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Introduction
Cognitive behavioural therapy, or CBT, continues to grow in popularity as an efficient and long lasting treatment for many different types of psychological problems. Increasingly, CBT is the treatment your doctor is most likely to offer you if you consult him with concerns about your mood. If the word psychological sends you running from the room screaming, try to consider the term referring to problems that affect your emotional rather than your physical sense of well-being. At some point in your life, something’s going to go a bit wrong with your body. So why on earth do humans assume that their minds and emotions should be above the odd hiccup, upset, or even more serious difficulty? Happily, fewer stigmas about mental health difficulties like anxiety and depression exist now than when this book first published in 2005).
This book gives you a comprehensive introduction to the theory and application of CBT techniques. Although we don’t have the space to go into nitty-gritty specifics about how to use CBT to overcome every type of emotional or psychological problem, we do try to lead you in a helpful direction by giving an overview of some of the most common problems people encounter. You may not have realized just how common mental health problems can be. We aim to help you see that you aren’t alone, that there is help and that you certainly have no need to be embarrassed about seeking support! We believe all the CBT principles and strategies outlined in this book can improve your life and help you to stay healthy, regardless of whether you’ve worked with or are currently working with a psychiatrist or other psychological professional.
In addition, whether you think your problems are minimal, you’re crushing this living thing, you feel mildly depressed, or you’ve had years of uncomfortable psychological symptoms, CBT can help you. We ask you to be open-minded and to use the stuff in this book to make your life better and fuller.
About This Book
If you’re embarking on a journey of self-help or self-improvement, we hope that this book provides a useful introduction to CBT techniques and will be of benefit to you. This book covers the following:
The basics of using CBT as a scientifically tested and verified psychotherapeutic method of overcoming common emotional problems.
Ways in which you can identify your problems and set specific goals for how you’d rather be living your life.
Techniques to identify errors in the way you may be thinking and to adopt more helpful thoughts, attitudes, philosophies, and beliefs.
Behavioural experiments and strategies you can incorporate into your life to improve your day-to-day functioning.
Information that can help you to understand, normalise, and address some common human problems. You may think that you’re the only person in the world who feels and thinks the way you do. This book shows you that many problems such as depression, anxiety, anger, and obsessions are in fact very common human experiences, so welcome to the human race! You’re not alone.
We hope that the whole experience will be at least a little entertaining in the process. So read on, welcome new concepts, and consider trying some of the ideas we offer in the book.
Note: Depending on the degree of disruption and distress that your personal difficulties are causing you, this book may or may not be enough treatment to help you recover. The book may spur you on to get further help to really knock your emotional demons on the head. See Chapter 23 for tips on finding and working with a professional.
To make your reading experience easier and to alert you to key words or points, we use certain conventions.
Italics introduce new terms, underscore key differences in meaning between words, and highlight the most important aspects of a sentence or example.
We use the terms him in even-numbered chapters and her in odd-numbered chapters when writing, with a view to incorporate gender equality.
The case studies in the book are illustrative of actual clients we have treated and aren’t direct representations of any particular clients.
Bold text is used to show the action part of numbered lists.
And to make your reading experience even easier, we identify skippable material:
Sidebars and the Technical Stuff icon: Within most chapters, we include sidebars of shaded text. These sidebars contain interesting nuggets of information or occasionally expand on a topic within the chapter. Read them if they sound interesting to you and skip them if they don’t. The same goes for text marked with the Technical Stuff icon.
Our acknowledgements: Probably pretty boring to the average reader.
Foolish Assumptions
In writing this little tome, we make the following assumptions about you, dear reader:
You’re human.
As a human, you’re likely at some stage in your life to experience some sort of emotional problem that you’d like to surmount.
You’ve heard about CBT, or are intrigued by CBT, or have had CBT suggested to you by a doctor, friend, or mental health professional as a possible treatment for your specific difficulties.
Even if you don’t think you’re particularly in need of CBT right now, you want to discover more about some of the principles outlined in this book.
You think that your life is absolutely fine right now, but you want to find interesting and useful information in the book that will enhance your life further.
You’re keen to find out whether CBT may be helpful to someone close to you.
You’re studying CBT and want to use this book as a hands-on adjunct to your training.
Icons Used in This Book
We use the following icons in this book to alert you to certain types of information that you can choose to read, commit to memory (and possibly pass on to unsuspecting friends and family), or maybe just utterly ignore:
