Cognitive Behavioural Therapy For Dummies. Rob Willson

your thoughts about the event under ‘B’, and how you feel and act under ‘C’. Developing a really clear ABC of your problem can make it much easier for you to realise how your thoughts at ‘B’ lead to your emotional/behavioural responses at ‘C’. (Chapter 3 describes the ABC form more fully.)

Characterising CBT

      We give a much fuller description of the principles and practical applications of CBT in the rest of this book. However, here’s a quick reference list of key characteristics of CBT. CBT

       Emphasises the role of the personal meanings that you give to events in determining your emotional responses.

       Was developed through extensive scientific evaluation.

       Focuses more on how your problems are being maintained rather than on searching for a single root cause of the problem.

       Offers practical advice and tools for overcoming common emotional problems (see Chapters 9, 12 and 13 Numbers may change).

       Holds the view that you can change and develop by thinking things through and by trying out new ideas and strategies (head to Chapter 4).

       Can address material from your past if doing so can help you to understand and change the way you’re thinking and acting now. (Chapter 16 covers this in depth.)

       Shows you that some of the strategies you’re using to cope with your emotional problems are actually maintaining those problems. (Chapter 7 is all about this.)

       Strives to normalise your emotions, physical sensations and thoughts rather than to persuade you that they’re clues to ‘hidden’ problems.

       Recognises that you may develop emotional problems about your emotional problems – for example, feeling ashamed about being depressed. (See Chapter 6 for more on this concept.)

       Highlights learning techniques and maximises self-help so that ultimately you can become your own therapist (head to Chapter 22).

GETTING COMPLICATED

      Sticking to the simple ABC formulation in which A + B = C can serve you well. But if that seems a little simplistic, you can consider the more complicated formulations shown here:

      This diagram shows the complex interaction among your thoughts, feelings and behaviours. Although your thoughts affect how you feel, your feelings also affect your thinking. So, if you’re having depressed thoughts, your mood is likely to be low. The lower your mood, the more likely you are to act in a depressed manner and to think pessimistically. The combination of feeling depressed, thinking pessimistically and acting in a depressed manner can, ultimately, influence the way you see your personal world. You may focus on negative events in your life and the world in general and therefore accumulate more negative As. This interaction among A, B and C can become a vicious circle.

      CBT pays a lot of attention to changing both unhealthy thinking patterns and unhealthy patterns of behaviour.

Chapter 2

      Spotting Errors in Your Thinking

      IN THIS CHAPTER

      

Identifying classic pitfalls in human thought

      

Correcting your thinking

      

Getting to know the thinking errors you make most

      You probably don’t spend a lot of time mulling over the pros and cons of the way you think. Most people don’t – but to be frank, most people ideally ought to!

      One of the central messages of CBT is that your thoughts, your attitudes and the beliefs you hold have a big effect on the way you interpret the world around you and on how you feel. So, if you’re feeling excessively bad, chances are that you’re thinking badly – or, at least, in an unhelpful way. Of course, you probably don’t intend to think in an unhelpful way, and no doubt you’re largely unaware that you do.

      Thinking errors are slips in thinking that everyone makes from time to time. Just as a poor signal stops your phone from functioning effectively, so thinking errors prevent you from making accurate assessments of your experiences. Thinking errors lead you to get the wrong end of the stick, jump to conclusions and assume the worst. Thinking errors get in the way of, or cause you to distort, the facts. However, you do have the ability to step back and take another look at the way you’re thinking and set yourself straight. In this chapter we show you how to do just that.

Months or years after the event, you’ve probably recalled a painful or embarrassing experience and been struck by how differently you feel about it at this later stage. Perhaps you can even laugh about the situation now. Why didn’t you laugh back then? Because of the way you were thinking at the time.

      To err is most definitely human. Or, as American psychotherapist Albert Ellis is quoted as saying, ‘If the Martians ever find out how human beings think, they’ll kill themselves laughing’. Ellis made that observation back in the ’60s, but not a lot has changed about our tendency to ‘think badly’ since. By understanding the thinking errors we outline in this chapter, you can spot your unhelpful thoughts and put them straight more quickly. Get ready to identify and respond in healthier ways to some of the most common ‘faulty’ and unhelpful ways of thinking identified by researchers and clinicians.

      

Albert Ellis was one of the founders of cognitive-based psychotherapy. He developed a treatment for emotional disorders called Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy or REBT. A long-winded name, no doubt, but it basically involves much of what is in this book. Alongside Aaron Beck, who developed CBT for the treatment of depression and later further popularized CBT, Ellis developed the underlying philosophical foundations that still comprise CBT today. So if you are very keen on learning more about how CBT developed, look for books by Ellis and early work by Beck. You may also want to look at books by Windy Dryden, who has over 200 publications on the subject.

Catastrophising: Turning Mountains Back Into Molehills

Catastrophising is taking a relatively minor negative event and imagining all sorts of disasters resulting from that one small event, as we sum up in Figure 2-1.

      Consider these examples of catastrophising:

       You’re at a party and you accidentally stumble headlong into the ice sculpture. After you slide your way across the floor and to the bathroom to