Cognitive behavioral techniques are very useful to eliminate the power of intrusive thoughts, they are the ones that invade our minds until we cover ourselves with their toxic and negative haze, so before further intensifying our anxiety, causing a useful little cognitive slope, it will always be of great help to apply these simple strategies in the day to day.
For those who have never heard of cognitive behavioral therapy, is this one of the?Toolboxes? Most used in the usual practice of any psychologist. One of the pioneers of this type of strategy was undoubtedly Aaron Beck, who after using psychoanalysis for several years, realized that he needed another approach.
- Most people who have suffered depression.
- Anxiety attacks.
- Stress or other trauma have had a second – obsessive.
- Negative and overwhelming.
- Which plunged them into a negative and continuous dialogue.
- Where it was very difficult to move on.
- Beck’s interest in understanding and solving such dynamics.
- Which changed his therapeutic line to one that he found much more useful.
Cognitive behavioral techniques have proven to be incredibly effective in clinical practice, so that if we manage to gradually change our thinking patterns, will we reduce the negative emotional burden that sometimes bothers us, so that we can finally make changes and make our behaviors more inclusive and healthy?
Having obsessive and negative ideas is one of our greatest sources of suffering, it is a way to further intensify the cycle of anxiety, to feed this hole that captures us and envelops us with useless images, impulses and reasoning that completely erase our sense of control. .
In these cases, it doesn’t make sense to say phrases like “calm down and don’t think about things that haven’t happened yet. “Like it or not, the mind is a relentless factory of ideas and, unfortunately, what it produces does not always have quality and does not help us at all to achieve our goals or feel better.
However, and this must also be said, we all have very absurd and useless ideas; However, under normal conditions, we do not give more importance to these thoughts because we prefer to give priority to those who give us courage, or those who are relevant.
However, when we go through periods of stress or anxiety, it is normal for intrusive thoughts to appear more frequently and, moreover, to give them a value they do not deserve, now let’s see what cognitive behavioral techniques can help us in these cases.
Thought recordings allow us to apply logic to many of our mental processes, for example, let’s think of an employee who is afraid of losing his job, so he begins to obsessively think that his boss and his superiors believe that everything he does is wrong or has no quality.
Entering this cycle of thought can end up causing a self-fulfilling prophecy, that is, the strength to think that everything you do is wrong sooner or later will come true (for example, by falling into a very negative state of dismay). So, to have a greater sense of control, balance and coherence, nothing better than recording the thoughts that bother us.
To do this, simply record every negative idea that appears in our minds and try to verify its veracity.
Another of the most useful cognitive behavioral techniques in these cases is to plan rewarding activities throughout the day. Something as simple as giving you quality time? You will get very positive results and break the obsessive cycle of negative thoughts.
These activities can be very simple and brief: go out for coffee with a friend, pause, buy a book, prepare a good dinner, listen to music, etc.
Intrusive thoughts are like the smoke of a chimney, the heat of something burning within us. This inner fire is our problem, the same one that we do not solve and which, day by day, generates even more discomfort.
Once we have a visual order, we will reflect on each point, try to rationalize and give solutions to each one.
Emotional reasoning is a very common kind of distortion, for example, if I had a bad day today and I’m frustrated with my life, I say I’m in a dead end tunnel, another common idea is to think that if someone drops me down, deceives me or leaves me, it’s because I don’t deserve to be loved.
This is another of the most useful cognitive behavioral techniques that we must learn to develop in the day to day, we cannot forget that our punctual emotions are not always indicative of an objective truth, they are just momentary moods to understand and manage.
Like it or not, there are always situations that lead us to fall back into the abyss of intrusive thoughts, one way to be aware of these circumstances is to keep a personal diary to keep track.
Something as simple as writing our feelings every day, what goes through our minds and when these internal states and dynamics happen, will allow us to become aware of certain things, there may be people, habits or scenarios that make us lose control, that make us feel powerless, worried or annoying.
As we make more cases, we will be aware of all this and we will be able to prevent (if not manage) these situations.
In conclusion, it is worth saying that there are many other cognitive behavioral techniques that can be useful for these and many other cases, to better manage anxiety, stress and even depressive processes. To do this, we have books as interesting as “Manual of Cognitive behavioral Techniques”. Or Aaron Beck’s book “Therapies for Anxiety Disorders. “
It is within our reach to acquire and develop more resources to cope with the complexity of everyday life and better understand this factory of ideas that is our mind.