Improving Your Mental Health with CBT

CBT (Cognitive behavioral therapy) is a form of psychotherapy used to treat people who suffer from a wide range of mental conditions. It is a form of therapy based on how individuals process thoughts, feelings and how they act on these feelings.

Improving Your Mental Health

CBT is mainly geared towards aiding patients in identifying and changing disturbing and destructive thoughts, which may negatively influence their emotions and behaviors. Further, it can also be described as a form of psychosocial intervention, which aims to improve a patient’s mental health.

Apart from identifying and changing negative thought patterns in a person, CBT has other benefits discussed below.

1. Instills hope in patients about their condition

Mental health patients often have it rough. It is in the nature of humanity that patients with mental conditions feel pessimistic and less hopeful. It is therefore difficult for them to picture a future.

This therapy gives patients this much-needed hope because it changes their pessimistic mindset. CBT achieves this by assisting patients in seeing that their thoughts are not always correct.

Their thoughts are not always a representation of what will transpire. These patients learn how to challenge their thoughts, and this brings hope for a better tomorrow.

2. Helps people relax

Cognitive-behavioral therapy helps patients identify negative emotions, and they also learn how to control them. This therapy is mainly constituted by long sessions of learning to develop a calmer response with relaxation techniques.

These relaxation techniques help the patient suppress any anger or negative emotion they may be feeling. It thus helps them regulate their response to anger triggers. Cognitive-behavioral therapy also aids in reducing symptoms associated with various mental health conditions.

3. Improves one self-esteem

Reduced self-esteem is a symptom associated with many mental health conditions. The patient often feels down in the mouth and is typically withdrawn because they are uncomfortable in their own skin. Negative thoughts and bad behavior frequently follow, and this can have many harmful consequences for the individual.

However, cognitive-behavioral therapy can disrupt this negative pattern and help one develop confidence and feel good about their body and abilities.

Patients who undergo this therapy are taught to understand how their thoughts work. When they master this skill, they can control their thoughts by filtering out all the negative ones.

4. Helps one to develop rational thought processes

The primary benefit of cognitive-behavioral therapy is it helps one get control of their thoughts. Patients are trained to replace negative thoughts with positive ones, and this procedure can completely transform one’s way of thinking.

You can no longer let destructive thoughts take control of your mindset. Instead, you can now process thoughts in a positive light and properly evaluate appropriate responses to any situation you may face.

CBT is an excellent way of controlling one’s thoughts by only thinking about the positive.

5. Learning how to face your fear instead of running away

Seemingly, at times it is better to run away from a problem than to face it. However, this is a negative mentality that should not exist in people’s minds. That is because running away from problems only delays the issue much longer, and the proper course of action is to face your troubles head-on.

Therapy helps patients deal with any emotional problems they are afraid of because it may bring harm and distress. CBT is geared towards helping the mind solve issues that would seem rather complicated.

Conditions that are often treated with cognitive-behavioral therapy include:

• Post-traumatic stress disorder
• Bipolar disorder
• Eating disorders
• Phobias
• Psychosis
• Obsessive-compulsive disorder

Wrap-Up

Cognitive-behavioral therapy is life-changing. It can help anyone change from having a negative mindset to having a positive one. When one has positive thinking, their self-esteem improves, and they are calmer when dealing with triggering situations.

CBT also helps patients learn how to face their fears instead of avoiding them.