My name is Dr Emma Gray, and I'm the Lead Clinical Psychologist at the British CBT & Counselling
Service.
And in this video, I'm going to be talking to you about Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
for anxiety.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, or CBT, is currently the most effective treatment that
is available for anxiety.
Before we look at that though, it's important that you are sure that anxiety is the problem
that you're dealing with.
So, do you find that your heart is often racing, or pounding?
Do you often feel dizzy, or worry about losing control, or fainting?
Do you find yourself often fearing that the worst will happen?
Or that you are frequently avoiding the situations that make you feel uncomfortable?
And are you finding that, increasingly, the decisions that you make are influenced by
your anxiety?
Now, if you have answered 'yes' to one or more of these questions, it is quite likely
that you are experiencing anxiety and that a course of CBT could help you.
Now as I've said, CBT is the most effective therapy that is currently available for anxiety.
However, not all CBT programmes have been created equal, and it's really important that
you find a therapist who can individually tailor a programme to you and what you need—that
they're not just delivering an off-the-shelf programme that they use with everybody.
Now, it's easier said than done to find a therapist who can do this—it will be principally
determined by their qualifications and their training.
But in the next video, I'm going to look in a little bit more detail about how to choose
the best therapist for you.
But in the meantime, let's look at what a good CBT programme involves.
So there are 4 key stages.
The first stage is an assessment stage because everybody's experience of anxiety is different.
So your therapist needs to know about your experience so they can tailor the programme
to you.
So they'll ask you a selection of questions, including, ‘when did your symptoms start?
What triggers your anxiety, what your specific physical symptoms are, what sorts of things
make you anxious?
What situations are you avoiding because of your anxiety?
What makes your anxiety better, what makes it worse?’
And they'll also ask some more general questions about family, work, and interests so they
have a context— so they can understand a little bit about your life.
And this is really important if the programme is going to work for you—if it's going to
be individually tailored to you.
The next stage is where you start to look at reducing your anxiety but also building
your confidence so that you can manage situations.
Now, in CBT, we think about anxiety as being triggered by the types of thoughts that we
have, so anxious thoughts lead to anxious feelings.
So in this stage, you'll look at identifying those thoughts, then evaluating their accuracy
and their helpfulness.
And if they're not accurate and helpful, you will look at developing alternative thoughts
which will induce feelings of calmness and relaxation.
In this stage, you will also look at beginning to challenge or test yourself a little bit,
so that you can build your confidence in your capacity to cope.
In the third stage of therapy, and this will begin once your day-to-day symptoms of anxiety
are much more reduced—much lower—and you're feeling more settled in yourself.
You'll begin to look, with your therapist, at what has made you vulnerable to develop
the symptoms of anxiety in the first place.
And this is important because anxiety doesn't just strike randomly.
There will be something that has happened to you in your past that has made you vulnerable
to developing the anxiety.
And it's really important that that's identified and dealt with—so it doesn't continue to
have an impact on you in the current day—otherwise, your symptoms of anxiety, over the course
of time, will just return.
And the final stage of therapy is to consolidate what you've learned, but also to build your
confidence that you can manage without therapy.
So in this stage, your therapist will be setting you tasks and challenges, to build your confidence
that you can manage.
So that's good CBT for anxiety, in a nutshell.
If I haven't managed to answer all of your questions, please post them in the comments,
and I'll do my best to help you.
And I'll see you soon.