3 Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Techniques That Help Anxiety in Massachusetts
1. Identify Your Negative Thoughts
In a CBT session, you and your therapist will work to uncover your negative thoughts. This can be a thought about feeling awkward in public spaces or that people think you are ugly or a loser. Your therapist will ask you questions about your feelings, and together, you’ll find the root thoughts behind your anxiety and tackle each one separately.
2. Challenge Your Negative Thoughts
When living with anxiety, your negative thoughts can overtake rational ones leaving you feeling crippled by fear, shame, and embarrassment. During CBT, your therapist will help you question your thoughts, examine the evidence for them, and analyze the belief behind each one. Then you will be asked to test it in the real world. You will test your negative thoughts by separating them and your feelings from reality. You may feel uncomfortable at parties and assume your friends don’t like you. Yet, you get invited out all the time, and that would not happen if they thought less of you. You will soon learn that your thoughts and feelings aren’t based on facts but have been unduly influenced by your negative point of view.
3. Replace Negative Thoughts with Realistic Thoughts
It is a fool’s errand to swing the pendulum too far the other way during CBT for anxiety. Replacing negative thoughts with toxic positivity is doomed to fail and possibly worsen a guest’s anxiety. Therefore, realistic thoughts are encouraged in CBT. You and your therapist will seek out realistic thoughts that pass the reality test. For example, owning your own feelings of being awkward but also accepting that others must not feel the same way about you because they are regularly extending invitations to you.
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What Does Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Do?
Through functional analysis and life skills training, cognitive-behavioral therapy can teach you how to identify the negative thoughts and actions at the root of your anxiety. Like most therapies, cognitive-behavioral therapy is a laser-focused approach to therapy designed to help patients overcome their issues, from anxiety behavior to a dependency on dangerous substances like opioids, cocaine, painkillers, and alcohol.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy is effective because it is based on the theory that your negative feelings, behaviors, and disorders are not caused by outside influences, situations, or your environment, but rather that your harmful thoughts impact your anxiety. Therefore, CBT attempts to positively influence how you think about yourself and alter your thoughts, actions, and circumstances. With the help of skilled, medical professional cognitive-behavioral therapists, you will start to change how you feel and how you behave.
During a cognitive-behavioral therapy program, you will learn to:
- Recognize dangerous situations
- Avoid triggering events
- Steer clear of risky scenarios
- Improve self-control
- Change bad habits
- Manage negative feelings and harmful thoughts
CBT is typically a short-term, skills-focused treatment program that alters maladaptive emotional responses by changing your thoughts and anxiety behaviors.
Learn More About Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy at Paramount Recovery Centers
If you or someone you love is suffering from anxiety, contact Paramount Recovery Centers using our secure online form. Our team is ready to tell you more about how cognitive-behavioral therapy can help you overcome your anxiety behavior.
