Our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are intimately connected. Each affects the other. What we think affects how we feel. What we feel affects how we behave. How we behave circles back to influence how we think and feel.
The process works in the other direction, too. In other words, it can start with behavior. What we do can affect how we think and feel.
I recently watched a tv show in which an otherwise good person got mixed up with some bad people and did some very bad things. As a result, this otherwise good person started thinking and feeling some very negative things about himself. He began to withdraw, spending time at home alone with negative thoughts and feelings. He began to self-medicate, to abuse substances, stopped going out or seeing other people. Things went downhill from there. A perfect example of how our actions and our thoughts about them can have negative consequences. How what we do affects how we think and feel.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is all about the power of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Countless research studies show that positive change in one leads to positive change in the others. When our thoughts are positive, our feelings and actions tend to be. When our feelings are positive, we do and think good things. When we take positive action, our thoughts and feelings follow along. Whichever of these leads, the others follow.
CBT is about replacing unwanted, unhelpful, unpleasant thoughts, feelings, and behaviors with wanted, helpful, pleasant ones. Decades of evidence support its use as the leading treatment for anxiety, depression, insomnia, chronic pain, trauma, and other complaints.
And it’s not a complicated treatment. It’s scientific, but not rocket science.
What’s more, CBT can be very efficient, with results achieved rapidly, often over the the course of just six to eight sessions. Ten to twelve at most.
That said, some folks are more suited to CBT than others. For those others, alternatives are available. Click here to explore Solution-Focused Therapy, or Internal Family Systems (which is not about your family family, but rather is all about you, or the family of personalities (parts) inside your head that make you you).
If you’re interested in exploring what CBT, SFT, or IFS can do for you, visit my contact page.
~ Mike
Michael D. McVey 