Brief Summary
This video explores Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), clarifying what it is and isn't, and introduces various CBT approaches. It emphasizes that CBT is not impersonal or confrontational, but rather a collaborative process focused on empowering individuals to modify unhelpful thought and behavior patterns. The video also highlights the importance of understanding the interplay between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and how changing one area can positively impact others. It covers different CBT methods like Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and an integrative approach called PIECES, each offering unique tools and perspectives for addressing mental health challenges.
- CBT is a collaborative, empowering therapy focused on modifying unhelpful patterns.
- Different CBT methods include REBT, DBT, ACT, and PIECES, each with unique tools.
- Understanding the interaction between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors is crucial in CBT.
The video introduces the topic of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and clarifies common misconceptions. CBT is not cold or impersonal; therapists aim to build a secure, empowering relationship with clients. It's also not confrontational, respecting the client's expertise on themselves. CBT is a collaborative process where the therapist helps the client identify and modify unhelpful thought patterns, behaviors, and emotions to move toward a more fulfilling life.
CBT is not a one-size-fits-all solution and may not be suitable for everyone or every diagnosis. Individuals seeking a less directive, more feeling-focused approach may prefer humanistic therapy. For trauma, while trauma-informed CBT exists, other methods like EMDR may be more appropriate. The video emphasizes the importance of finding a therapeutic environment and tools that resonate with the individual.
CBT recognizes the interaction between thoughts (cognitions), behaviors, and feelings. Thoughts trigger urges, behaviors, and feelings, while feelings and behaviors also influence thoughts. Changing one area can affect the others; for example, improving sleep can positively impact concentration, optimism, energy levels, and mood. Positive behaviors generally lead to positive effects on mood and thinking patterns.
CBT involves various skills to address thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, but skills alone are not methods. Skills are like tools in a toolbox; knowing how to apply them is essential for progress. There's a difference between learning DBT skills from a therapist and a therapist using the DBT method in treatment.
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) is an early form of CBT that addresses thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. REBT utilizes the ABCDE technique: A (Activating event), C (Consequences), B (Beliefs), D (Dispute and restructure beliefs), and E (Evaluate the consequences). This process involves identifying automatic thoughts that guide reactions to events, disputing inaccurate beliefs based on facts, and evaluating the effectiveness of behavioral and emotional reactions.
In the REBT model, disputing and restructuring beliefs involves examining the accuracy of thoughts and considering alternative explanations. For example, if someone cuts you off in traffic, instead of assuming disrespect, consider other possibilities like being in a blind spot or distraction. The goal is to arrive at accurate beliefs based on facts and context.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) builds upon REBT by adding mindful awareness and responsiveness to needs. It involves becoming mindfully aware of feelings, radically accepting them, and evaluating vulnerabilities that led to distress. DBT also focuses on developing distress tolerance and vulnerability prevention skills, teaching individuals to sit with distress instead of immediately trying to eliminate it.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) emphasizes radical acceptance of current feelings, whether anger, depression, or anxiety. Struggling with these feelings or adding more feelings to them amplifies distress. ACT encourages awareness of what's important in life and evaluating whether energy is being used to move toward or away from those values, which is referred to as purposeful action.
PIECES is an integrative CBT approach that considers the interaction between physical health, interpersonal relationships, emotions, thoughts, environmental influences, and spiritual beliefs. Anxiety, for example, can impact physical health, sleep, pain levels, relationships, thinking, environmental comfort, and spiritual beliefs. This approach seeks to provide holistic, trauma-informed, and solution-focused care.
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Transcript
Full transcript of “Empower Your Mental Health: a Crash Course in CBT, DBT and ACT”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 Learn more at DocSnipes.com hey there everybody and welcome to this video where we're going to be talking about the different types of cognitive behavioral therapy I'm your host Dr Donnelly Snipes a lot of people did not realize that there were multiple types of CBT so that'll be really interesting but before we get into that let's talk about what CBT is not the first thing cognitive behavioral therapy is not cold and impersonal CBT therapists want to develop a secure safe relationship where you feel empowered that's really important in any sort of therapeutic situation so the CBT therapist
0:47 isn't just going to start barking orders like a drill sergeant or doing things for or to you CPT is not confrontational when a person is talking to me if I hear what I think might be a cognitive distortion I might point that out but if they disagree if they think it's on point then they are the expert on themselves so take what's useful leave the rest sort of approach CBT is not something the therapist does to somebody you're not going to go into CBT therapy and have somebody work Magic on you CBT involves helping you identify the thought
1:32 patterns the cognitions the behavioral reactions and the emotions that are associated with those things and figure out the helpfulness or unhelpfulness of those patterns and ways to modify those patterns that will help you move toward your rich and meaningful life and finally CBT is not for everyone and not for every diagnosis if you are wanting something that is less directive less goal oriented and more feeling focused then you may choose a humanistic therapist if you are wanting something um they're psychoanalytic therapy out there there is psychodrama there are a lot of different approaches and part of
2:24 therapy and part of recovery is being in an environment and working with tools that are meaningful to you so if cognitive behavioral therapy just sounds too structured for you okay there are other options out there likewise CBT isn't appropriate for every diagnosis trauma is the perfect example yes there are trauma-informed versions of cognitive behavioral therapy and trauma-informed therapists can very effectively Implement CBT to help people address trauma but that is not necessarily the way somebody may want to address their trauma EMDR is a very well
3:10 studied very effective alternative best practice to addressing trauma so it's important for people to recognize that CBT is not the only way and CBT may be a good fit for some but not others so what is CBT we just discussed what it is not cognitive behavioral therapy is a method of addressing problems that recognizes the interactions between cognitions or your thoughts your behaviors and ultimately your feelings and I know feelings doesn't make it into the acronym but that's really what we talk about so when you have these thoughts what urges does it cause what behaviors does it trigger What feelings does it trigger and why when you have particular
4:00 feelings how does that affect your thoughts and your behaviors when you do particular things when you engage in certain behaviors how does that impact your mood and your thinking for example when you do something that you really enjoy it's probably going to make you feel happy and content which will alter your perceptions because you're going to be viewing the world through a safe empowered happy lens cognitive behavioral therapy asserts that when there is a change in one area it has similar effects on all the other areas so if you do something for yourself let's just pick an easy one like starting to get better quality sleep all right that doesn't
4:47 sound like it's really related at all but if you are engaging in that behavior and you're feeling more rested how does that affect your ability to concentrate how does that affect your sense of optimism or pessimism how does that affect your energy levels how does that affect your mood it affects everything and generally that positive behavior is going to have positive effects on your mood as well as your thinking patterns and your ability to think clearly the first thing I want to talk about is the difference between skills and methods cognitive behavioral therapy has many many different skills and I have one video where I went over 35 different cognitive behavioral therapy skills that people can use in order to begin to
5:40 address their thoughts their feelings and or their behaviors but skills alone are not methods so think of skills like all the tools in your toolbox that's great but you have to know how to apply those tools in order to make any progress you have to know how to use those tools in order to build a bookcase for example so it's important to recognize that there's a difference and there's a lot of people out there that use a variety of skills that may be attributed to dialectical behavior therapy or acceptance and commitment therapy uh however they're not implementing the
6:25 method so knowing the difference between seeing a therapist who helps you learn DBT skills and seeing a therapist that uses DBT method in treatment they're very different things before we start talking about the different types I want to point out that you can learn more at docsnipes.com we now have self-guided trainings and concierge coaching and Recovery support you can also support the channel by donating any amount at docsnipes.com donate or on cash app at Doc Snipes so let's talk about rebt first rebt was one of the first waves of cognitive behavioral
7:12 therapy and rebt stands for rational emotive so emotions are making it in there behavior therapy so the rational really addresses the thoughts e the emotions and then the behaviors when people use rebt they can go through a technique a skill called the ABCDE a stands for activating event what happened C stands for consequences this happened I got cut off in traffic what was the consequence I got really upset okay well how did I get from a to c what happened in the meantime the belief is that there are a Litany of automatic thoughts we
8:03 have based on our prior experiences that guide our reactions to the event you may think to yourself that person has no respect for me that person could have killed me this whatever you think that triggered your sense of threat and led to the feeling of anger or anxiety okay it is what it is d stands for dispute and restructure beliefs that are inaccurate based on the facts in context so you're going to go back over those beliefs they're not all inaccurate some of them may be spot on maybe they did literally run you off the road and put your life in danger okay well
8:48 you're not going to change that one if they didn't know if you think you know what I'm reacting more strongly to this than maybe it warrants okay then you may restructure those beliefs the person was had no respect for you it's another thought that comes up how do you know you don't know what they thought what are some alternative explanations for why they may may have cut you off maybe you were in their blind spot maybe they were talking on the phone to somebody yeah they're not supposed to be doing that and it is disrespectful but it didn't have anything to do with you so examining those beliefs disputing and restructuring as appropriate
9:34 and then you're left with accurate beliefs based on the facts and context the E stands for evaluating the consequences your behavioral and your emotional reactions to determine the effectiveness and alternatives so let's say I got cut off in traffic and yeah it was a really near miss and it scared the snot out of me all right that is a legit reaction what is the effectiveness of me continuing to stay angry about it continuing to be fearful in driving for the rest of the day what are my alternatives uh likewise is it helpful to continue to hold on
10:25 to this anxiety or not how could I use my energy differently well maybe I could use my energy to be more on guard thinking hey I'm driving during rush hour and there are a lot of people that are distracted right now so I need to be more on my game to protect myself from all those people who are distracted so rebt is really the base skill if you will for cognitive behavioral therapy I mentioned dialectical behavior therapy earlier DBT adds on to rebt and Linehan includes tools that like mindful awareness and responsiveness to your needs so you
11:12 become mindfully aware of how you're feeling in the moment and accept radically accepting it and maybe even looking at the dialectics which means taking the good with the bad she talks about evaluating vulnerabilities that led up to your level of distress right now can you do some backward chaining and find out oh hey you know normally this wouldn't bother me but last night the baby kept me up all night and I was late getting to work today and blah blah blah so I had all these other stressors now I understand how I got to this point now I understand my level of distress in this particular situation
11:59 and she talks about developing distress tolerance and vulnerability prevention skills so you start to learn how to sit with distress instead of feeling like you got to make it go away right away which takes us to acceptance and commitment therapy or act and one of the core features of Act is the radical acceptance of how you feel in the moment I'm angry I'm depressed I'm anxious however you feel it is what it is and struggling with it getting angry about still being depressed or feeling anxious because you think you're never going to feel happy again or whatever when you
12:47 start adding feelings onto it you start turning up the volume and you're amplifying your distress you're sinking lower or getting more stuck in the quicksand whatever analogy you want to use act encourages you to be aware of what's important in your rich and meaningful life and regularly evaluate whether you're using your energy to move toward or away from the things that are important in that rich and meaningful life and Hayes calls this purposeful action and finally pieces and this is my Approach of Integrative cognitive behavioral therapy places is a holistic trauma-informed solution-focused cognitive behavioral
13:35 method that pulls together all of the pieces I believe it's important to recognize the interaction between your physical health and your behaviors if you're in pain you're probably going to do things differently than if you're not in pain your interpersonal relationships your emotions your thoughts environmental influences like triggers or just things that make you feel uncomfortable or comfortable and your spiritual beliefs or your sense of meaning purpose and connection in the world each one of these things influences every other one of these things if you are anxious
14:20 just generally anxious most of the time how does that impact you physically how does it impact your sleep how does that impact your pain levels how does it impact your relationships your ability to trust others your energy to even interact with others because you're so stressed out all the time your other emotions your ability to think clearly your sense of safety and comfort in the environment generally when people are anxious they tend to be more hyper Vigilant and more sensitive to sensory stimuli and how does anxiety impact your spiritual beliefs or your sense of meaning and purpose and connection to the world do you believe that they are there to support you and
15:06 you're in a safe place or they're out to get you do you believe that what you're doing is making a difference or do you believe that you're just kind of spinning your wheels and counting the days cognitive behavioral therapy approaches tend to be more analytical and action oriented seeking to help people understand and address patterns and interactions in their life the cognitive behavioral therapist is curious provides support and compassion in addition to tools to help you move from understanding the problem to addressing the problem
