Cognitive behavioral therapy is a well known and a reputable method of treatment for Anxiety Disorder, particularly General Anxiety Disorder and Panic Disorder. Apart from anxiety disorders, it has also been used for successfully treating depression, eating disorders, and alcohol and drug use problems.
CBT is comprised of two parts, The Cognitive Therapy and The Behavioral Therapy. Depending upon the condition of the person and the therapist, the therapy can be more Cognitive oriented or Behavioral oriented.
Let’s understand each aspect of the CBT –
1. Cognitive – The Cognitive Therapy includes understanding your thought process and realizing how this thought process is the main reason behind your condition.
For example, a panic disorder sufferer is usually afraid of having another panic attack. And it is this fear that actually forms a vicious cycle of anxious thoughts which gets worse and worse with each cycle until a point where the person actually has a panic attack. Understanding the thought pattern, how it starts, and learning how you can stop the vicious cycle of thoughts is the main focus of Cognitive Therapy.
Once the thought pattern is understood, the therapy requires the person to challenge the usually irrational thought pattern. For example, in the above case of fear of panic attacks, the person must realize that there is no way that a panic attack can harm them and even if they had the panic attack it will just be for a few minutes after which the panic attack will subside. Realizing this, the person will see that a panic attack isn’t nearly as accurate as they interpret it in their mind.
Understanding the thought pattern can be used to greatly alleviate the anxiety, depression or any other condition. Cognitive therapy has been extremely effective in treating panic disorder without agoraphobia, GAD, and depression.
2. Behavioral – The next part of CBT is the Behavioral therapy. Behavioral therapy is a mixture of the classical conditioning developed by Ivan Pavlov and operant conditioning developed by B.F. Skinner.
In essence, behavioral therapy deals with what we do. How we react to a certain condition. It is usually always followed by the Cognitive part. Understanding the thoughts pattern is just one part, the next part is for the patient to go out and face the situation, the fear of which is usually exaggerated in the mind because of the previously mentioned thought pattern.
The therapist will ask the patient to go out and face the situations they fear. For example, in the case of the panic disorder sufferer, if the person is afraid of having a panic attack in a shopping mall because of which he was avoiding going to a shopping mall; he will be asked to go to a mall realizing that no matter what happens, a panic attack at a shopping mall will not be as dangerous as they think it to be.
In addition to the Cognitive and Behavioral therapy, CBT therapy also includes learning a few relaxation techniques and breathing exercises which the patient can use to calm down and relax their mind.
Is CBT suitable for me?
Cognitive behavioral therapy has been proven to be effective in treating anxiety disorders. However, it might not be for everyone.
CBT sessions are structured with each session having a certain goals after which the therapist might give a certain assignment for you to do at home. People who are looking for a more self more exploration therapy are not generally very fond of the structured session.
One of the biggest disadvantages of CBT is the time limit. A CBT therapy usually last a few weeks with only two or three sessions every week. For some people, such small amount of time is not enough to completely cure their condition and reprogram their brain. And since there are only two or three sessions per week, the sufferers might have a hard time dealing with their problems (like panic attacks) in the starting stages where the therapy only requires you to understand the condition and doesn’t give you an effective method to deal with the problems.
