In my last article, I talked about how the inner critic impacts our sense of self worth. In this article, I decided to expand even further on these two topics (inner critic and self worth) by talking about CBT.
What is CBT? Why do a lot of psychologists recommend it? And how is it related to self worth and the critic?
CBT stands for cognitive behavioral therapy. It is designed to help patients deal with certain (especially negative) patterns of thinking by using rational thought to respond to and challenge those patterns. CBT is used for many different disorders such as anxiety, depression, and eating disorders. However, the main goal of CBT is not to diagnose or pin down a specific name for a person’s struggles. It looks at symptoms, thoughts and behaviours as a whole, whereas other methods of therapy often look at an issue from a very specific viewpoint. For example, psychoanalysis tends to look for unconscious reasons and explanations for why a person feels a certain way, most likely trying to connect a current feeling or behavior to childhood events. Many therapists use multiple methods, but what makes CBT stand out is that it is more “solution oriented” and “problem focused”. These traits make CBT applicable to relief of mental illness symptoms on both a short term and long term scale, and it is often more efficient at helping a patient feel better, although other methods of treatment can present similar benefits over time.
So how does CBT work? CBT usually has six phases:
- Psychological Assessment.
- Skills Acquisition.
- Skills Consolidation and Application Training.
- Generalization and Maintenance.
- Post-treatment Assessment Follow-up.
The first phase seems fairly obvious: identify the problem and what is causing the patient specific distress. Let’s apply our self worth problem to this. Say a patient says to his/her therapist, “I don’t feel valuable”. This statement would act as the assessment and thought pattern that needs to be addressed. The next step is to reconceptualize, which is the heart of CBT and most likely the challenging part of the process. A therapist at this point is likely to present a more “light hearted” way of wording how the patient is feeling. For example, “I don’t feel valuable” could become “I’m not feeling at my best today”. Then the therapist may ask the patient where this feeling came from? It could be linked to a recent event or it can go far back to childhood memories. And regardless of where it came from, the goal of CBT remains the same: to challenge the negative feeling.
The third phase is skills acquisition, where the therapist helps the patient deal with those thoughts and feelings as they come up. The skills can vary and can be active or passive. The most effective skills have one concept in common, and that is mindfulness. Mindfulness centers on being present, conscious and aware of your internal and external circumstances. It can help us become kinder towards ourselves as critical thoughts pop up in our minds. It helps us realize negative patterns such as thought distortions and rumination. Being mindful also helps us tolerate uncertainty, and feel better in the moment even when anticipating a negative event or feeling.
The next three steps are there to help the patient through the process. It takes a lot of practice to become mindful and aware. One of the key practices used to develop mindfulness is meditation. Let’s assume the patient in our self worth example chooses a regular meditation practice, as simple as meditating for five minutes a day. After a few weeks of regular practice, they can start to develop a more mindful mindset, and that enables them to recognize and challenge their negative thought patterns, therefore reconstructing their feelings of self worth. And they are likely to be much more positive.
Is the problem solved? Is this person never going to feel low self worth in the future?
Well, the short answer is no. Even though a regular mindfulness practice such as meditation can help a great deal, it does not erase what feelings and thoughts could come up in the future. But the reaction to those negative feelings is more likely to come from a positive, more assured and self-aware place, leaving the patient feeling much more in control of the feelings and thoughts.
Another thing worth mentioning is that the mindfulness practice should remain regular in order for this to work. If we wait for negative feelings to meditate, we are not likely to experience the benefits meditation has to offer.
Written by Maryam Alsadiq
Sources:
“Cognitive behavioral therapy.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 25 January 2016. Web.