My latest Continuing Studies class. 5 weeks long.

Week 1 Summary

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

  • Core principles of CBT:
    • Focuses on the present
    • Identifies specific goals to work on
    • Teaches client to be THEIR OWN therapist
  • Uses socratic questioning
    • Guided discovery w/o giving advice
  • Why CBT is effective:
    • Being observed by someone
      • Hawthorne effect- client changes behavior b/c they’re being observed/held accountable
    • Confronting a problem (and spending time thinking about it)
    • Therapeutic alliance (and unconditional positive regard)
  • Patients ultimately benefit from CBT by learning skills
    • First CBT skill: tracking your thoughts
  • OARS skills for facilitating conversation
    • Often applied as: Reflect -> Affirm -> Open-ended question
    • Open-ended questions
      • “Tell me about your weekend” NOT “Did you have a good weekend”
    • Affirmations
      • “That’s very brave of you”
      • “You’re really good at…”
      • “Sounds like you’re trying really hard”
    • Reflections/Summary statements
      • “It sounds like you felt…”
      • “So you thought…”
      • “Let me see if I understand…”

Tracking your thoughts

  • Thoughts impact your behavior and emotions
  • Thoughts are often distorted and not reflective of reality
  • Common emotion/thought pairs
    • Sadness -> “I’ve had a loss”
    • Anxiety -> “There’s a threat in the future”
    • Anger -> “Something’s unfair”
    • Guilt -> “I did something bad”
    • Shame -> “I am defective in some way”
    • Embarrassment -> “I did something bad and people will know”
    • Frustration -> “Something is blocking my goal”
    • Envy -> “Someone has something better than I do”
    • Jealousy -> “There’s a threat to my relationship”
    • Regret -> “I made the wrong decision”