Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Techniques You Need to Free Yourself from Anxiety, Depression, Phobias, and Intrusive Thoughts. Avoid Harmful Meds by Retraining Your Brain with CBT.

By John Hoffner

Take control of your mind and start your CBT journey to achieving happiness!

If, despite your best efforts, you always seem to find yourself acting on impulses related to depression, anxiety, insecurity, or fears associated with phobias, then your actions might not be to blame. It might just be your thoughts.

The good news is that anxiety, guilt, pessimism, procrastination, low self-esteem, and other 'black holes' of depression can be cured without drugs.

If you are looking for a way to change your thoughts directly, then Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: is the book you have been waiting for.

This book equips you with the most effective techniques for overcoming depression, anxiety, and intrusive thoughts. These are long-term solutions that have stood the test of time and are scientifically proven.

Built on a solid foundation of neurological and behavioral research, CBT is an approach almost anyone can use for promoting greater mental health and improving quality of life. CBT illuminates the links between thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and physical health and uses those connections to develop concrete plans for self-improvement.

Inside you will find:

• Behind the scenes of cognitive behavioral therapy - how it really works
• Going beyond the basics - how cognitive behavioral therapy can help you
• Narrowing it down - identifying your condition for effective treatment
• Reasons cognitive behavioral therapy solves the problem - for good
• Innovative CBT Techniques you can apply in your everyday life
• How cognitive behavioral therapy was developed - and why it is the future
• The most difficult conditions overcome - and how this is achieved
• Practical examples and applications of cognitive behavioral therapy

As well as realistic, simple and workable steps to examine your own problems - a case study to show how cognitive behavioral therapy actually works, definitions and types of therapy - identifying the vicious cycle, hypnotherapy and isolating emotional threats.

Before you know it, you could be changing your thought patterns for the better and improving every aspect of your life as a result.

So, what are you waiting for?

Grab your copy today, take control of your mind and start your journey  to achieve happiness!

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Hoffner
• Release date: Apr 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386377856

Book preview

Introduction

Let’s Start..

It seems that even in today’s modern world, where the quality of life is supposedly at its highest, there are people who are still not satisfied with their lives. There are those that seem to have everything they could ever wish for and they are still unhappy, depressed, stressed out, and have simply lost interest in life. These people struggle every day with feelings of self-doubt, worthlessness, and despair. It seems no matter what comes their way, they tend to fall into a quagmire of insecurities that keep them in a perpetual loop of fruitlessness which they are unable to disentangle themselves from no matter how hard they try.

These people usually go to their doctors for prescription medications just so they can get through the day ahead. The problem with this type of solution is that it’s only temporary. As soon as the drug wears off, those negative feelings come flooding back. In essence, medication only masks the problem, but it doesn’t get to the root cause of this epidemic which is affecting so many people. 

Others may head off to a psychiatrist and express how they think or feel about their present state of mind. For years, this was the highly accepted form of treatment for those with chronic depressive or anxiety disorders, yet many of these sessions only address part of the problem. While this kind of treatment somewhat brings relief to patients, they often struggle with complex problems that may take years to overcome.   

One relatively new form of alternative treatment that has been gaining popularity in recent years is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT. This type of therapy sees the client as an individual who has developed a dysfunctional thought process that has a direct impact on his or her emotions and, by extension, their behavior. The result of this thought process eventually has a negative effect on their entire lives. It impacts their relationships, their professional life, their social position, and even their health. 

The goal of CBT is to do more than just diagnose someone with a disorder as it also readjusts their thought processes into a more positive direction. It also determines how certain behaviors are creating insufficiencies in their lives and evaluates those negatives for frequency, intensity, and duration. If the behavior is determined to be excessive, techniques are deployed to decrease the frequency and/or intensity of that behavior. If it is determined to be an insufficiency, treatment will involve increasing the same elements.

Life can be a challenge for most people. It is perfectly normal to have bouts of anxiety, fearfulness, and depression from time to time. Most of us can shake off these negative feelings when they come upon us, but for some, they can linger for days, weeks, months, or years. It is in cases like these where the basic principles of CBT can be the most beneficial. 

Quite often, those who seek out CBT already have had other forms of treatment but found that it was not enough to identify their problem, nor did countless hours of therapy sessions bring them relief. These treatments didn’t give them what they needed to turn their life around and change the way they perceived the world around them. 

There are plenty of books on this subject on the market, thanks again for choosing this one! Every effort was made to ensure it is full of as much useful information as possible. Please enjoy!

Defining Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Cognitive behavioral therapy is not something that you try on yourself. It's just not going to happen. You have to work with a trained therapist or counselor. While you do the heavy lifting as far as your personal beliefs and your responses to the outside world go, you need expert guidance. You need somebody who knows what they're doing and who knows what to instruct you. They must have been around the block a few times, so they know what to anticipate.

This is a one common misconception about cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT for short. A lot of people think that if they just read a book on CBT, they would know the ins and outs of this alternative therapy system, and they can pretty much treat themselves.

There’s more to recovery through CBT than just buying a book and learning techniques. You have to actually put them to use. This is the difficult part. You have to keep using these techniques no matter how inconvenient they can be. You have to keep practicing them no matter how busy you get. 

Given these logistical considerations, it’s no surprise that a lot of people think that you need specially trained counselors or psychiatrists to go through a CBT program. Most of the time, the main value these professionals bring to the table is they give you a formal structure for CBT. You can still do it yourself-you just have to give yourself the time, the space, and you need to commit to doing CBT consistently.

It’s very hard to get out from under your mental habits if you are trying to do CBT alone. You need to be under the proper guidance of an experienced therapist who not only understands how it works and how its principles can be tweaked to apply your personal situation but who also knows how to measure success.

You have to understand that this is a results-based therapy. You don't just undergo CBT because you're just trying to feel better. Who knows what that means? It’s too subjective.

When you're working with a trained cognitive behavioral therapist, you are made aware of how your interpretations of things happening in your life impact your feelings, your interpretation of reality and, ultimately, your behavior.

The main goal of cognitive behavioral therapy is not just to feel good or feel at peace. Medication can do that. Being with the right people can do that.

Instead, CBT aims for something higher. It seeks to teach you how to effectively interpret life in such a way that you remain positive, empowered and in control. In other words, with the proper guidance, CBT would help you handle your life in a very different way.

People who normally seek cognitive behavioral therapy feel that their life is spiraling out of their control. They feel that they're stuck. It's as if they're watching a movie of their life, and they really can't do anything about it except just sit back and let things happen.

Properly implemented, cognitive behavioral therapy enables you to reclaim your personal power over your life. Believe it or not everything that happens in your life is your responsibility ultimately.

A lot of people try to run away from this truth. In fact, to a lot of people, this is quite inconvenient and uncomfortable.

Unfortunately, regardless of how we feel, the truth is still the truth. We are always in control of how we respond to the world and this response is never neutral. It always has an impact on what we feel and, ultimately, what we do.

Cognitive behavioral therapy focuses on how people make sense of their world in terms of their interpretation. This is the foundation of cognitive behavioral therapy.

When you change the interpretation, you change how people emotionally respond to things, and this can lead to a profound impact on how they do things.

For example, somebody who is suffering from low self-esteem issues usually looks at any situation from a perspective of doubt. They don't think they're good enough. They don't think they're good-looking enough. They don't think people would like them. They don't think they would belong, so on and so forth.

Since this is how they interpret the signals people and situations give them, it is no surprise that they tend to miss out on opportunities or avoid social settings. They doubt themselves so much. They feel that people would not like them. They feel uncomfortable.

This is not just happening in their heads because when somebody has such a low self-esteem, and they’re doubting themselves all the time, this