Cognitive Behavior Therapy

Albert Ellis, Aaron T. Beck, Judith Beck, and Donald Meichenbaum make up Cognitive Behavior Therapy with each of their approaches.

Rational emotive behavior therapy- Introduced by Albert Ellis

• A common approach that is still used in treatment today
• REBT- the idea of this approach is that one's cognitive thinking, emotions, and behavior all interact and effect one another.

A-B-C Framework

• This model reflects the understanding in which REBT is based upon.

A (activating event) <-- B (belief) --> C (emotional and behavioral consequence)

                  

D (disputing intervention) --> E (effect) --> F (new feeling)

Cognitive restructuring

• The practice of replacing irrational beliefs with rational beliefs.
• Monitoring self-speech, improving self-speech by replacing negative language with adaptive speech

Goals of CBT

• Separating evaluation of behaviors from evaluation of self
• Accepting oneself for who they are
• Establishing healthy behaviors
• Learn how to accept others
• Creating realistic and self-enhancing goals

Homework

• Clients are required to carry out assignments that will increase self-enhancement and are checked periodically to view their progress.

Techniques

Cognitive Methods

• Diminishing irrational beliefs
• Cognitive homework (challenging beliefs)
• Bibliotherapy (reading and researching approaches)
• Altering one's language
• Psychoeducational methods (educating clients about the nature of therapy)

Emotive Techniques

• Rational emotive imagery- Clients imagine challenging situations in which create disturbing feelings, then are trained to replace those emotions with healthy emotions.
• Using humor
• Role playing
• Shame-attacking exercises

Behavioral Techniques

• Operant conditioning
• Self-management principles
• Systematic desensitization
• Relaxation techniques
• Modeling
• Homework assignments

Aaron Beck's Cognitive Therapy

• How a client feels and behaves determines their perception and functioning in life.

Principles of Cognitive Therapy

• Automatic thoughts- Gathering and weighing the evidence in support of their beliefs
• Discovering cognitive distortions and their effect
• Arbitrary inferences- Making assumptions with no supportive evidence
• Selective abstraction- Focusing on the negative
• Overgeneralization- Extreme beliefs being applied to innappropriate events
• Magnification and minimization- Perceiving a situation in a false manner (too light, too great)
• Personalization- Relating external events to themselves without support for this connection
• Labeling and mislabeling- Identifying oneself by the imperfections
• Dichotomous thinking- Black and white, your either one way or the other

Applying Cognitive Therapy

• Indentifying and examining one's beliefs, exploring how their beliefs were established, modifying one's beliefs.
• Activity scheduling
• Behavioral experiments
• Skills training
• Role playing
• Behavioral rehearsal
• Exposure therapy

Donald Meichenbaum's Cognitive Behavior Modification 

• Focuses on changing one's self verbalizations

How Behavior Changes

1. Self-observation
2. Start a new internal dialogue- Begin to notice the opportunities for change in behavior
3. Learn new skills- Interrupting the downward spiral of thinking, feeling, and behaving by learning coping mechanism.

Stress Inoculation Training

• Teaching clients ways to manage stress
• Expose clients to anxiety-provoking situations by means of role playing and imagery
• Require clients to evaluate their anxiety level
• Teach clients to become aware of the anxiety-provoking cognitions they experience in stressful situations
• Help clients examine these thoughts by reevaluating their self-statements
• Have clients note the level of anxiety following the reevaluation

Constructivist Narrative Perspective

• Focuses on the stories clients tell about themselves and others regarding significant events in their lives
• Gives more emphasis to past development
• Targets deeper core beliefs
• Explores the behavioral impact a client pays for holding on to certain roots

My View: When I was learning about this approach, it took me back to social psychology where I learned that one's thoughts effects one's actions therefore producing one's behavior. This approach is based upon that and I agree with it. It is like chain of events that link up together, one thing is effected and created by the other and if you are struggling in certain behavior, this is an excellent approach to consider in helping to change behavior.