CBT is a talking therapy and is not dissimilar to NLP or Mindfulness, as they are all based on the ideology that when we experience difficult situations, the problems are not caused by the situation but by our interpretation and our reaction to that experience.  Our minds can convince us that our thoughts are related to a particular feeling, therefore they must be factual and real but this emotional reasoning is a common mistake in how we think as human beings.

 

 

When using CBT, we look at our thoughts as opposed to from them and we can then replace any negative or destructive thought patterns with those that are more appropriate and positive to any given situation.  The brain, because it is malleable, is responsive to these changes and succeeds in improving the logical and emotional parts of the brain.

 

 

CBT is based on the context that what we think about situations or problems can affect our emotional response (the way we feel), which then creates a physiological reaction in the body which then impacts on our behaviour.  We then create a pattern of behaviour and program and is why we then repeatedly react to similar situations in the future.  We then find ourselves caught in a continuous cycle of often unproductive and irrational thoughts.

 

THOUGHT CYCLE