Cognitive Behavioural Therapy differs to Behaviourism (which many practitioners who cared about people in distress found to be lacking in warmth and humanity) in that it acknowledges the potential of the human being to cognitively (i.e. by thinking) change their own world, their environment, their emotions and then their behaviour so that they will be happier and more content.
(We’re getting close to emergence here)!
As the name suggests, it focuses on the cognitive (thinking) abilities which we all have, and the usefulness of these abilities in our life’s project.
The CBT therapist will encourage the person who is suffering, first to identify and then practice strategies that are linked to goals that are achievable. The good enough practitioner will have enough experience, common-sense, and empathy to assess what level the person in distress is at so that she won’t set the bar too high and cause the person to be disappointed by failure to achieve the goal.
However, as the goals are achieved, they are increased in difficulty and with more success the symptoms of the disorder gradually get less intense, less frequent, and less distressing for the person seeking help.
(This, of course, mirrors our mainstream education system where we start with very simple literacy and numeracy tasks in Baby Infant class and gradually the tasks increase in difficulty until we reach Leaving Certificate – which is why I said in a previous post that the principles of CBT were very familiar to me even though I didn’t know what it was called).
CBT uses reward (that is, achieving goals are rewarded by reduction in distress) far more than punishment, and indeed the principles of cause and effect are clearly evident. The cause is the hard work of the individual, affirmed all the way by the therapist or practitioner, and the effect is, of course, the reduction in distress.
Our brain does an incredible amount of information processing every second of every minute of every day – and CBT uses this power to change distorted thinking and harmful behaviour by continually practicing new coping mechanisms.
Positive feedback – that is, dwelling on, and affirming things that have worked well, and then repeating them – is a very powerful aspect of CBT, because, as we all know, success usually breeds success.