Cognitive Therapy in Practice
In the following anecdote you may recognise the way in which anxious persons thoughts destroy his ability to function adequately. A lonely young man wants to ask a girl for a date, but every time he has the opportunity to do so the anxious thoughts rise up and he avoids asking her. The 'automatic thoughts' he has are; "She'll thing I'm stupid to be so nervous. She'll turn me down and I'll look pathetic. I'll have failed yet again". How would Cognitive therapy help someone whose anxious thoughts and imaginings interfered with their ability to lead the kind of life that is rewarding to them? Firstly, by helping you to recognise the kind of errors of reasoning in your thinking that cause you to be upset. Secondly, by helping you to correct these errors and substitute more reasonable and rational ones that will not result in excessive anxiety, and debilitating ways of looking at the world (what are called
UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS) may make you vulnerable to thinking in anxiety provoking ways. During treatment, your therapist will help you to learn how to challenge your irrational, automatic thoughts and to change maladaptive underlying assumptions. There are a variety of ways of doing this, and your therapist will help you to find the particular ways that helps you best. This can be a slow and at times painful process, and will involve you taking some risks in 'testing out' your beliefs and ideas to determine how realistic they are. However, the rewards of learning how to control your anxiety will almost certainly compensate more than adequately for the hard work that may be involved. As you gradually eliminate the distortions and inaccuracies in your own thinking you will develop an increasing confidence in your ability to handle situations in your life that previously caused you a lot of difficulty.
