About Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.

• Cognitions are thoughts that are in your mind, they are personal and private. No one is able to know what you are thinking unless you say.

• Behaviours are actions that you and other people can see and observe.

In order to recognise your thinking patterns and thinking style you need to:

1. Record your thoughts ( see download for keeping thought records)
2. Recognise that thoughts are not real they are only thoughts e.g. “Nobody likes me”
3. Recognise that sometimes there is no evidence for the way we think e.g. “I am going to fail ”
4. We think in ways we have learnt to think over time; these ways are often unhelpful e.g. “I am a bad person”.
5. Often there is no evidence to support our thinking e.g. “He does not like me”
6. We can think too much and over analyse situations. (rumination)
7. Our thinking can be irrational e.g. “I am going mad ”
8. Our thinking can be worrying and so raise anxiety e.g. “What if..... ”
9. Thinking can put a filter or shade over our actions.
10. Our thinking can be already fixed and rigid regardless of the real evidence e.g. “I have always thought like this, so it must be true”

Here are some examples of certain unhelpful sets of thoughts. :

(Some common automatic thoughts)

Behaviours:

1. Our behaviours are actions and are real; they can be seen by others and confirmed independently. e.g. I closed the door, I got into bed. I walked the dog.
2. Behaviours are the actions of our "controlling" thoughts, e.g. I always fail, so there is no point in trying to do anything.
3. Sometimes our behaviours don’t make sense and seem irrational, e.g. I was frightened so I ran out, but there was nothing to be frightened of.
4. Our behaviours can be directly related to the way we are thinking.
5. If our thoughts are irrational, then the consequential behaviours will also be irrational, e.g. an angry thought will provoke an angry behaviour.

Now consider the role of cognitions and behaviours as applied to any of the mentioned problems people ask for help about : Anxiety, Stress , Worrying , Panic, Fear, Phobias, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder ( OCD) , Post Traumatic Stress disorder ( PTSD), Eating Problems ( Bulimia and Anorexia ), and most importantly Depression.

CBT is highly applicable to all of the above problems which are all driven by unhelpful negative thoughts.