Theory and Practice of Contemporary Psychotherapies

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Video Transcript

Cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, is the bread and butter of all psychotherapeutic modalities. This is because it's one of the few empirically valid talk therapeutic practices proven in clinical trials to effectively treat depression and anxiety. Certain fundamental aspects of CBT have been identified in various ancient philosophical traditions, particularly in stoicism. The stoic philosopher, Epictetus, believed that logic could be used to identify and discard false beliefs that lead to destructive emotions. This influenced the way modern CBT therapists identify cognitive distortions that contribute to depression and anxiety. CBT was originated from Aaron Beck and cognitive therapy, which was later developed into CBT, and Albert Ellis, who created rational emotive behavioral therapy, or REBT, and came up with the ABC method. Let's look at an example of this, starting with the activating event.

Let's say your girlfriend tells you to put the toilet seat down. A lot of people know this scenario. After the event occurs, it goes through our filter of perceptive beliefs, where we add subjective meaning to the event with our thoughts. A lot of guys would have an error in thinking, and take it personal by saying something like, "She thinks I'm lazy." Then the resulting emotion would be anger, and you saying something like, "Why the hell should I? She's such a nag." Then finally, the resulting behavior would probably be a fight. Beck emphasized the importance of two people having drastically different thoughts about similar events based on our beliefs and the way we see the world. Therapists attempt to make the client aware of these negative thoughts of cognitive of theirs. One technique is to challenge them by simply reframing them.

Let's look at a couple more of these beliefs that don't coincide with reality. Let's say one morning you wake up to birds chirping and you're angry. You're angry because you don't want to go to work. Later that day, it begins to rain, and you just can't help but complain about that too. What if you got a full night's sleep and the first thing you did in the morning was realize how grateful you are to have another day to experience life? Then when it inevitably rains later that day, it reminds you of your childhood stomping in puddles, and you think to yourself, "This is awesome." Humans are very emotional creatures. We make decisions and perceive our world based on how we feel in the moment. Major companies know this, so they market to people's emotions rather than their logic.

We see the world through the lens of our emotions. This is known as a mental filter or emotional reasoning. We also tend to make assumptions about how good we are at something or about how an event will go based on previous similar events. However, when reality goes against our expectations, we become sad, angry, and depressed. These assumptions are known as jumping to conclusions. Have you ever been late to work and while you're rushing there you think, "Oh my gosh. My boss is gonna get mad at me. He's gonna yell at me, and I'm gonna get fired, and I'll probably end up homeless on the streets." People who do this exaggerate the importance of problems, shortcomings and minor annoyances. This is known as magnification or catastrophizing, where we think of the worst possible outcome in a given situation.

CBT works because it makes our oftentimes unaware internal processes and habitual behaviors noticeable. It shows you that each of these processes are all connected to each other. However, there is one criticism that I'm going to point out to you about CBT. Recent research by Jonathan Haidt, who wrote the book, Happiness Hypothesis, says that our emotions actually are the old software that has been developing for thousands and thousands of years, and our higher cognitive part of the brain, in the frontal part of the lobes is like the new software. In reality, what really happens is an activating event occurs, we always experience the emotion first. Then our cognitive process comes in like a little lawyer to explain that set emotion. We may not be able to control how something makes us feel at first, but we can choose how to think and act on those feelings.

Let me know in the comments below what cognitive error you guys fall for most, and as always, thanks for watching. Until next time.