Rob Willson - Cognitive Behavioural Therapy For Dummies

The basics of using CBT as a scientifically tested and verified psychotherapeutic method of overcoming common emotional problems.

Ways in which you can identify your problems and set specific goals for how you’d rather be living your life.

Techniques to identify errors in the way you may be thinking and to adopt more helpful thoughts, attitudes, philosophies, and beliefs.

Behavioural experiments and strategies you can incorporate into your life to improve your day-to-day functioning.

Information that can help you to understand, normalise, and address some common human problems. You may think that you’re the only person in the world who feels and thinks the way you do. This book shows you that many problems such as depression, anxiety, anger, and obsessions are in fact very common human experiences, so welcome to the human race! You’re not alone.

We hope that the whole experience will be at least a little entertaining in the process. So read on, welcome new concepts, and consider trying some of the ideas we offer in the book.

Note: Depending on the degree of disruption and distress that your personal difficulties are causing you, this book may or may not be enough treatment to help you recover. The book may spur you on to get further help to really knock your emotional demons on the head. See Chapter 23 for tips on finding and working with a professional.

To make your reading experience easier and to alert you to key words or points, we use certain conventions.

Italics introduce new terms, underscore key differences in meaning between words, and highlight the most important aspects of a sentence or example.

We use the terms him in even-numbered chapters and her in odd-numbered chapters when writing, with a view to incorporate gender equality.

The case studies in the book are illustrative of actual clients we have treated and aren’t direct representations of any particular clients.

Bold text is used to show the action part of numbered lists.

And to make your reading experience even easier, we identify skippable material:

Sidebars and the Technical Stuff icon: Within most chapters, we include sidebars of shaded text. These sidebars contain interesting nuggets of information or occasionally expand on a topic within the chapter. Read them if they sound interesting to you and skip them if they don’t. The same goes for text marked with the Technical Stuff icon.

Our acknowledgements: Probably pretty boring to the average reader.

In writing this little tome, we make the following assumptions about you, dear reader:

You’re human.

As a human, you’re likely at some stage in your life to experience some sort of emotional problem that you’d like to surmount.

You’ve heard about CBT, or are intrigued by CBT, or have had CBT suggested to you by a doctor, friend, or mental health professional as a possible treatment for your specific difficulties.

Even if you don’t think you’re particularly in need of CBT right now, you want to discover more about some of the principles outlined in this book.

You think that your life is absolutely fine right now, but you want to find interesting and useful information in the book that will enhance your life further.

You’re keen to find out whether CBT may be helpful to someone close to you.

You’re studying CBT and want to use this book as a hands-on adjunct to your training.

We use the following icons in this book to alert you to certain types of information that you can choose to read, commit to memory (and possibly pass on to unsuspecting friends and family), or maybe just utterly ignore:

This icon highlights practical advice for putting CBT into practice.

This icon is a cheerful, if sometimes urgent, reminder of important points to take notice of.

This icon marks out specific things to avoid or possible traps to keep your eye open for in your quest for better emotional health.

This icon highlights information that may be interesting but isn’t essential for understanding the topic at hand. You can skip these bits if you like.

This icon alerts you to stuff that has a bit of a philosophical basis and may need some mulling over in your spare time.

This icon indicates a CBT technique that you can try out in real life to see what results you get.

We made a ‘cheat sheet’ that sums up the key points in this book; you can use it a handy reminder or give it to anyone who might benefit from its tips.

Go to www.dummies.com and search for ‘Cognitive Behavioural Therapy For Dummies Cheat Sheet’ and commence cheating!

This book is written in a rough order to help you progress from the basics of CBT on to more complex techniques and ideas. However, you can read the chapters in any order you like or just hit on the ones that cover subjects you think you want to know more about.

We’d really like you to read everything in this book and then post positive reviews all over the Internet, get t-shirts printed with the title (and maybe design yourself a CBT For Dummies tattoo), make the cover your profile pic on social media, and scream about its virtues to random people you meet on the street. Too much? Well, failing that, just use this book as your reference guide to CBT, dipping in and out of it as and when you need to.

Have a browse through the table of contents and turn to the chapters that look as if they may offer something helpful to you and your current difficulties.

When you’ve used the book in one way or another, you may decide that you want to get stuck into CBT treatment with a therapist. If so, consult Chapter 23 for more advice on getting treatment.

Part 1

IN THIS PART …

Get to grips with what CBT stands for and why it’s the ‘weapon of choice’ among mental health professionals.

Understand how your thinking about events leads to how you feel (and how negative feelings also lead to more negative thinking).

Discover how to recognise and tackle your negative thought patterns.

Gain some tips about exerting control over your attention.

Chapter 1

IN THIS CHAPTER

Defining CBT

Exploring the power of meanings