Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Anxiety

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By learning to change our thoughts, we can then change our emotions and feel better.  In other words, we can free ourselves of anxiety and panic.  

There’s more to this though.

When we are feeling overly anxious or experiencing a panic attack, we are experiencing the emotions of anxiety and panic because of distortions in our thinking.  Specifically these distortions are called “Cognitive Distortions.”

A “cognitive distortion” is an inaccurate thought about reality.  For example, feeling our heart racing and consequently concluding we are having a heart attack, when in reality our heart is racing just due to anxiety, would be a “cognitive distortion.”  This is just one example, but in reality many cognitive distortions can cause our anxiety or panic.

The exciting thing, however, is that one by one we can dissect these distortions and then substitute healthier and realistic thoughts in their place.  Such a process is referred to as “cognitive restructuring.”

Many people complain that before they experienced their first panic attack they were completely rational and then after their first attack their thoughts became circular and constantly stuck in a cycle of anxiety.  Thus they find Cognitive Behavioral Therapy satisfying because it allows them to regain their rational thinking (not that it was ever really lost to begin with but it just felt that way) processes and get better.

We first need to understand a little more about cognitive distortions though.

Also, as mentioned in a previous installment, we're going to look at a cognitive distortion and substitute a healthier one.  In order to be able to do “Cognitive Restructuring” one needs to be able to identify the distortions so let’s first look at the different types of distortions.

Remember: When we are feeling overly anxious or experiencing a panic attack, we are experiencing the emotions of anxiety and panic because of distortions in our thinking. 

Furthermore, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy maintains that there exist 10 main cognitive distortions.  One or more of these distortions exist within one’s thinking when one is experiencing negative emotions.  Negative emotions can lead to depressed or anxious thinking and panic attacks, etc.

Let's first look at the types of cognitive distortions and their definitions and then look at an example.

Now, let’s look at an example of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy being applied to Anxiety:  

Someone having a panic attack might experience the following thoughts:

“Oh my God, my heart is beating so fast. I’m going to die”

“I feel so nervous it’s hard to concentrate what will everyone think of me?”

“I can’t seem to stop my racing thoughts.  I’m going to go crazy!”

What distortion(s) are present?

“Jumping to conclusions” and probably “disqualifying the positive” are present.

Why?

To begin, jumping to conclusions refers to our tendency to make negative predictions even when there is no real evidence to support them.2  Well obviously we’ve all had our hearts beat fast, at one time or another, and we didn’t die. Furthermore we are predicting the future when we state that are going to die. 

Also I said probably “disqualifying the positive” was present.  “Disqualifying the positive” refers to our tendency to forget all of the positive outcomes in our life and focus only on the negative.  In other words, we are forgetting about all the times in the past when our heart has beaten fast and we did not die, for example, a time when we we’re exercising, or perhaps a time when we were really happy and excited over an event in our life.  We did not have a heart attack then.
 
Now that we’ve identified the distortions, we would then go to the next step and substitute healthier thoughts.

For example we would tell ourselves that our hearts have beaten fast many times before and we did not die.  Furthermore we’re still here now.  Also a little research into what other people experience with panic attacks is that they too have reported the feeling of having a heart attack but they were fine.  One would continue to work on their thoughts each day.  By restructuring their thoughts over time they can feel much better.

So as you can see Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is something that can be very beneficial for anxiety, panic attacks, and agoraphobia.

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