Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a common form of talk therapy that focuses on the relationship between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. By focusing on how your thoughts affect how you feel and behave, CBT helps you change those negative patterns to improve your daily functioning.
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a form of psychotherapy that has been shown to help people with a variety of conditions, including depression and anxiety. The goal of CBT is to help you become aware of distorted or unhelpful thinking patterns, so you can view challenging situations more clearly and respond to them in a more effective way. Through this process, you can feel better about yourself and take action to make positive changes in your life.
CBT is an effective treatment for a variety of mental illnesses and can also help manage stress. CBT helps people gain more control over their mental health by helping them change the way they think about themselves, other people and situations. The following 10 strategies can help you manage your stress by changing how you think about stressful situations:
- Cognitive Restructuring
This technique is where you identify the negative thoughts that you have and examine them to determine if they are helpful or harmful, and then challenge them.
- Self-Monitoring
Self-monitoring is keeping a record of your thoughts and feelings so you can establish a pattern of your thinking. This will allow you to notice your thought patterns and be better able to change them when they are unhelpful.
- Thought Stopping
Thought stopping is where you stop yourself from thinking negative thoughts by distracting yourself with something else like repeating a word or phrase over and over again such as “Stop.”
- Shifting Focus to Positive Thoughts
Shifting focus to positive thoughts is where you work on replacing negative thoughts with positive ones instead.
- Reconstructive Thinking
Reconstructive thinking is another type of cognitive restructuring which involves determining the reality of the situation rather than how you perceive it.
- Journaling
Journaling involves writing down your feelings about an event or situation in order to gain clarity about how it made you feel and how it impacted your life in general.
- Meditating on Positive
Develop ways to relax your body and calm your mind, such as meditation or yoga, so you can put yourself into a more positive state of mind when you are faced with stressful situations or triggers.
- Develop healthy ways to reward yourself when you achieve your goals or successfully manage difficult situations without resorting to unhealthy behaviors or habits—you want positive behaviors to become habits too!
- Set goals for yourself that are specific and achievable within reasonable time frames (short-, medium-, long-term). You will feel motivated by each success as it happens.
- Learn to solve problems in a simple four-step process: identify the problem, come up with solutions, evaluate the pros and cons of each solution, and take action on the best solution, then repeat if necessary.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a psychotherapeutic approach that addresses dysfunctional emotions, maladaptive behaviors and cognitive processes and contents through a number of goal-oriented, explicit systematic procedures. The name refers to behavior therapy, cognitive therapy, and to therapy based upon a combination of basic behavioral and cognitive research.