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:
Beyond the Book
We made a ‘cheat sheet’ that sums up the key points in this book; you can use it a handy reminder or give it to anyone who might benefit from its tips.
Go to www.dummies.com and search for ‘Cognitive Behavioural Therapy For Dummies Cheat Sheet’ and commence cheating!
Where to Go From Here
This book is written in a rough order to help you progress from the basics of CBT on to more complex techniques and ideas. However, you can read the chapters in any order you like or just hit on the ones that cover subjects you think you want to know more about.
We’d really like you to read everything in this book and then post positive reviews all over the Internet, get t-shirts printed with the title (and maybe design yourself a CBT For Dummies tattoo), make the cover your profile pic on social media, and scream about its virtues to random people you meet on the street. Too much? Well, failing that, just use this book as your reference guide to CBT, dipping in and out of it as and when you need to.
Have a browse through the table of contents and turn to the chapters that look as if they may offer something helpful to you and your current difficulties.
When you’ve used the book in one way or another, you may decide that you want to get stuck into CBT treatment with a therapist. If so, consult Chapter 23 for more advice on getting treatment.
Part 1
Introducing CBT Basics
IN THIS PART …
Get to grips with what CBT stands for and why it’s the ‘weapon of choice’ among mental health professionals.
Understand how your thinking about events leads to how you feel (and how negative feelings also lead to more negative thinking).
Discover how to recognise and tackle your negative thought patterns.
Gain some tips about exerting control over your attention.
Chapter 1
You Feel the Way You Think
IN THIS CHAPTER
Cognitive behavioural therapy – more commonly referred to as CBT – focuses on the way people think and act to help them with their emotional and behavioural problems.
Many of the effective CBT practices we discuss in this book should seem like everyday good sense. In our opinion, CBT does have some very straightforward and clear principles and is a largely sensible and practical approach to helping people overcome problems. However, human beings don’t always act according to sensible principles, and most people find that simple solutions can be very difficult to put into practice sometimes. CBT can maximise on your common sense and help you to do the healthy things that you may sometimes do naturally and unthinkingly in a deliberate and self-enhancing way on a regular basis.
In this chapter we take you through the basic principles of CBT and show you how to use these principles to better understand yourself and your problems.
Using Scientifically Tested Methods
The effectiveness of CBT for various psychological problems has been researched more extensively than any other psychotherapeutic approach. CBT’s reputation as a highly effective treatment is based on continued research. Several studies reveal that CBT is more effective than medication alone for the treatment of anxiety and depression. As a result of research like this, briefer and more intense treatment methods have been developed for particular anxiety disorders such as panic, anxiety in social settings or feeling worried all the time.
As scientific research of CBT continues,
