When it comes to providing patients anxiety relief, CBT is one of the most respected and accepted forms of therapy the world over. Studies have shown that CBT can produce results in a short period of time when practiced correctly. CBT teaches you how to become more aware of your thoughts, so that you can identify and replace self defeating thought patterns. The world's leading experts on CBT agree it is effective even when practiced in a self-help environment.
As with any CBT program, there are three basic steps you will learn during your self-help DVD program that will help you achieve anxiety relief. Step one is made up of lessons that will teach you how to understand your moods. Step two will have lessons aimed at helping you change the way you feel, and step three will help you develop a healthy value system for living a better life. These steps may or may not be clearly identifiable in your DVD program, but in CBT program they are there.
Let's take a look at these steps for anxiety relief more closely: During step one the lessons are designed to help you understand your moods better. Cognitive Behavior Therapy operates on the theory that our thoughts help determine our mood and emotions. This can be better understood when you break an event down using the ABC model of emotional theory.
A=The activating event.
B=The belief or interpretation of the event.
C= The consequence or the emotional or behavioral response.
During step two of CBT you learn how to change the way that you feel. You are taught how to spot thought distortions and answer them back. For example, if you think someone else thinks that you are stupid, you are taught to remind yourself that you are mind reading. There is no way that you can presume to know another person's thoughts. Mind reading, is just one of the many distortions that create anxiety and worry.
The final step, step three is designed to help you develop a healthier value system for long-term success and happiness. This entails you evaluating your core beliefs about the world, people and yourself. It also involves you identifying your rules for living. This often means challenging yourself because believe it or not you already have set-up rules for living. The rules you set-up now are negative, they have you avoiding people, places and situations. Your new rules may take you out of your comfort zone a bit, but in the end they will provide you anxiety relief.
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