Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a short-term skill building process to help change your way of thinking in response to anxiety triggers. Check out my previous post I for Identify Triggers, J for Journal for a bit more on identifying anxiety triggers.
If CBT is something you’re curious about, definitely do some research. There’s a somewhat dated research article discussing effectiveness of CBT here. I previously mentioned that I was a bit skeptical at first. If I’m honest with myself that was because I wasn’t expecting to do “work” or have a workbook to track my thought process. At the core of the work were questions to break down my thoughts. When I catastrophized, I was told to ask questions like
- Who cares?
- What’s the worst than can actually happen?
- So what?
then physically write down a response. The idea was that, in reality, my fears and thoughts were usually much less earth-shattering than I thought. Sometimes they weren’t realistic at all.
In a 2019 Mindful article, author Byron Katie described that diffusing anxiety can come down to answering one question — IS IT TRUE? If you break down how you’re feeling or what your fear is or even a potential catastrophe, is it really true?
I’m always curious to hear about others’ experiences and this time is no different. Let me know what you think about CBT and/or asking questions to change your anxious thought patterns.
I’m a BIG fan of CBT! I love how it gives you the power to start controlling your disease (anxiety, depression, etc.) It gives you a lot of responsibility to put a lot of work in too though which means it’s HARD! Taking meds is easy, trying to train your brain to think differently is not.
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