do you feel trapped by a cycle of
negative thoughts and then possibly
destructive behaviors that go around and
around and you just don't feel good
maybe depressed maybe anxious but
overall you would just like to change
how you feel is there anything that can
help I think there is I'm barber
Heffernan and I'm a psychotherapist
who's been helping people recover from
anxiety and trauma for over 15 years for
videos designed to help you live a more
joyful life please subscribe to my
channel and hit the bell to be notified
when I release a new video every Tuesday
whether you're working with a therapist
or you're looking for some self-help CBT
techniques this video can help you
cognitive behavioral therapy is one of
the most effective best research
treatments for anxiety and for
depression in this video I'm going to
explain what CBT is and why it helps in
order to explain cognitive behavioral
therapy I think it's very helpful to
have a visual depiction of it but I want
to start first with the goal the goal is
for you to feel better
what is CBT so CBT looks at our feelings
our thoughts which we call cognitions
and our behaviors and it looks at how
those interact with one another
most of us are keenly aware of how our
feelings impact our thoughts and how our
feelings impact our behaviors if we
don't feel good and we're like I don't
feel like exercising then we don't
exercise so many of us operate in a way
where we are driven by our feelings and
cognitive behavioral therapy looks at
how we are also driven by our thoughts
so how we think impacts how we feel and
how we think impacts how we behave and
then of course how we behave impacts how
we think and how we behave impacts how
we feel so for example in the example
that I just gave that you don't feel
like exercising and you get up and you
do it anyway you probably afterwards
feel better feel
more energized so that behavior will
have changed how you feel and that's a
really key point because I've been
looking at a lot of videos I've been
looking a lot of social media about
cognitive behavioral therapy and these
days it's just very very popular to say
you know how you think creates your
world how you think creates how you feel
and it's only sort of true
plus it's forgetting half of CBT is
focused on behavior so let me give you
an example of how this might work for
somebody who has depression in general
people with depression have incredibly
negative self-talk they will talk to
themselves the way they would never talk
to a friend and if you're doing that
it's very helpful to begin to be aware
of it so you can gradually change it but
let's say somebody is extremely
depressed and can't get off the couch
and lays on the couch all day maybe eats
an entire bag of potato chips begins to
say to themselves you know I'm fat I'm
lazy I'm a failure they end up feeling
worse and worse and worse they probably
don't get off the couch and the whole
thing just spirals down the behaviors
contribute to the thoughts contribute to
the feelings and it goes around and
around and around an example of how this
might work for somebody who has anxiety
let's say your boss is sharp with you
and sort of corrects you and you have a
lot of anxiety you might immediately
start thinking like I'm gonna lose my
job and then if I lose my job I won't be
able to pay my rent and if I can't pay
my rent then I'll be homeless and within
about thirty seconds of your boss like
correcting something you did you're on
the street and you're homeless and
meanwhile your body is completely
activated your pulse rate is going up as
you are feeling emotionally anxious your
thoughts are getting more anxious your
physiological body is getting more
anxious and you're probably shutting
down more and more and more anxiety
creates a lot of avoided behavior so
that anxiety might be so bad that you
actually don't do any work for the rest
of the day which only makes the
situation worse and makes you more
anxious that you will get in trouble at
your job so before I continue can you
let me know in the comments below
whether this psycho makes sense to you
so clients come
to my office and they say Barbara I
don't like how I feel
help me change how I feel and the basis
of cognitive behavioral therapy is that
it's very difficult if not impossible to
directly change our feelings so to
change your feelings you not need to
either change how you think or how you
behave so with CBT therapy we focus on
where can we change cognitions which
thought patterns are incredibly
unhelpful or destructive we call them
cognitive distortions because in general
are super negative thinking is usually
pretty distorted and then we also look
at what changes can we make in behavior
so one of the tools commonly used in
cognitive behavioral therapy is called a
thought log I actually just call it a
CBT log because the term thought log is
ignoring behaviors and then I want to
take a moment and talk about behaviors
so so unhealthy behaviors generally fall
into the categories of compulsive
behaviors or avoidant behaviors
compulsive behaviors can be working too
much overeating drinking too much and
avoided behaviors could be not driving
if you're afraid of driving on not
socializing if you have social anxiety
or isolating if you're depressed
procrastinating if you have fear some of
the work you're doing or you have a
perfectionist tendency and you're afraid
that it won't be perfect you might
procrastinate so all those things would
fall into avoidant behaviors and most
people are keenly aware of how
compulsive behaviors can be destructive
but they may not be as aware of how
destructive avoidant behaviors can be so
avoidance does not work and I talked
about this in one of my other videos
traumatic memory processing and I'll put
the link above and also in the category
of avoidance is numbing out when we numb
out our feelings or we sublimate issues
we just push them down and pretend
they're not there and
general those two things reinforce fear
increase anxiety and they can also
increase depression the other category
of behaviors is healthy bakers and
you'll need to determine what are
healthy behaviors for you some common
healthy behaviors that can be
substituted for the avoidant or
compulsive behaviors would be to call a
friend go for a walk sometimes just take
a shower ask someone for help
ask someone to help you face something
that you've been avoiding meditate do
yoga hug a pet there's a ton of
different healthy behaviors and as you
go through the CBT process and you work
with the CBT log you can jot down which
healthy behaviors should try and which
ones make you feel better so coming back
to the CBT log for a second and you can
actually do a screenshot of this page
and then come back to it and use it but
really you can just do your log on the
auricular notepad and so if you want to
write out the facts of what happened in
the situation column your feelings your
emotional and physical feelings and then
label them on a scale of 0 to 10 how
upsetting is the emotion you're having
and then the unhelpful thought to
categorize the unhelpful thought in one
of the unhelpful thinking styles which I
will summarize in a moment but I also
have an entire video on CBT unhelpful
thinking styles which the link is above
and you can access that and then also
note what kind of unhelpful behaviors
you either did in that situation or you
would normally do and again those
behaviors could be compulsive or
avoidant and then in your log write down
an alternative thought how can you
reframe the unhelpful thought if it is a
cognitive distortion you can know that
it is not true that's very important if
you're able to identify one of your
thoughts as a cognitive distortion you
can be assured that it's not accurate
and then a very helpful thing to help
you with the thinking piece of this is
what would you say to
friend right down in your log what you
would say to a friend if they were in
the same situation and then jot down
what are some alternative behaviors that
might be more adaptive and help you feel
better and then the last column of the
log is for you once you've implemented
the alternative behavior or the
alternative thought and you can write
down how you're feeling now rate that
feeling go back and compare it to your
original feeling and see what has
shifted for you I'd like to emphasize
that changing your behavior is key to
your feeling better
changing your behavior actually
communicates to your old brain it
communicates to your emotional brain
that things are better and so even if
you are not feeling better when you
initiate the behavior you probably will
feel better afterwards and this is
something a lot of people don't
understand that our behavior does not
have to be driven by our feelings we
cannot want to do something and we can
do it anyway a very very helpful phrase
to keep in mind is move a muscle
change a thought when we move a muscle
our thoughts change if there's one thing
I'd like you to get out of the video
today it's the importance of your
behavior it's the importance of
initiating positive healthy behaviors
that help you feel better as I mentioned
before so much of our society is right
now focused on how you think and that
just simply changing the way you think
is going to make you feel better but
many of us can't change the way we think
so with the whole CBT cycle you really
need to identify where you can intervene
whether you can intervene with changing
your thoughts or whether you can
intervene with changing your behavior
and just to reiterate on reframing
thoughts basically identify the
cognitive distortion that you're having
is it a projection is it something about
the future is it a projection into the
future of some horrible thing happening
which is catastrophizing is it mind
reading is it thinking that you know
what someone else is thinking when you
have an
and they haven't told you is there
evidence for the thought that you're
having or does it just feel true and the
key question is can you see it
differently so I go over in detail
common cognitive distortions in the
video I released last week called CBT
unhelpful thinking styles so it would be
definitely worthwhile watching that to
combine it with this video to figure out
how to move this forward changing how
you think is not easy and changing how
you behave is not easy either both take
practice effort and practice and if you
find changing how you think about
yourself to be nearly impossible it's
likely you have had some kind of trauma
in your background and the repeated
negative thoughts you've been living
with them for a long time and I have a
PDF that works very well for that called
transforming your negative core beliefs
and you can download it in the links
below so I'm very interested to know
whether this video has helped you
understand how your thoughts behaviors
and feelings all interact with each
other and how you can focus on your
thoughts or your behaviors in order to
feel better let me know in the comments
below
if you liked this video please give me a
thumbs up it helps me know that I'm on
track and motivates me to keep making
more content for you till the next time
[Music]