Should you use CBT for Anxiety?
For those of you who have spent years suffering with anxiety
and panic attacks, there is hope and a light at the end of the
tunnel providing you are willing to take the steps necessary to
help yourself. Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) for
anxiety is one of the most common methods used by
psychotherapists to help patients learn how to gain control of
their disorder. According to an extensive
review of scientific literature on CBT, completed by Boston
University in April of 2008, CBT had a far greater effect when
used by psychotherapists than other placebo methods.
These reports showed that the overall severity of a patient’s
anxiety symptoms was significantly decreased when CBT was used
properly.
Panic Away is
based upon CBT. Click here to find out more
To successfully use CBT for anxiety therapy, you should have a
good basic understanding of the subject and how it is applied
to help the patient first cope with and then overcome and
eliminate the issues that cause their anxiety. CBT can be
broken down into individual steps that first help you to
understand what is causing your anxiety and then teach you ways
to improve your level of positive thinking and finally become
so practiced at using the power of positive thinking that it
becomes second nature and your anxieties disappear
altogether.
If you find yourself thinking about the issues that cause you
to become anxious, you are allowing negative thoughts to enter
your mind. These negative thoughts may be along the line
of “I am a failure” or “what if everyone laughs at
me?” To help you learn to recognize these thoughts,
think about a situation that causes you anxiety and write a
list of all of the thoughts that occur and then sort out the
positive thoughts from the negative ones. Once you have learned
to recognize these negative thoughts, you can begin to take the
steps necessary to adjust your personal beliefs and
assumptions. For the person with an anxiety disorder, it
is quite natural to have negative beliefs and assumptions such
as “If I do not get the promotion at work, I am a
failure.”
The second phase of CBT teaches you how to challenge your
beliefs and learn how to overcome them. This can help you
to eventually make permanent changes to your core
beliefs. Next you must learn to recognize the effect that
your negative thinking has on your behavior. Often the
negative thoughts that you have, may result in you feeling a
particular way. An example of this might be the feeling of
intense depression that might come with the thought that you
are not going to get that promotion. Alternatively, the
negative thoughts might actually stop you from doing something
you might enjoy, such as going to a party, because you think
everybody is going to laugh at you.
Once you have learned to recognize your negative behavior, the
final step in CBT is to begin to challenge your behaviors and
make the necessary changes to your thought processes to
eliminate them. This entails changing the way you think
from the negative “I can’t” to “I can.” This type of therapy
means being strong enough to go the party despite any
misgivings to see if anyone actually does laugh at you.
Click here and
learn about Panic Away
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is not something that you can do
alone; it takes professional guidance from a therapist who has
been specially trained in CBT. With good therapy and
practice you can learn to control your anxieties finally
eliminating them and enjoying an anxiety free life.
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