Cognitive Behavioral Theory (CBT)
When I first started dealing with anxiety years ago, I realized a few things
The 2 major mistakes nearly everyone makes with their mental health
Having difficulty thinking about the loss of a loved one?
How to rewire your thoughts to fight addiction
The Power of Neuroplasticity
How to re-think personal conflicts with others
The Importance of Forgiveness
Having Difficulty Concentrating?
The Mind-Brain Connection and How it Impacts Our Health
*Brief Summary of the book: Emotional Healing in 3 Easy Steps
1) Cognitive Behavioral Theory (CBT)
Most of counseling is based off of 3 main principles of CBT: (www.apa.org)
Psychological problems are based, in part, on faulty or unhelpful ways of thinking.
Psychological problems are based, in part, on learned patterns of unhelpful behavior.
People suffering from psychological problems can learn better ways of coping with them, thereby relieving their symptoms and becoming more effective in their lives.
People tend to think on auto-pilot and don't often analyze every thought we have in order to ask ourselves if that thought is helpful or not. That's why counseling is generally recommended because a good counselor can help us see if we are having repetitive unhelpful ways of seeing things, and then they can suggest how we might approach similar situations in the future differently.
2) When I first started dealing with anxiety years ago, I realized a few things:
A. Not everyone sees the same situation in the same way. What I was afraid of others might laugh at and what others were afraid of I might laugh at. When you see it that way, fear doesn't really make sense does it?
B. I thought I was being "smart" by thinking about all the what-ifs that could happen, that way I could be better prepared if they did happen. But most of the time those what-ifs never took place. So I was really wasting my brain power and energy and losing peace of mind by letting myself focus repeatedly on all the what-ifs. Anxiety is like a rocking chair: it gives me something to do but it never gets me anywhere.
C. We cannot just ignore the various problems around us, but I do not have enough time and energy to constantly think about all those problems. So I need to figure out which problems I can do anything about, and which ones I cannot. Then when having anxious or depressed thoughts, if there is some helpful action I can take, then I should do it. But if there is nothing I can do to improve the situation then I need to think about better things.
Example 1: Feeling bad about a messy home
Do I have a free minute while at home? If so, then spend a few minutes cleaning something.
Is it night-time and I should be sleeping or am I away from home? If so, then think about something better.
Example 2: Thoughts about what-ifs
Is there anything at all that I can do to stop the what-if from happening?
What if I get a bad grade on my upcoming test? Have I studied? Could I review my notes again?
What if my friends don't like me? What if food prices keep going up? Is there anything I can do to prevent
these things? If not, then think about something better.
D. Thinking over a list of things that I am grateful for can help a lot when I am feeling bad.
Here's a simple list that's helped me: home, family, friends, clean food and water, a roof over my head and bed to sleep in, pets, steady job, sobriety, God. According to WorldBank.org half of the world (46%) lives on a total of $5.50 per day (or $2,000 per year)!
3) The 2 major mistakes that I believe nearly everyone makes with their mental health:
A. Ignoring bad/unwanted thoughts
People often ignore unwanted thoughts that are anxious, depressive, or full of anger. I did it for many years hoping they would just go away. I tried meditation to get better at controlling my mind hoping to block them out that way. But it didn't really work. And I don't have time to sit and meditate all day. So I need a better solution. One solution people try is to KEEP BUSY. When we are busy doing things we don't have so much time to think bad thoughts. But that is a recipe for burnout which will never keep away the bad thoughts. They will still come to us during work and especially when we are resting after work. And to make things worse, we never stop thinking. That's why meditation is not a great solution to the problem. Even while we sleep our brain is working, often dreaming whether we remember dreaming or not. So how are we to have any real peace of mind??? The key is - paying attention to what goes through my mind and when bad/unwanted thoughts are going through it I must force myself to think about better, more helpful things. That's it! But it takes work. It takes retraining my thoughts which is difficult. But the good news is that what I think about is based on habit. Good thoughts come more often and more automatically after I make a habit of focusing on them. See the section below on neuroplasticity for more on this idea.
B) Waiting for everything to get better/easier some day
The problem with doing this is that we are constantly looking for the solution to our mental unrest in external circumstances. "If I could just get that better paying job, or that home, or the significant other of my dreams, then everything will be better." But this is fairy-tale logic - the stuff Disney is made of. And we cannot fix our thinking with external things. It is an inside job. That's why no person can really make me happy. I could be surrounded by people who are all happy and celebrating but if I'm in a really bad mood most likely I will stay in a bad mood. My wife cannot make me happy. Neither can my house or my job. I have to make a choice to be content with what I have and I have to make a choice to focus on all the good in my life and to focus on how I can try to help make things better for myself and for others. Because if I start focusing on all the bad, all the incomplete, all the things that need fixed, then my mood and outlook will suffer.
On a similar note, pessimistic people think that they see things closer to the way that they really are and they think that optimistic people are lying to themselves about how bad things really are. But if you understand how the placebo and nocebo effects work -- that my belief in whether something is going to help me or harm me makes it more likely to be true EITHER WAY, then you realize that it is simply my belief that creates my reality for better or worse!! I like to say that both pessimists and optimists are right -- the question is whether you want to have good mental health and get things done (optimistic) OR sit around and play the blame game for why nothing seems to be going your way (pessimistic).
**Please know that this took me many years to figure out and I have no doubt that God revealed this to me because I'm not this intelligent.
4) Having difficulty thinking about the loss of a loved one?
I did after my dad passed away in 2020. Grief is normal and healthy. But after spending an adequate time grieving for my dad, I started to realize that every day when I thought of him I would have the same discouraging thoughts:
I should have been able to help save him, I miss him and just wish I could see him again, I was not a very good son...etc. Those thoughts would come automatically, and would basically paralyze me and take away my energy to do anything productive around the home.
Then I realized 2 big things:
A. I had passed beyond grieving and was getting into depression.
B. My dad would not want me to be that way and he would prefer that I had good thoughts about him.
So I decided to hack my brain by using the concepts of CBT and neuroplasticity. I realized those thoughts were automatic, just like a habit, like thinking on auto-pilot. But instead of letting myself automatically think that way, every time I thought of my dad I forced myself to focus on the good things about him, and how I was grateful for various things about him and our past together. After a while, those new and better thoughts became automatic. They became the new habit of thinking about my dad. I still get sad every once in a while but only briefly, because then I remember to think about the good things instead.
5) How to rewire your thoughts to fight addiction:
When I got sober from alcohol about 7 years ago, it was not easy. I really liked cold beer. Every time I went into a food store or gas station I would cringe and try to stay away from the beer coolers. It was hard! I would be a wreck for a few hours after having to go into a store, white-knuckling to stay away from the beer. This kept happening until I realized what was really taking place. Every time I thought about that beer I was immediately thinking of the 'good' feelings it would bring me. The taste, the relief, the relaxation and freedom to not care about anything. But the problem was, those thoughts were lies! By that time 7 years ago, over a 12 year period alcohol had wrecked my life in so many ways I could have wrote a book about it.
I then realized that I needed to rewire my thoughts. I needed to remember all the loss, pain, and suffering that my drinking had brought into my life. Every time I thought about alcohol, I forced myself to think of it as a poison (for me, not others) that would make me sick and wreck my mind, body, and the whole rest of my life. After a short time I was able to go into stores that sold alcohol without any problem at all. I truly did not want it anymore. I was even able to be around people while they were drinking for short periods of time and not be out of my mind wanting to drink. I believe that any addiction from smoking to other drugs can be tamed in this way.
6) The Power of Neuroplasticity
Video: what is neuroplasticity?
Video: Neurohacking: rewiring your brain | Don Vaughn
To put it simply, neuroplasticity means that the structure and function of our brains changes based on our thoughts.
Neuroplasticity can be described as: the nerves in the brain are like a road, and our thoughts travel down those roads and strengthen them. But if that road is not helpful, to change my mind (hack my brain) and begin to build a different road takes more effort. The more I do that the more well traveled the new road gets and the weaker the old road gets. The more effort throughout each day that I put into analyzing and retraining my thoughts, the more quickly I will see positive results. But I need to remember that if I let myself fall back into the habits of stressful negative thinking, I can lose some of that positive forward progress that I have made.
So our recurring thoughts shape our brains and over time those thoughts can become automatic (like how our habits become automatic). If I want to change a negative automatic thought, it first takes awareness that it is occurring -- I cannot fix a problem that I am not aware of.
If I devote more of my thoughts and energy every day toward the goal of stress reduction, I can expect to see significant results within only a few weeks to a few months, because of how neuroplasticity works. A new thought pattern can be trained to take hold in about 3 weeks if it is worked on daily. That new thought pattern will need about 42 more days to become automatic (or unconsciously active).
Journaling or note-taking is a very powerful tool to help me change harmful thoughts. By getting negative thoughts out and onto digital or paper notes, I can then re-analyze them in a new positive light. I can come up with possible solutions to help fix a problem, and if no practical action can be taken, I can simply work on letting go of that harmful thought and find ways to put my energy into something that is useful to me and others.
7) How to re-think personal conflicts with others:
Don't just react - take a step back and ask myself: what are they going through? Why are they upset?
Don't absorb other's negative energy. Remind myself that this person's words and actions show how they are struggling and that they don't know how to fix that. Remember that often how people treat me is a projection of their own turmoil and state of mind, so try not to take their words/actions personally.
I can accept it I feel hurt or frustrated, I don't need to suppress my emotions or feel guilty for them. But I should recognize that these emotions will pass and they don't have to define my next actions or thoughts.
Remember that the best leaders are humble because they know how to put their feelings aside to work with others as non-judgmentally as they can to find solutions and common ground, thus improving any situation without getting stuck with negative feelings.
A quote from one of my good friends is: "If you want to play God, then forgive someone"
8) The Importance of Forgiveness
I have come to realize that probably all of the most mentally troubled people that I have seen struggle with unforgiveness for things that either happened to them, happened to someone they love, or both. This is a difficult concept for many people but it is so important for good mental health and peace of mind. It is also one of the most important spiritual tools we have. Jesus was the ultimate spiritual teacher, and he modeled forgiveness for us by forgiving those who brutally tortured and murdered Him despite Him being innocent.
AA works to get people sober and get their lives back in order largely because it heavily uses the tool of forgiveness - for others and for ourselves.
We need to strongly consider forgiving others if we want to be free. But what forgiveness is and what it is not is not always well understood. The following video explains it very well.
Video: Forgiveness is Not the Same as Reconciliation
9) Having Difficulty Concentrating?
Beginning in high school, I struggled for many years to be able to concentrate. I would find myself rereading the same paragraphs over and over again sometimes. It was very frustrating. Things got worse while in P.A. school, likely due to all the added pressure to perform well. It was suggested that I see a doctor about it and I was diagnosed by a psychiatrist with ADHD. I tried some medicine for a short time but did not find it helpful and I could not afford the cost of it or the cost of repeated visits to the doctor. So I had to find ways to improve on my own.
This is what I found:
There is generally no known specific cause for ADD/ADHD, and I personally believe it is because there are often many causes. I have found that these are the 4 main things that seem to factor into it:
A) Anxiety will divide our attention and make learning new things very difficult --- so avoid 'what-if' type thinking and worrying about what classmates and others are thinking as that will distract our focus.
B) Many people are what are called 'kinesthetic learners' -- meaning they learn much better while moving in some way. Unfortunately this is very difficult to do in traditional school settings, but it may be something one can try at home.
For example: while I was a toddler my mother began teaching me the alphabet. She noticed that when I was trying to learn a letter for the first time, I would sit and rock back and forth while learning it. After that, when recalling from memory that letter I did not need to move. But when learning anything new I learned faster and easier while rocking back and forth.
C) Learning anything is much easier when we want to learn the material. When we don't want to learn it, trying to force ourselves to learn is very difficult and highly inefficient. It is best if we can stop thinking about why we don't want to learn something and much better and more efficient if we instead focus on the reasons why we need to learn something.
It has been said that nothing we learn is ever wasted and I agree for a few reasons. For example: if the only difference between 2 people applying for the same job is whether or not one has a college degree, regardless of the type of degree it is, the employer will generally choose the applicant with the degree because it shows that they are motivated to learn and have proven to be teachable. Our brains are like muscles, the more we use them the stronger they get.
D) Developing daily routine and working towards better time management are essential to being productive. Keep finding ways to stick to and fine tune daily routines. For example, after class I might come home from class, eat some food, then relax for 30 minutes before working on school work for a few hours. After that, then I could use my free-time however I wanted to. Having a routine and sticking to it is essential for success.
E) Lastly, I encourage people to realize that no medicine can take the place of doing the above. And by working on the above 4 things as best as possible, medicines can often be avoided. I encourage people to work with counselors on these things and on any other ideas counselors may have to help improve one's attention and focus.
10) The Mind-Brain Connection and How it Impacts Our Health
In the book "Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess," Dr. Caroline Leaf states:
"Sometimes it feels like we live in a world characterized by fear. People are fearful about their health, the economy, their jobs, the future, corruption, crime, and their feelings of powerlessness. The cost of this fear is toxic thoughts, toxic stress, anxiety, and depression, which in turn increase our vulnerability to disease. The end result of this fear, anxiety, and illness cycle, if we don't manage it with our minds, is a society dependent on external factors such as painkillers, medications, wellness fads, and skyrocketing health costs to fix us." Dr. Leaf goes on to state that toxic thinking can release stress hormones such as cortisol and homocysteine among others, which can hugely impact the immune, cardiovascular, and neurological systems of the body.
By altering the stress response in our body, toxic thinking can lead up to 90% of various diseases and illnesses such as heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, and only 5-10% of disease is estimated to occur from poor genetics alone. For the first time in decades, the trend of people living longer has been reversed due to lifestyle-related diseases which we are in complete control over (pages 25-26). People between the ages of 25-64 are the most affected (pg 32). Before recent years, people were living longer due to advancements in technology, but this reversed trend shows that improvements in technology cannot save us from our unmanaged stresses.
"Many professionals and researchers pay attention only to the symptoms of how someone feels, not why they feel, because it's a lot easier to deal with one-dimensional symptoms than multidimensional causes, especially as visits to the doctor become shorter and prescribing a pill becomes easier. Even people in the medical system complain how bad it has become. Despite their vast medical knowledge, they are suffering from high rates of mental health issues themselves because they do not understand the mind and how to heal it. It is estimated that one doctor in the United States commits suicide every day. This is one of the main reasons I train physicians on the importance of the mind, correct mind-management, how to manage their mental health, and how to help their patients with mental health issues." (pages 45-46)
Video: Neuroscientist REVEALS How To COMPLETELY HEAL Your Body & Mind! | Caroline Leaf & Lewis Howes
For those who have faith in God to heal them emotionally/spiritually:
11) Brief Summary of the book: Emotional Healing in 3 Easy Steps
by Praying Medic
Father God helps give us His perspective on the traumatic event. Jesus heals us. The Holy Spirit helps us remember any details we may have blocked out of our memory but which still need healing (He leads us into all truth).
Emotions simply need to be felt. Once you've felt them, you no longer need to carry them around if they're painful.
The main problem with emotional healing is that people who are extremely rational by nature may ask a lot of "why" questions in the middle of the healing process, which causes distractions and impedes the healing process. To receive healing, it doesn't matter why something happened to you - the only thing that matters with regard to healing is how it affected you. If you focus on the emotions you're feeling, and identify them one-by-one and allow Jesus to heal them, it's likely that you'll be able to receive healing fairly easily.
Healing painful emotions usually requires you to go back to events in your life where you can feel an emotion that is troubling you.
A. Identify the painful emotion associated with a particular event.
*If the emotion is sinful, ask God to forgive you and receive his forgiveness. If in doubt, ask for forgiveness because a lack of forgiveness can block the healing process.
*Say that you believe His blood has taken away the penalty and consequences of your sin. If the emotion is not sinful, go to the next step
B. Tell Him you want the emotion removed from your soul and ask Him to heal the wound in your soul caused by the emotion.
*Tell Him you receive His healing.
*If the emotion is there because you believed a lie about that situation, ask Jesus to show you the truth about it.
C. Ask Him to give you something positive to replace the negative emotion that He is removing. If you ask Him to take away sadness, you might ask Him to give you joy. If you ask Him to take away anger, you might ask Him to give you peace.
When you're done with this, bring the memory of the painful event to your mind again. If the emotion was healed, you should not be able to feel that emotion any longer, but there may be a different negative emotion that you can feel. Determine what negative emotion is strongest and do the same thing with it that you did with the first emotion.
When you're done, bring the memory of the event to your mind again. Once more, try to determine if there are any negative emotions. If there are, repeat this process until you can bring the event to your memory and you feel no negative emotions. This process can be used on any memories that are associated with negative emotions.
When you no longer feel any negative emotions while recalling an event, you are healed. If you suffer from amnesia concerning the events from your past, you can ask the Holy Spirit to bring to your memory the things you've forgotten. As He brings the events to mind, and as you feel the emotions, ask Jesus to heal them.
If you'd like to be healed of all the emotional trauma you've received over your lifetime, you might consider beginning with the earliest memories you have that are troublesome to you. Use this process to receive healing of the emotions of that event, then go to the next event from your past that stirs up negative emotions when you think about it.
Note on Forgiveness:
It isn't necessary to forgive those who have wounded you before you can receive emotional healing. Forgiving someone from the heart can be difficult when you still feel the emotional pain they've caused. But after you've been healed, you might find it easier to forgive them and perhaps even forget those unpleasant memories. If you are able to forgive them it will free you and it will free them. Jesus said to His disciples, "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." (John 20:23) When we learn to forgive others, it increases our own capacity to receive forgiveness both from men and from God. It can also help lessen the trauma we're likely to suffer in the future.
I pray that your heart would be healed and filled with peace.
I pray that you would know the depth of God's love for you.