What were the ideas that created cognitive therapies?
Dissatisfied with ideas from psychoanalysis, highlighted that thoughts and beliefs can cause emotional distress and highlights that future isn’t determined by past and people have the power to change and aren’t determined by previous experiences.
Who were the main contributors of cognitive therapies?
Ellis (Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy) and Beck (Cognitive Behaviour Therapy)
What is the focus of REBT?
Irrational beliefs and how thinking causes emotional problems. It’s not events themselves that upset people, but our beliefs about them.
Uses the ABC Model to explain this, A (event)does not equal C (consequence of belief), but is influenced by B (perpetuation of event from belief).
Example: “If I’m not perfect at everything then I’m worthless” → causes anxiety + fear of failure → REBT challenges this belief.
What if the focus of CBT?
How people think (cognitions), feel (emotions), and act (behaviours) interact and changing one can change the others.
Example: thought - “I am going to die”, feeling - petrified/helpless, action – does nothing and continues to have panic attack → CBT helps to rethink – “I am pretty scared right now but its okay because I have felt this before”, change feeling – optimistic and calm, change action – uses strategies to ground and calm myself through this panic attack
What are 5 ways cognitive therapies believe peoples problems come from?
- Thinking traps which are distorted e.g. catastrophizing or negative filtering
- Maladaptive or irrational beliefs about self, others and the world
- Underlying schemas which are deep beliefs formed in early life which shape interpretation of experiences
- Automatic thoughts which are quick, involuntary and habitual interpretations which trigger negative emotions and behaviours
- Peoples problems persist from not questioning thoughts/schemas or lack cognitive awareness of how patterns influence them
How do cognitive therapies support change?
Therapists establish links between behaviours + thoughts to then restructure them. Identify specific goals for change. Clients learn new functional interpretations and perspectives of themselves. Strong therapeutic relationship working together to investigate and clients are experts in their stroies.
What are the roles of the counsellor in CBT?
Being an educator, collaborative empiricist, coach + skill trainer, structured facilitator and being supportive + empathic
What are therapeutic techniques in cognitive therapies?
Cognitive restructuring, socratic questioning, thought monitoring, homework to apply learning to real life, exposure and response prevention
What is socratic questioning?
Asking a client a series of thoughtful questions to help them think more deeply and find their own answers. Focused on guiding reflection, challenging assumptions and clarity - not about giving advice
What is an example of homework as a technique?
Thought diary (unhelpful/helpful) and asking if there is a thinking trap - how did I change it?
