CBT For Better Me

Cognitive Behavior Therapy

What Is Cognitive Behavior Therapy

Cognitive behavioral therapy more commonly
referred to as CBT focuses on the way people
think and act in response to daily events.
It helps them overcome their emotional and
behavioral problems.

CBT For Better Me

What Does CBT Do?

More and more physicians and psychiatrists refer their
patients for CBT to help them overcome a wide range
of problems as:

Addiction
Anger problems
Anxiety
Chronic fatigue and pain
Depression
Eating disorders

Obsessive-compulsive disorder
Panic disorder
Personality disorders
Phobias
Post-traumatic stress disorder
Relationship problems

CBT For Better Me

CBT Components
Cognitive

means mental processes like thinking. The word

cognitive refers to everything that goes on in your mind including
dreams, memories, images, thoughts, and attention.

Behavior refers to everything that you do. This includes what you

say, how you try to solve problems, how you act, and avoidance.
Behavior refers to both action and inaction, for example biting your
tongue instead of speaking your mind is still a behavior even though
you are trying not to do something.

Therapy

is a word used to describe a systematic approach to

combating a problem, illness, or irregular condition.

CBT For Better Me

CBT = You Feel What You Think

You can live more happily and productively if
you are thinking in healthy ways

CBT For Better Me

Think
The THINK-FEEL
Link Feel Link
When she does
that, she makes
me angry

When she does

that, she makes
me behave
incorrectly
CBT Terms
1. Her Behavior leads to.
2.Assumption that she does this
deliberately to upset me
3. This assumption makes me angry

CBT For Better Me

Think
The THINK-FEEL
Link Feel Link
If your partner treats you inconsiderately, you may conclude that she makes you angry.
You may further deduce that her inconsiderate behavior makes you behave in a
particular manner, such as sulking or refusing to speak to her for a long time.
CBT encourages you to understand that your thinking or beliefs lie between the event
and your ultimate feelings and actions. Your thoughts, beliefs, and the meanings that
you give to an event, produce your emotional and behavioral responses.
So in CBT terms, your partner does not make you angry and sulky. Rather, your partner
behaves inconsiderately, and you assign a meaning to her behavior such as shes
doing this deliberately to upset me! thus making yourself angry and sulky.

CBT For Better Me

The THINK-FEEL Link

The meaning you attach to any sort of event influences the emotional responses you

have to that event. Positive events normally lead to positive feelings of happiness or
excitement, whereas negative events typically lead to negative feelings like sadness or
anxiety.

However, the meanings you attach to certain types of negative events may not be
wholly accurate, realistic, or helpful. Sometimes, your thinking may lead you to assign
extreme meanings to events, leaving you feeling disturbed.

CBT For Better Me

More THINK-FEEL Links

My partner is about

This is a sign
that my partner
is losing interest
in me and feels
anxious

to leave me for
someone else and
feels jealous

My partner
doesnt love me
and feels
depressed
I dont deserve to be
treated poorly
because I always do
my best and feels hurt

CBT For Better Me

My partner has done

a bad thing by treating
me in this way, and Im
not prepared to put up
with it and feels
annoyed

More THINK-FEEL Links

That idiot has no
right to treat me
badly and feels
angry

Aha! Now I have a

good enough reason
to break up with my
partner, which Ive
been wanting to do
for ages! and feels
happy

I must have done

something serious to

upset my partner and

feels guilty

I really wish my partner

had been more considerate
because were usually highly
considerate of each other
and feels disappointed

My partner must have

found out something
despicable about me to
treat me in this way and
feels ashamed

CBT For Better Me

CBT ABC

CBT For Better Me

CBT ABC Examples

A: You imagine failing a job interview.
B: You believe: Ive got to make sure that I dont mess up this interview,
otherwise Ill prove that Im a failure.
C: You experience anxiety (emotion), butterflies in your stomach (physical
sensation), and drink alcohol to calm your nerves (behavior)

A: You fail a job interview.

B: You believe: I shouldve done better. This means that Im a failure!
C: You experience depression (emotion), loss of appetite (physical sensation),
and stay in bed avoiding the outside world (behavior).

CBT For Better Me

CBT ABC Getting Complicated

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CBT For Better Me

1. Catastrophising
IT IS taking a relatively minor negative event and imagining all sorts of
disasters resulting from that one small event

Examples:
You fall in public, conclude that everyone laughed at you
Your daughter is late, you conclude she is dead
Your spouse forgets something, you conclude she/he wants to leave

Remediating Strategies (Turning Mountains To Hills)

Put your thoughts in perspective: Surely you arent the only person in the world to fall in public. Chances
are, people are far less interested in your embarrassing moment than you think, and if they notice, it will not a
cover page news
Consider less terrifying explanations: Isnt being late is common in adolescence? Perhaps the movie ran
over or there was a traffic jam
Weigh up the evidence: Do you have any info proving he/she will leave? Probably you have info proving you
had good time together instead

Focus on what you can do to cope with the situation, and the people or resources that can come
to your aid: Engage in social activities, repair a damaged relationships, find another

CBT For Better Me

2. All-or-Nothing Thinking
IT IS like black-or-white thinking, it is extreme thinking that can lead to
extreme emotions and behaviors. People either love you or hate you, right?
Somethings either perfect or a disaster. Youre either responsibility-free or
totally to blame?

Examples:
You eat a doughnut while in diet, you conclude the whole diet is blown up
and you eat the rest of them
You fail one subject, you conclude the whole diploma is pointless and quit

Remediating Strategies (Finding A Place In Between)

Be Realistic: You cant possibly get through life without making mistakes. One doughnut doesnt
a diet ruin. Remind yourself of your goal, forgive yourself for the minor slip, and resume your diet
Develop bothand reasoning skills : You can both succeed in your overall educational goals
and fail a test or two - You can both assume that youre an OK person as you
are and strive to change in specific ways

CBT For Better Me

3. Fortune Telling
IT IS when you predict all the negative things about an approaching event
Examples:
You reject a party invitation because the food will be bad, there will be
noise, traffic will be bad, it will be boring
You cancel a camping plan because the trip will be tiring and will not be
able to do the associated sports

Remediating Strategies (Step Away From The Crystal Ball)

Test out your predictions: You really never know how much fun you might have at a party until
you get there

Be prepared to take risks: Isnt it worth possibly losing a bit of cash for the opportunity to try a
sport youve always been interested in?

Understand that your past experiences dont determine your future experiences

CBT For Better Me

4. Mind Reading
IT IS
The tendency is often to assume that others are thinking negative things
about you or have negative motives and intentions

Examples
You chat with someone who yawn, you conclude he think you are boring
Your boss asks you to hand over a project to someone else, and you
conclude he thinks your work is bad

Remediating Strategies (Pour salt to your guesses to shrink them)

Generate some alternative reasons for what you see: The person you are chatting with can be
tired, your boss may want to give you different work

Consider that your guesses may be wrong: Are your fears really about your bosss motives, or do
they concern your own insecurity about your abilities at work? Do you have enough information or hard
evidence to conclude that your boss thinks your work is substandard?

Get more information (if appropriate): Simply confront and ask

CBT For Better Me

5. Emotional Reasoning
IT IS
Relying too heavily on your feelings as a guide which eventually leads you off
the reality path

Examples
Husband travels a lot, wife feels insecure he knows another one and is jealous
from his women colleagues
You feel guilty out of the blue. You conclude that you must have done
something wrong otherwise you wouldnt be feeling guilty

Remediating Strategies (Feelings are not facts)

Take notice of your thoughts: Note thoughts such as Im feeling nervous, something must be wrong and Im so
angry, and that really shows how badly youve behaved, and recognize that feelings are not always the best measure
of reality, especially if youre not in the best emotional shape now

Ask yourself how youd view the situation if you were feeling calmer: Look to see if there is any concrete
evidence to support your interpretation of your feelings. For example, is there really any hard evidence that something
bad is going to happen?

Give yourself time to allow your feelings to subside: When youre feeling calmer, review your conclusions
and remember that it is quite possible that your feelings are the consequence of your present emotional state (or even
just fatigue) rather than indicators of the state of reality

CBT For Better Me

6. Overgeneralizing
IT IS
The error of drawing global conclusions from one or more events. When you find yourself
thinking always, never, people are . . ., or the worlds . . ., you may well be
overgeneralizing

Examples
You feel down. When you get into your car to go to work, it doesnt start. You think to yourself, Things
like this are always happening to me. Nothing goes right and makes you feel more gloomy
You become angry easily. Travelling to see a friend, youre delayed by a fellow passenger who cannot
find the money to pay her train fare. You think, This is typical! Other people are just so stupid, and you
become tense and angry
You tend to feel guilty easily. You yell at your child for not understanding his homework and then decide
that youre a thoroughly rotten parent

Remediating Strategies (Avoiding Part/Whole error)

Get a little perspective: How true is the thought that nothing ever goes right for you? How many other people in
the world may be having car trouble at this precise moment?

Suspend judgement: When you judge all people as stupid, including the poor creature waiting in line for the train,
you make yourself more outraged and are less able to deal effectively with a relatively minor hiccup

Be Specific: Would you be a totally rotten parent for losing patience with your child? Can you legitimately conclude
that one incident of poor parenting cancels out all the good things you do for your little one? Perhaps your impatience
is simply an area you need to target for improvement

CBT For Better Me

7. Labelling
IT IS
The process of labelling people and events

Examples
You read a distressing article in the newspaper about a rise in crime in your
city. The article activates your belief that you live in a thoroughly dangerous
place, which contributes to you feeling anxious about going out
You receive a poor mark for an essay. You start to feel low and label yourself
as a failure

You become angry when someone cuts in front of you in a traffic queue. You
label the other driver as a total loser for his bad driving

Remediating Strategies (Giving up the rating game)

Allow for varying degrees: Think about it: The world isnt a dangerous place but rather a place
that has many different aspects with varying degrees of safety

Celebrate complexities: All human beings yourself included are unique, multifaceted, and everchanging. To label yourself as a failure on the strength of one failing is so extreme. Likewise, other
people are just as complex and unique as you. One bad action doesnt equal a bad person

CBT For Better Me

8. Making Demands
IT IS the inflexibility of the demands you place on yourself, the world around you, and
other people. It means you dont adapt to reality as well as you could

Examples:
You believe that you must have the approval of your friends. You feel anxious in social
situations and drives you to try to win everyones approval
You think that because you try very hard to be kind to others, they ought to be as kind.
Because your demand is not realistic you feel frustrated
You believe that you should never let people down. So, you rarely put your own welfare
first. You often end up feeling stressed and depressed

Remediating Strategies (Think Flexibly)

Pay attention to language: Replace words like must, need, and should with prefer, wish, and want
Limit approval seeking: Can you manage to have a satisfying life even if you dont get the approval of everyone you seek it from?
Specifically, youll feel more confident in social situations if you hold a preference for approval rather than viewing approval as a dire need
Understand that the world doesnt play to your rules: . If you can give others the right to not live up to your standards, youll
feel less hurt when they fail to do so

Retain your standards, ideals, and preferences, and ditch your rigid demands about how you, others, and the
world have to be: keep acting consistently with how you would like things to be rather than becoming depressed or irate about things
not being the way you believe they must be

CBT For Better Me

9. Mental Filtering
IT IS a bias in the way you process information, in which you acknowledge only
information that fits with a belief you hold. Information that doesnt fit tends to be
ignored

Examples:
You believe youre a failure, so you tend to focus on your mistakes at work and
overlook successes and achievements
You believe youre unlikeable, and really notice each time your friend is late to call back
or seems too busy to see you. You tend to disregard the ways in which people act
warmly towards you

Remediating Strategies (Keep an open mind)

Examine your filters closely: For example, are you sifting your achievements through an Im a failure filter? If
so, then only failure-related information gets through. If you look for a friends achievements over the same week
without a filter, youd be likely to find far more success
Gather evidence: Imagine youre collecting evidence for a court case to prove that your negative thought isnt
true. What evidence do you cite?

CBT For Better Me

10. Disqualifying The Positive

IT IS related to the biased way

Examples:

that
people
can
process
information. Disqualifying the
positive is a mental action that
transforms a positive event into a
neutral or negative event in your
mind

You believe that youre worthless

and unlovable. You respond to a
work promotion by thinking, This
doesnt count, because anyone
could get this sort of thing. The
result: Instead of feeling pleased,
you feel quite disappointed
You think youre pathetic and feel
low. A friend tells you youre a very
good friend, but you disqualify this
in your mind by thinking, Shes
only saying that because she feels
sorry for me. I really am pathetic.

Remediating Strategis: Keep the baby when throwing a bathtub

Become aware of your responses to positive data: Practice
acknowledging and accepting positive feedback and acknowledging good
points about yourself, others, and the world. For example, you could
override your workplace disappointment by recognising that youre the one
who got the promotion. You can even consider that the promotion may well
have been a result of your hard work
Practice accepting a compliment graciously with a simple thank you:
Rejecting a sincerely delivered compliment is rather like turning down a gift.
Steer your thinking towards taking in positive experiences. When others
point out attributes you have, start deliberately making a note of those
good points

CBT For Better Me

11. Low Frustration Tolerance

IT refers to the error of assuming

Examples:

that when somethings difficult to

tolerate, its intolerable. This
thinking error means magnifying
discomfort and not tolerating
temporary discomfort when its in
your interest to do so for longerterm benefit

You often procrastinate on college

assignments, thinking, Its just too
much hassle. Ill do it later when I
feel more in the mood. You tend
to wait until the assignments
nearly due
You want to overcome your
anxiety of travelling away from
home by facing your fear directly.
And yet, each time you try to travel
farther on the train, you become
anxious, and think This is so
horrible, I cant stand it

Remediating Strategis: You can bear the unbearable

Pushing yourself to do things that are uncomfortable or
unpleasant: For example, you can train yourself to work on
assignments even if you arent in the mood, because the end result
of finishing work in good time, and to a good standard, outweighs
the hassle of doing something you find tedious
Giving yourself messages that emphasise your ability to
withstand pain : To combat a fear of travel, you can remind yourself
that feeling anxious is really unpleasant, but you can stand it. Ask
yourself whether, in the past, youve ever withstood the feelings
youre saying you presently cant stand

CBT For Better Me

12. Personalizing
IT involves interpreting events as

Examples:

being related to you personally and

overlooking other factors. This can
lead to emotional difficulties, such
as feeling hurt easily or feeling
unnecessarily guilty

You may tend to feel guilty if you

know a friend is upset and you
cant make him feel better
You feel hurt when a friend you
meet in a shop leaves quickly after
saying only a hurried hello. You
think, He was obviously trying to
avoid talking to me. I must have
offended him somehow.

Remediating Strategis: You are not the center of universe

Imagine what else may have contributed to the outcome youre
assuming personal responsibility for: Your friend may have lost his
job or be suffering from depression. Despite your best efforts to
cheer him up, these factors are outside your control
Consider why people may be responding to you in a certain way:
Dont jump to the conclusion that someones response relates
directly to you. For example, your friend may be having a difficult
day or be in a big hurry he may even feel sorry for not stopping to
talk to you.

CBT For Better Me

Thinking Errors - Summary

Thinking Error

Remediation Strategy

Catastrophising

Turning Mountains To Hills

All-or-Nothing Thinking

Finding A Place In Between

Fortune Telling

Step Away From The Crystal Ball

Mind Reading

Pour salt to your guesses to shrink them

Emotional Reasoning

Feelings are not facts

Overgeneralization

Avoiding Part/Whole error

Labelling

Giving up the rating game

Making Demands

Think Flexibly

Mental Filtering

Keep an open mind

Disqualifying All The Positive

Keep the baby when throwing a bathtub

Low Frustration Level

You can bear the unbearable

Personalizing

You are not the center of universe

CBT For Better Me

Mindfullness Meditation For Self Awareness

Concept

Description

Be present in the moment

Mindfulness is the art of being present in the moment, without passing

judgement about your experience. Keep your attention focused on
HERE AND NOW AND YOU. Suspend your judgement about what youre
feeling, thinking, and absorbing through your senses. Simply observe
whats going on around you, in your mind, and in your body without
doing anything.

Let your thoughts pass by

You can develop your mindfulness skills and use them to help you deal
with unpleasant thoughts or physical symptoms. If you have social
anxiety for example, you can develop the ability to focus away from
your anxious thoughts (Watching a train carrying your anxiety passing
by or watching cars in a road)

Dont listen much to

yourself

Given that many of the negative thoughts you experience when youre
emotionally distressed are distorted and unhelpful, youre much better
off letting some thoughts pass you by, recognising them as symptoms or
output of a given emotional state or psychological problem. Becoming
more familiar with the thoughts that tend to pop into your head when
you feel down, anxious, or guilty makes it easier for you to recognise
them as thoughts and let them come and go, rather than treating them
as Facts
CBT For Better Me

CBT In Practice

CBT For Better Me

CBT In Practice With Solutions

CBT For Better Me

CBT In Practice Example

CBT For Better Me

CBT For Better Me

Action Behavior Consequences Dispute - Effect

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(

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( -
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(
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( ( ) )

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CBT For Better Me - Handout

A Activating events
2

Beliefs

3
Consequences B

1
Dispute C

4
Effect D

CBT For Better Me

5
E

CBT For Better Me

Activating events

2
A

3
-
Consequences B Beliefs-Behaviors

1
C

Dispute

4
Effect D

5
E

Activating events

3
2-
Consequences B Beliefs-Behaviors A

1
C

Dispute

4
Effect D

5
E

Activating events

3
2-
Consequences B Beliefs-Behaviors A

1
Dispute C

4
Effect D

CBT For Better Me

5
E

Activating events

3
2-
Consequences B Beliefs-Behaviors A

1
C

Dispute

4
Effect D

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5
E

Activating events

3
2-
Consequences B Beliefs-Behaviors A

1
C

Dispute

4
Effect D

5
E

Activating events

3
2-
Consequences B Beliefs-Behaviors A

1
Dispute C

4
Effect D

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5
E

Activating events

3
2-
Consequences B Beliefs-Behaviors A

1
C

Dispute

4
Effect D

CBT
BetterFor

Me

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E

Activating events

3
2-
Consequences B Beliefs-Behaviors A

1
Dispute C

4
Effect D

CBT For Better Me

5
E

Activating events

3
2-
Consequences B Beliefs-Behaviors A

1
Dispute C

4
D

Effect

CBT
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5
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Activating events

3
2-
Consequences B Beliefs-Behaviors A

1
Dispute C

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4
D

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Effect

5
E

Activating events

3
2-
Consequences B Beliefs-Behaviors A

1
Dispute C

CBT
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Effect

5
E

Created By
Make a change in yourself your
world will change

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2012 by Better Me- Psychology Services
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