Comprehensive Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Essay Guide

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is one of the prevalent types of talk therapy you may encounter in life. Besides, it is merely working with a mental health counselor to understand negative thinking on specific issues. Moreover, you get the chance to review stressful situations and respond to them efficiently. Therefore, it is necessary to understand different aspects of a cognitive behavioral therapy essay.

Here is a cognitive behavioral therapy essay guide for you. Generally, it covers a detailed analysis of Cognitive Behavioral Psychology. For instance, this ranges from the goals, types of disorders treated, the four cognitive restructuring steps, and the commonly used techniques.

What Does Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Involve?

Usually, you can undergo cognitive behavioral therapy in groups or one-on-one. These groups can be of family members or people with similar issues. Likewise, you can also use online resources if you live in an area with a few local mental health. Cognitive Behavioral treatment often involves lessons about your mental health condition. Besides, this can take about five to twenty therapy sessions. But it depends on the type of disorder, symptoms, stress, family support, and how quickly you adjust to the process.

Furthermore, you learn and practice various therapy techniques. These may include relaxation, resilience, coping, assertiveness, and stress management. In your first therapy session, expect your therapist to collect all the information about yourself. Moreover, he or she will ask about what you’d like to handle.

In most cases, the therapist will ask about a past or current physical and emotional feeling to understand your situation. Besides, this is a chance to interview your counselor. Confirm if he or she will be a perfect match for you. It is crucial to understand your treatment goals, approach, the duration of each session, and how many therapy sessions you need.

During Cognitive Behavioral healing, the therapist will motivate you to talk about your troubling feelings or thoughts. Sure, this can be challenging, but your counselor will help you build comfort and confidence. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a goal-oriented process, and it might call for homework.

For example, your therapist can ask you to reflect on the activities, practices, or readings that emphasize what you learned in previous therapy sessions.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Essay: What Are The Goals Of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy?

There are several goals that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy tries to accomplish. As you write your a cognitive behavioral therapy essay, aim to meet these objectives.

• Try as much as possible to get your client to do things according to his or her interest. Besides, this gives room to get back to daily lives and enjoyable activities. It also promotes self-awareness and emotional intelligence. Moreover, it teaches clients to read their emotions, noting the difference between healthy and unhealthy feelings.
• Likewise, cognitive behavioral therapy should work as an efficient approach to solve problems. It takes care of the things that make therapy patients worried, positively impacting their lives.
• It should help the patients adjust their reasoning capacity to think and adapt to their current situation. Meanwhile, this allows therapy patients to change their behavior and think about problems more efficiently. In other words, cognitive behavioral therapy brings up a solution that is more productive and positive.
• Develop a sense of self-control by revealing specific techniques to discover and challenge fuzzy thinking.
• A Cognitive Behavioral Therapy essay should prevent similar future episodes of emotional distress by developing personal growth. It should help clients build a change in core beliefs in their hearts of suffering.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Essay: Types of Disorders Treated By Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

For quite long, cognitive behavioral therapy has been a practical approach to handle a different number of health disorders. You can also combine this approach with other treatments such as antidepressants for efficiency. Here is a list of the conditions addressed by Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

• Sleep complications. For example insomnia
• Anxiety disorder
• Eating turmoil such as bulimia and anorexia
• Bipolar disorder

• Substance use mayhem. An excellent example is problems associated with excessive alcohol consumption.
• Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
• Panic and phobias disorder
• Sometimes, cognitive behavioral therapy can help treat people with long-term health conditions. For example, it is an effective remedy for patients suffering from irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, and chronic fatigue syndrome.
• Sexual disorder and PTSD
• Schizophrenia

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Essay: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Anxiety

As noted above, you can use cognitive behavioral therapy to treat fear and anxiety. Besides, this is the most effective option if you are suffering from unrelenting worries, obsessive thoughts, or panic attacks. Therapy helps. It treats more than anxiety level- calms your mind, creating a way to overcome fears.

Furthermore, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for anxiety involves two major components. Cognitive therapy identifies how negative thinking contributes to fear and Behavior therapy- which examines how you react to a situation causing anxiety.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Essay: How to Practice Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Anxiety

Generally, it is a bit challenging to face your fears. However, research shows that repeated exposure to situations or things, causing anxiety increases the sense of control. Instead of facing these fears right away, cognitive behavioral therapy offers a step by step approach- the systematic desensitization. Moreover, this method gives time to adjust your fears gradually, building confidence as you master skills to control anxiety. You can practice systematic desensitization as below.

• Learn relaxation skills- It is the first step to overcome your fears. Here, your therapist is most likely to teach some of the efficient relaxation techniques. A good example is deep breathing or muscle relaxation. Besides, this method reduces your physical anxiety reactions like trembling, aiding to relaxation.

• Create a list- the next step is to create a step by step list of scary events that will accomplish your goal. It can be a list of ten to twenty situations. For instance, maybe you are afraid of riding a motorcycle. Then you start by looking at photos of various motorbikes and later take an actual ride. Remember, each step must be specific enough to reveal a clear and measurable objective.
• Go through the steps- Well; this comes back to therapist guidance where you start working through your listing. You should stay in each listed situation long enough to overcome the fear. When anxiety builds up, just switch back to the relaxation technique you used earlier. After gaining a relief, you can review your situation once more and to the next without feeling over distressed.

Other Therapies for Anxiety Disorder

Apart from the cognitive behavioral therapy practice, you can also consider other matching therapies to bring down overall stress levels and attain emotional balance.

• You can set aside some time to go for an exercise. Sure, this is a natural remedy to overcome or relieve anxiety. At least thirty minutes of exercise can work perfectly. To relieve stress, work out three to five times a week. However, you can choose to do your exercise for one hour to achieve the ultimate results.
• Consider other relaxation techniques like mindfulness meditation. They work great by reducing anxiety levels, boosting your well-being.
• Moreover, you can combine hypnosis with cognitive behavioral therapy to fix anxiety.
• You can as well go for biofeedback. It uses sensors that measure individual physiological functions. A good example is your heart rate, muscle tension, and breathing rate. Biofeedback teaches you how to recognize your body’s reaction to anxiety and how to achieve ultimate control.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Essay: Tips To Make Anxiety Therapy Work for You

Since there is no quick approach to fix anxiety, you should follow a certain procedure to overcome your fears. Indeed, this process takes time and a lot of commitment. Sometimes you may feel discouraged by the recovery pace but be grateful because anxiety therapy takes quite long. Just see it through, and you’ll enjoy the benefits.

Furthermore, you can come up with your anxiety therapy approach through positive choices. Keep in mind that all the activities in your social life affect anxiety. Here are some tips to promote relaxation, vitality, and make anxiety therapy work.

• Learn and understand about therapy. To overcome fear, you need to understand the cause of anxiety. Sure, education is a key factor in curing anxiety disorder as it helps get the most out of therapy.
• Build up your connections with other people. Generally, increased anxiety may be as a result of isolation or loneliness. Try to reach out to others to minimize your vulnerability to stress and anxiety. You can either see a close friend or join a self-help group for help. Share out your utmost worries and matters with a trusted individual.
• Take on healthy lifestyle practices. It all comes down to physical activities such as regular exercise. As stated earlier, workouts are perfect as they reduce tension and relieve anxiety. Do not use other methods like drinking alcohol and drugs to cope with your situation. Moreover, avoid nicotine and caffeine as much as possible because they can easily make your anxiety levels worse.
• Try your best to minimize stress. Examine your way of life, identify what causes pressure, and look for ways to reduce such tension. Moreover, avoid people or groups that make you anxious. Create time for fun or relaxation and say no to added responsibilities as they make your schedule tight.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Essay: The Four Steps of Cognitive Restructuring

It is very crucial to follow a certain procedure or steps on a cognitive behavioral therapy essay guide. After all, you need to succeed in your therapy. Here are some of the steps to follow in cognitive treatment restructuring.

Identify the Troubling Situations

The first step in cognitive restructuring is to discover the most troubling conditions in your life. These might comprise issues like anger, a medical condition, divorce, grief, and other psychological health disorder symptoms. Make sure you take some time with your therapist to decide what problems or goals to handle.

Be Aware Of Emotions and Beliefs

Since you have identified the issues you what to work on, be aware of thoughts, emotions, or beliefs about these problems. In most cases, your counselor will ask you to talk more about them. Observe what you convince yourself about a certain experience, your interpretation, and beliefs about yourself and other people or events. Besides, it is recommended to write and keep a journal of these thoughts.

Identify Negative Thinking

You ought to discover inaccurate or negative thinking. Sure, this helps you recognize behavior or thinking patterns contributing to the current problem. Thus, pay close attention to your emotional, physical, and behavioral reactions to different situations.

Replace Negative Thinking

Because you have identified your negative thoughts, it time to reshape. Think of whether your reviews follow a specific fact, or it’s just an inaccurate perception of the current situation. Find out how you can replace negative thoughts with positive thinking. After all, your cognitive behavioral therapy essay should provide a solution.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Essay: Techniques Used In Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Cognitive Restructuring Technique

The cognitive restructuring method aims at helping people to identify patterns contributing to negative moods. There are usually numerous techniques used in cognitive restructuring, including tracking of dysfunctional feelings.

Graded Exposure

The exposure techniques’ main objective is to help people attain a systematic approach to their fears. With this method, you can master feared situations one by one. It is one of the most effective psychological treatments, with a ninety percent success rate.

Activity Scheduling

Here is another Cognitive Behavioral technique that helps people to increase certain behaviors. Some of these may enhance the likelihood of completing specific activities. The model works perfectly for people who don’t engage in many rewarding activities or those with challenges completing their tasks.

Skills Training

Skill training is a cognitive behavioral therapy technique that aims at providing the appropriate skills for one to attain his or her goals. Besides, this design focus is more on social training skills, assertiveness training, and communication training.

Mindfulness Practice

A therapy technique borrowed from Buddhism. Its main objective is to help people disengage from obsessions about negative things. Moreover, this design redirects attention to present activities by cutting the edge of psychotherapy practice.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Essay Videos

Watch Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Essay: a video on CBT

 

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Essay: Insight vs Action Oriented Therapies

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Essay: Basic assumption and favorite techniques of Person-Centered, Existential, and Psychoanalytical approaches

Person-Centered Approach

A person-centered approach to psychotherapy tends to place the client at the center of the service, focusing on their actions and conditions through active listening. This assumption tends to assume human beings’ growth orientation to pursue self-actualization by growing to more advanced stages of moral, behavioral, and emotional stages. It also assumes that the individual is subject to their experience of the world, making it harder for the therapist to understand their perception and experiences completely (Kottler & Shepard, 2011).

In addition to this, it tends to rely on acceptance, warmth, openness, permissiveness, and the therapist’s trust. It also assumes the clients’ intrinsic trustworthiness in their pursuit of social responsibility, which is expected to reduce defensiveness in the therapy course. Finally, the therapist’s goal is to be human, ethical, contemplative, intentional, and accessible.

Existential Approach

On the other hand, the existential approach in therapy tends to explore psychotherapy from the client’s capacity and motivation towards taking responsibility for their success, thus making it a philosophical approach. It tends to assume that the client, just like every other human being, can be self-aware, want to be free, accept the consequential responsibility, and have a unique identity revealed in their relationship with other human beings.

The existential approach to psychotherapy assumes that death is a fundamental condition that tends to give human beings significance in life and each human being tends to recreate themselves depending on their understanding of the meaning of life, something that is dynamic through their lives (Kottler & Shepard, 2011). Therefore, it is based on the attitude towards life and is based on techniques like active listening, empathetic reflection, and Socratic questioning.

Psychoanalytic Therapy

Psychoanalytic therapy is more time-consuming and complex at it explores the influence of the unconscious mind on behavior and thoughts and is based on Sigmund Freud’s theories. Therefore, this approach aims to repress the client’s emotional reaction to their past experiences to access the unconscious by first making it conscious. This is because their undesirable behavior is a symptom of their unconscious disturbances.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Behavioral therapy focuses on the fact that human beings tend to be influenced by their environment and thus focus on the present, unlike psychoanalytical, existential, and person-centered psychotheraphy approaches that focus on the past. The counselor’s attention focuses on changing specific undesirable behaviors based on the research of particular treatments for specific problems (Kottler & Shepard, 2011).

The assumptions made here that human beings are neither inherently good nor evil but tend to modify their behavior to suit their specific circumstances. In addition to this, given the right circumstances, they can rectify the misgivings that make them perceived as evil.

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is a problem-oriented, intensive, and short-term psychotherapy approach meant to provide the client with skills to sustain them in the long run. The techniques involved here include identifying any distortions in the clients’ thinking, perceiving their thought as ideas as opposed to facts, and their perception of different points of view.

A positive collaborative relationship between the therapist and the client is deemed necessary and is used to solve psychological disorders like bulimia, body dysmorphia, anxiety, mood, and substance abuse. CBT is based on the assumption of cause and effect relationship between the stimuli and the client’s behavior responses, cognition can be measured, and that as their cognition changes, behavior changes.

Solution-Focused Therapy

Solution-focused therapy is another problem-oriented approach to psychotherapy that goes beyond the mere understanding of the client’s problems and provides them with the tools to apply in the present, thus changing their future (Kottler & Shepard, 2011). The assumptions made include that change is change tends to be constant and is defined as the client’s goal to rectify their shortcoming by using their strengths and resources. The therapist’s goal is to provide the client with achievable goals, enhances the rapid resolution of problems based on the assumption that there is no correct way to look at life.

Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy refers to helping people with emotional difficulties and various forms of mental illnesses to enhance their well-being. The therapist, therefore, identifies the theory of practice to apply, choosing between insight-oriented and action-oriented models, which often differ. The choice depends on their understanding of their personal and professional value, standards, and morals. Insight-oriented psychotherapy is based on the idea that the unconscious part of their brains controls the client’s attitudes, behavior, and thoughts, thus casing their present-day emotional inabilities, pain, or lack of goals (Kottler & Shepard, 2011).

Additionally, the choice depends on the counselor’s understanding of what the client is most likely to respond to base on their traits, that is, strengths, and the complexities of their condition. One such example is Freudian psychoanalysis is; one such example involves the analysis of the unconscious trigger of the maladaptive behavior, the awareness of which is expected to help the client change and overcome the difficulties they are facing.

The client is encouraged to speak out their minds, regardless of whether they are irrelevant, embarrassing, or silly, a technique used to encourage close association with the therapist, themselves, and other people around them. The therapist is then tasked with interpreting these thoughts and using them to reach for further insight into the client’s well-being.

Action-Oriented Approaches

Action-oriented approaches are based on the client’s daily life interpretation and how to correct their maladaptive behaviors. Here the client is provided with the tools to overcome their difficulties, thus solving any psychological difficulties they might possess (Kottler & Shepard, 2011). One example of action-based therapy is Cognitive behavioral therapy, based on the assumption that one’s past experiences tend to influence their past, such as childhood.

These thoughts tend to affect their interpretation of daily-life occurrences. And thus, it restructures correct behavior, an approach whose applicability is flexibly used to its practicality. The target difficulties include anger, disturbing emotions, procrastination, anger, and stress.

Despite the differences in the approaches applied, both psychotherapy approaches have a similar goal of strengthening the client’s mind by enlarging their conscious capacity. Additionally, both methods tend to enhance the client’s ability to use their mental potential optimally to correct their mall adaptive behavior. The enhancement of the client’s contentment, inner happiness, and willpower is a key priority. The application of both approaches, in the end, eliminates their emotional pain, confusion, and other psychological issues (Kottler & Shepard, 2011). Insight-oriented and action-oriented models can therefore differ in their means, but the goal is similar.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Essay Conclusion

In conclusion, both methods are effective, but therapists are moving to evidence-based approaches that may involve the combination of both insight and action-oriented. Understanding the present and past and their influence on the client’s dysfunctional thinking is essential, especially in developing an actionable plan for the future. Additionally, the time the client is willing to take in counseling is also a factor in which the two approaches can be affected is an important consideration. This is because action-oriented approaches to psychotherapy tend to take longer than insight-oriented approaches.

References

Kottler, J. A., & Shepard, D. S. (2011). Introduction to counseling: voices from the field. 8th ed. Australia ; Brazil; Mexico; Singapore; UK; Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Conclusion

Now, you have a clear analysis of a great cognitive behavioral therapy essay and what to expect. Go ahead and choose a therapy program to lower rising anxiety and high depression rates. Take your chances and improve your mood. After all, everybody has that specific troubling situation in life.

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