CBT Principles: What You Need to Know
Ceus are available at AllCEUs.com/CBT-CEU.This episode was pre-recorded as part of a live.Continuing education webinar On demand.Ceus are still available for this presentation through ALLCEUs ALLCEUs.om/CBT-CEU.I’D like to welcome everybody today to cognitive, behavioral therapy addressing negative thoughts.Now a lot of us took courses and cognitive behavioral therapy.We’Ve worked with CBP for many many years, so some of the this is just going to be a refresher and others.You know you may pick up a few new tips or tools as we go along.So we’re going to define cognitive, behavioral therapy and its basic principles just get a really basic refresher on what was that original CDP about well identify factors impacting people’s choices?Behaviors, because you know they always have a choice, we’ll explore causes and the impact of thinking errors.
Cognitive distortions impact physical well-being
Whether you call them cognitive distortions, irrational thoughts or when I work with my clients, I try to call them unhelpful beliefs or unhelpful thoughts, because distortions and irrational seems sort of pejorative to me.So I try to avoid those words as much as possible and help clients see them as not incorrect, necessarily but unhelpful, and then we’ll identify some common thinking, errors and their relationship to cognitive distortions and some of our just very basic fears.Why do we care well because cognitive distortions or irrational thoughts or unhelpful thoughts, whatever you want to say, really, impacts people on a physical level, a mental level and an emotional level?A person who perceives the world is hostile, unsafe and unpredictable will tend to be more hyper vigilant until they exhaust the stress response system.So think about you know a bottle ship and you’ve got a bunch of new people on this battleship and all the sailors.
Don’t Fall For The “All Hands On Deck” Trap
Every time there’s the least little thing they send off the all-hands-on-deck, so a big bird flies over and I mean literally a bird and they freak out found me all hands on deck, and this goes on for a week or two or six months.You know, let’s think about our clients.They don’t usually come in right away where everything is set to OFF that startle response.Everything sets off that fight-or-flight response.The staff starts to get exhausted all the rest of the sailors that have to drop everything and run to their battle stations after a little while they’re like really no.No, we just.We can’t even do this and it also reminds me of the boy who cried wolf.
How Chronic Stress Can Cause Depression
Anyhow, I digress sticking with the battleship metaphor.So eventually the captain says you know what let’s retrain on what is worth setting off the all hands on deck, because everybody here is exhausted and nobody’s even really responding anymore when they come to their battle stations, they’re, just kind of dragging their butts in, like whatever It’S probably another false alarm.The same sort of thing is true with us when we’re on on high alert for too long our brain says you know what we got to conserve some energy in case some really really big threat comes along, so it turns down what I call the stress response System, it turns down the sensitivity, so you don’t get alerted for every little thing.That would cause you stress, but you also don’t get alerted for those little things that would cause you happiness either.Anything that would cause the excitatory neurotransmitters to be secreted you’re, just not getting those anymore, which a lot of people kind of refer to as depression.
How to Reduce stress in work
It’S just kind of like the F, whatever, and only the biggest most notable things actually cause an emotional effect.We don’t want people to get to that point.That’S no way to live, so we need to help them, learn how to sort of retrain their spotters to figure out what is actually stressful.A person who perceives the world is generally good and believe they have.The ability to deal with challenges as they arise will be able to allow their stress response system to function.Normally there are going to be times you have all hands on deck, whether it’s a real emergency or whether it’s just a drill, but it will happen and they can go they can you know, do what they’re going to do.They have that adrenaline rush.They have the energy and the focus to do their jobs, and when it’s over, they go back to their quarters, they can relax refresh.
How cbt can help with stress and anxiety
You know just kind of chill for a while and then there’s a low where their body rebalances before the next one, and this is kind of what we want in life I mean.Ideally, we wouldn’t have super high peaks very often, but we want to make sure we give our body time to rebalance after there’s a stressor and not have to stand on on edge, not be hyper vigilant, constantly just waiting for the next one to come along.So what is the impact of these thinking errors?Well, whenever we have that stress response system activated, the body is saying we either need to fight or we need to flee so you’re dumping, all kinds of adrenaline and other neuro chemicals.So there’s anxiety, there can be stress when people start having this reaction.You know they start having muscle tension, sweating, heart rate increases, breathing increases.People will call that anxiety.
Helping someone with chronic anger issues
Some will label that as anger either way they’re both sides of the same coin.They need to do something, but if it lasts too long, then we start moving into depression and they just they don’t have to get up and go anymore.There’S just not any excitatory neurotransmitters really left.They need some time to rest and rebalance behaviorally.Think about it.If you go somewhere and you are just constantly on guard, are you going to keep going there or are you going to withdraw so people who have a lot of thinking errors?Unhelpful thoughts tend to withdraw more, they may turn to addictions to kind of numb or blunt some of the inputs, sleep problems and changes.
How cbt can help to reduce the stress response, and improve sleep
When you are hyper vigilant, when you have this stress response going, even if it’s not a full-bore, if it’s still there somewhat, if you’re stressed out you’re not going to sleep as well, you’re going to maintain higher levels of cortisol, so you’re not going to get that Restful rejuvenating sleep, you may kind of goes on and off eating changes.You know, depending on the person, some people eat the self food that some people can’t eat it all.But we do see that the hormones Guerlain and lets them get all out of whack, not under stress, but also when sleep gets out of whack when your circadian rhythms get out of whack.So we’re starting to see the Cascade effect where it’s emotional and behavioral physical you’ve got stress-related illnesses that start coming up.If you’re on that lunch, you’ve got muscle tension for that long, it starts to hurt.I mean you start to get migraines.Your back starts to hurt wherever you store your stress, so to speak.
The Negative Reciprocal Relationship Between Stress and Illness
It starts to come out and most people when they’re under a lot of stress for an extended period.You know a day is not a big deal for most people, but for an extended period become more susceptible to illnesses.They start getting sick, easier, headaches, GI distress.You know some people store their stress right in their gut socially think about the last time you were stressed, were you patient and tolerant, and just a pleasure to be around you may have tried to be but you’re more prone to irritability and impatience and again wanting To withdraw all of these affects, contribute to fatigue and a sense of hopelessness and helplessness, which often intensifies thinking errors.So you’ll see this negative reciprocal interaction.
How to prevent withdrawal in a stressed person
If somebody feels stressed out and overwhelmed and that they withdrawal, then they may start feeling like they have no support and they don’t and they lose all their social buffers to the stress, so they feel even more stressed, so they want to withdrawal even more so we’re Going to talk about how to prevent that now I like this little diagram, maybe because it’s got a heart in the center – I don’t know but behavior feelings and thoughts.This is the outside of the circle, all three of these impact diecuts each other.When you do something, it often impacts your feelings and your thoughts about a situation when you, when you’re thinking, if you think positively you’re, probably going to choose more positive behaviors and more, have more positive feelings, you’re thinking negatively.Obviously, you may choose more of an escape behavior Protection behavior and may have more feelings of anger, anxiety, depression, etc.So these things are going on and they’re all interacting.
Cognitive behavioral therapy helps break the chain of negative thinking
The one really cool thing is: if you break this chain somewhere or this circuit, then you can stop that reciprocal negative downward spiral.So cognitive behavioral helps people who are willing to show up or who are willing to address their thoughts.Not everybody is willing to start addressing their thoughts right away.Maybe they want to start addressing their sleep problems in their eating problems or something that’s more physical.Okay, that’s fine!Because anywhere we interrupt.This circuit is going to have positive effects.Assuming the intervention is positive.It’S going to have positive effects on the other ones.So what about the triangle?Well, yourself, so you’re feeling thoughts and behavior impact you.It impacts how you feel and you’re like well, yeah, okay, just stay with me, but the way you feel think and act impacts.Your future and it also impacts how you interact with others.So you know that kind of affects things because remember.
