What is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is all about taking control of your thoughts. It's aim is to help you to take back control over your mind and in doing this, you’re also going to be taking back control over your emotions and your feelings.
The end result is that you’re going to be able to become completely present in any given moment and completely ‘mindful’, thereby abandoning unhelpful concerns, stressors and emotions.
How it works
CBT actually starts out using a form of mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness meditation means that you are meditating in such a way as to become more aware of your own thoughts and feelings.
In other forms of meditation... such as transcendental meditation, ask the user to try and completely clear their mind, often by focussing on a single point in space, or perhaps a sound or a word (this is called a ‘mantra’ and it is why we imagine Buddhist monks to hum as they meditate!).
The difference with mindfulness is that you aren’t trying to eradicate your thoughts but rather you are trying to simply ‘watch them’ as they float past you. The idea is that you are becoming aware of the kinds of things you normally think but you aren’t engaging with them and you aren’t letting them affect you. The description is often that you should
watch them pass by ‘like clouds in the sky’.
Do this for a while and then write down the content of some of those thoughts. Look at the things you stress about and worry about on a regular basis and reflect on them in an objective, disconnected, nonjudgmental manner.
Cognitive Restructuring
The CBT professional would next instruct you to begin breaking down and analyze those thoughts. Some of these will be things that you are going to worrying about and stressing about and which are going to stop you from enjoying yourself in the moment.
You’re going to practice dismissing them but to help, you’re also going to disassemble them using restructuring techniques. One example of this is called ‘thought challenging’ which is going to teach you to challenge the validity of your worries or your distractions.
Worrying Thoughts
Let’s say that you’re worried you didn’t send an email at work. Thought challenging is going to help you overcome this. First, you ask yourself if there’s anything you can do about it. If not, then what is the good in worrying? In fact, it is more important that you relax and enjoy yourself so that you can be fresh and well to handle the challenges tomorrow.
Next, you ask how much it really matters. What is the worst case scenario? Everyone makes mistakes and in all likelihood, your boss isn’t going to be furious... they’ll be understanding.
Retraining Your Mind
Does some small part of you think that you’re going to get fired? Then just remind yourself that this is incredibly hard for any business to do legally and it would be worse for them than it would be for you. And after all, if your workplace would fire you so readily, would you really want to be there anyway?
Are you worried that people will be mad at you? You made a mistake! So what? And since when do you need to be best friends with your work colleagues?
This is the logical and reasonable reaction to this concern and once you can learn to deconstruct your worries this way, it will allow you to simply forget them and go back to enjoying whatever you’re doing or remaining calm when you’re under pressure.
@bitdollar
Help support me on Steemit by engaging on this post!! All feedback is greatly helpful to better myself, my content and as well as everybody else that follows.
You can subscribe to my YouTube Channel at www.youtube.com/mattj3
My recent trip to Mexico
I've made another sneaky move to reward some of your terrific work. This one is for Goal Setting Made Simple - Good vs Bad. I'm here today to let you know your post was included in my new curation project The Inbox Runneth Over.
(I'm also going to have to start running a tab ... so your next visit from me may be a lot more exciting. MB is constantly out of small vote options these days, so when they do have something available I'll probably have to grab one that accounts for 2 or 3 of what I owe you and run with it. I'll try to keep the books straight enough to explain what's happening ... when it does. Trust me, I've actually got all this written down somewhere so I can keep track.)
Meanwhile, you can find your post that was showcased at this link. Stop by when you have a minute and see what else I found along the trail. Your companions here are all interesting in their own way.
I know I'm late notifying you of all this, although I do note the people I include in Inbox in our Discord group when I announce a new issue. Look for future acknowledgements to appear with you tagged in the publication announcement in the railway post office channel. (Running behind in getting comments written on actual blogs is pretty much standard for me. There are just not enough hours in the day.)
You'll see a vote for about $.80 done by haiguzzi in your list here. That's from me. That is well above what I could give you in a simple upvote myself ... and I want inclusion in Inbox to be known as a "rewarding experience." Also, I figure better you should have the $$$ than some spammer.
Finally, there is an individual in Steemit who has made my ability to do this work and reward it this way much more difficult, but we work with what we have. (But he's part of the reason things are chronically late now.) Keep putting out quality posts, and I'll keep finding creative ways to encourage it. As I tell my husband when he yells at our pets, "It helps if you're smarter than the cat."
So glad how much you’ve enjoyed my posts! Your gratitude is all that is needed, means a lot! I appreciate everything you do. :)
Wow I have never heard of Cognitive Behavior Therapy. Love learning new tools to enhance my behaviors and reactions. Missed your video this morning.
Yea. I will be back with them. Been gearing up for my trip I leave for this weekend, so been a bit strapped for time. They will be back, I promise!! :D
I hope you are going somewhere with a warm climate. Always look forward to your posts
Guatemala...stay tuned! Will start to drop some info on the country tomorrow and then my vlogs as I arrive. :D
Lucky guy. Have fun keep us in the loop please and thank you.
Going to share all my adventures here :)... Friday will be my first post on Guatemala and Sunday will be the start of my vlogging.
My own tiny upvote is just a token of my clear appreciation for you and your excellent work, which I have discussed elsewhere, including mention of your rewards. My UV is just to satisfy the post-promo requirements, in case someone gets in a hurry ... or puts me on his sh*t-list. Here I am, playing by the rules for all I'm worth -- and more. I intend to claim this as meeting the requirements for submitting my own next post. (I may actually get one written. Imagine that!)
hi @bitdollar I agree with you
I upvoted it 'cause I love it.
Thank you!
Solid post my friend. What I find really interesting about CBT and also REBT (Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy) is that they're both build on the Stoic philosophy (well referenced by its founders). At least in my world coming from a "Stoic background" this gives immense credibility. So in many ways they have taken and built upon the best methods and packaged it in a contemporary manner, fascinating.
Good post as always!
REBT is another solid one. Great education on how we can become our best selves. Thanks for sharing @williamwest!
Excellent job. Working on meditation.
very good post sharing,i like this post
thanks
Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by bitdollar from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, theprophet0, someguy123, neoxian, followbtcnews, and netuoso. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows. Please find us at the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.
If you would like to delegate to the Minnow Support Project you can do so by clicking on the following links: 50SP, 100SP, 250SP, 500SP, 1000SP, 5000SP.
Be sure to leave at least 50SP undelegated on your account.