people often think about conditions like depression and anxiety
as problems with emotion but in this video i'm going to be talking about
the role of thoughts and how thoughts can have a huge impact on how you feel
hi everyone in today's video i'm going to be talking about something called
cognitive therapy which is a form of therapy that really focuses on thinking patterns and how
the way you think influences and affects the way you feel and your emotional reactions
to various situations but before i get into that just a couple of disclaimers to go over
i'm a registered psychologist in the province of british columbia canada
and this video is for informational purposes only it is not intended as a substitute or replacement
for advice from your doctor or mental health professional
now with those two things out of the way let's start talking about cognitive therapy and the
role that thoughts play in how you feel now when i first talk to my clients about cognitive therapy
i like to start off the discussion with almost like a philosophical point and the idea is that
none of us actually live in the real world we live in our perception of what's going on so the world
that we experience is based on how we interpret and how we understand what's going on around us
now for the most part the way we interpret the world is generally consistent with how the world
is but when a person is experiencing depression or anxiety the way they view or think about the world
can be skewed or um or an exaggerated extreme of what's actually happening
and that can contribute to excessive anxiety or excessive depression or mood symptoms so i want
you to think about how you typically experience emotion now usually when we experience emotion
there's a situation something happens and it's that something that happens that triggers my
emotional response to it so my friend says something uh mean to me and i feel really upset
because of what my friend said to me uh i'm late for a meeting and i feel really anxious
because i'm late for the meeting so the way we experience our emotion is typically
there's a situation that happens and it's the situation that causes our emotional reaction
now that seems to make a lot of sense so my emotions are directly tied to what's happening
now the problem is this is kind of a simplistic way of understanding how we experience emotion
it doesn't explain why sometimes our emotions are inconsistent with what's actually going on
and it doesn't explain why uh different people react to the exact same situations
in different ways so let me give you a few examples so
suppose i'm out going for a walk one day and i'm outside and it's a beautiful sunny day and i feel
totally at peace totally calm totally at ease as i'm walking down the sidewalk now unbeknownst to
me they're raising a grand piano into the 15th floor window of the apartment building above me
and the rope that's holding up the piano has snapped and so that piano is coming crashing
down and is about to smush me now i don't see the grand piano i'm just walking on the street so
the situation in that case is that i'm in grave danger something bad is about to happen to me
but my emotional reaction and my emotional response in that situation
is one of peace and tranquility and calm it's not consistent with what's actually happening
think about it the other way suppose i'm in a movie theater and i'm watching a really intense
horror movie a really scary part of the movie a guy jumps out of the shower with a big knife and
i react my my heart's racing my palms are sweaty i feel terrified so my emotional reaction in that
situation is one of fear and terror but the situation is that i'm in a big comfy room in a
big comfortable chair surrounded by people and i've got a bag of popcorn in my lap
that is not a situation that should trigger that level of fear and terror
as i mentioned earlier sometimes people can react to the exact same situation in totally different
ways so suppose one day i'm going for a walk and just as i'm about to leave my front door i hear on
the radio that it's squirrel season and that the squirrels are out foraging for nuts i don't think
too much of it must be a slow news day if they're talking about squirrels and i'd go on my way
so now i'm walking through the forest and uh looking around and off in the distance i hear
some leaves rustling what am i likely to think it is well i'm likely to think it's squirrels and so
i get these warm fuzzy commune with nature feelings because i think about how
the cute squirrels are foraging for their nuts and i go on my way feeling good about my walk
now the exact same situation except this time as i'm about to leave my front door i hear on
the radio that there's a mountain lion in my neighborhood and the mountain lion has attacked
a number of people so they're warning people to be very careful and very cautious in my area
so now as i'm walking i'm going through the forest and i'm looking around and trying to
enjoy my walk but i hear some leaves rustling off in the distance what am i likely to think it is
well a mountain lion how am i likely to feel well probably pretty scared probably pretty
anxious and terrified because i'm worried that i might be attacked by the mountain lion now notice
in the two scenarios the exact same thing is happening i'm walking down a path
and i hear some leaves rustling off in the distance in the first scenario i feel these warm
commune with nature feelings in the second scenario i feel terrified and scared
so the key is it's not the leaves that are rustling off in the distance that are causing
my emotional reaction what's causing my emotional reaction is the way i'm interpreting the leaves
rustling in the distance if i interpret the leaves rustling in the distance as squirrels
i'm gonna feel warm fuzzy feelings if i interpret the leaves rustling off in the distance as the
mountain lion i'm going to be afraid so our model for understanding emotion is actually a lot more
complicated than just situation happens and that causes my emotional reaction
there's a step that we often don't think about and that's our interpretation so there's a situation
that occurs i interpret the situation and based on my interpretation of the situation i experience a
certain emotional response so it's not the situation that causes my emotional response
it's the interpretation and the interpretation is how we think that's our thoughts it's the
the black box in our head that we're processing this information to determine how we should
feel about it now the thing is with anxiety with depression with pretty much any emotional state
we typically aren't aware of the interpretation part of this model we just experience situation
emotional response but the interpretation is key but it's not something we're necessarily aware
of and we call this automatic thinking that sometimes you can be thinking about something
and not even realize that you're thinking about it so this is a bit of a a weird concept for a
lot of people to fully kind of wrap their head around is how can i be thinking about something
but not be aware that i'm thinking about it well reality is it it happens all the time
so i think about the first time you got behind the wheel of an automobile and you went for your first
drive do you remember all the things you had to be aware of right hands at two and ten o'clock and i
needed to remember when to step on the clutch and shift gears and i need to be paying attention to
all the street signs and checking my rear view mirror and checking side mirrors and remembering
what the all the the street signs meant and when the lights are turning red and that car coming up
on my left hand side and remembering where i'm going it was all overwhelming because i had to
be aware of all of these things all at once so my mind is processing all of that information
and when you first start driving you can feel overwhelmed with all of the
information you have to be thinking about all of the information you have to be processing
but have you ever had an experience where you're driving somewhere and you're getting
from point a to point b and you get to your destination and you don't even remember the
drive you don't even remember how you got there well your buying still had to be processing all
of that information your mind still had to be processing where you're going when to
step on the gas pedal when to step on the brake pedal being aware of all the traffic around you
your mind still had to be thinking about all of that stuff but you weren't consciously aware of it
now this ability to think automatically is actually really adaptive because it can help
us multitask so i can be driving to a meeting and rather than focusing on or thinking about when i
shift gears from second to third i can be thinking about what i'm going to be saying at the meeting
so that's much more important than you know when to shift gears but because my mind is able to
process that information outside of my awareness it helps me to do two things in my mind at once so
in day-to-day life this ability to think without realizing i'm thinking is actually really adaptive
it only becomes problematic when we're talking about things like depression things like anxiety
when we may be having all sorts of negative or exaggerated thoughts
that fuel and drive feelings of depression feelings of anxiety and not even be aware of it
and if you're not aware of negative thinking patterns that are contributing to depression that
are contributing to anxiety you can't really do much about it and that's where cognitive therapy
comes in cognitive therapy is all about getting a better understanding and being a better awareness
of what it is that you're thinking about in these negative emotional states and being
able to challenge those thoughts and to be able to think about those thoughts in a more realistic way
so this is just an introduction to cognitive therapy i'm going to be doing
a lot of videos fully detailing out some of the characteristics of cognitive therapy
and ways that you can use cognitive therapy to help manage and regulate negative emotional states
so i hope you'll stay tuned and and keep an eye out for those videos so that's all for today's
video i'd love to hear some of your thoughts and ideas about cognitive therapy if you've ever
experienced it or if you're interested in learning more about it please leave me some
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for making it all the way to the end of the video and i will see you in the next one