is not simply to change cognition, but to experience and modify cognition in action. Many people only pay attention to cognition, but not action. As a result, they become "giants of thought, dwarfs of action", and become a cognitive theorist, but cannot solve their own problems.