Alzheimers Signs and Symptoms

Exactly How Does Cogntive Behavioral Therapy Work? -the FIve Areas Of CBT

February 21st, 2012

How does cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) work?

CBT works by helping you to grasp and sound correct of issues in your life, by utilizing the ’5 Areas ‘ to break them down into smaller parts. This lets you work out how each part influences your feelings and how each is attached to the others, and so make changes in a few of the areas to get different results.

What are the Five Areas of CBT? They are:

The Situation – this is an issue you are experiencing, or an unattractive event or problem situation
Thoughts – what you are thinking in this situation
Feelings – the emotional feelings that appear in that particular situation
Physical feelings – the physical feelings caused by your thoughts, emotions and actions
Actions – what you do in that situation

The indispensable thing to grasp here is that each of these 5 areas influence and change the others.

Your thoughts about a problem affect your feelings, both physical and emotional, and also your actions. The way these areas influence one another might be positive and favourable or negative and harmful – in every circumstance, your reactions can be either beneficial or harmful, relying on the context adn what you want, compared with what you are getting.

It's also important to understand that what you get, your outcomes, flow direct;y from your responses in each of these 5 areas.

The same scenario can cause a range of totally different outcomes, dependent on your thoughts about it. How you consider a situation will change how you are feeling and what you do, giving the numerous results.

For exapmle, let’s say you are walking home,having had an appalling day at work, when a good buddy of yours walks straight past you, not even bothering to say hi. How do you reply?

One option is to wonder ‘why did they ignored me – maybe they do not truly like me? ‘ (your thoughts), leading to you feeling rejected and lowering your confidence and self esteem (your feelings). This might then lead straight to you feeling upset, and start shaking, feel queasiness and a loss of energy (your physical feelings), leading to you going home and avoid ringing your pal later on (your actions).

Alternatively, you could question whether there had been something wrong with your chum as it is unlike them to brush off you, leading to a sense of concern for their welfare, with no negative physical feelings, and then you may get in contact with them later on to test how they are. This would potentially result in a reinforced comradeship, with stronger emotions of comradeship, and such like.

Can you see how a simple change in your thinking can result in a totally different set of outcomes from the same scenario?

It is simple to form an endless circle, which feeds upon itself and causes you to feel even worse.Then, your reaction to this new, worse feeling, creates a new situation that makes you feel worse.

You can even start to build a collection of awfully deformed (and upsetting) beliefs about the situation and yourself and again, make things worse!

When you are upset or troubled, you tend to target the negative side of a situation and are much more likely to leap to conclusions, translating things in negative and unhelpful ways. Luckily , CBT can give you a method of changing your reaction to a more positive one and breaking the viscious circle of negative feelings, feelings actions and results. By doing a Five Areasassessment of th eissue, it's easy to get a more clear appreciation of how every bit of your reply influences the others, and so change one or two parts to modify the way your feel.

By practising the talents and techniques of cognitive behavioral therapy, you can learn to be much more in charge of your sentiments in any problem situation,, reducing negative feelings such as foreboding and panic.

For more in-depth information about cognitive behavioral therapy, visit www.anxietysupportgroupsonline.com