How Effective is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Anxiety? How Does it Work?

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for anxiety is one of the most widely used
therapies to treat anxiety disorders. Cognitive therapy assesses how negative
thoughts contribute to anxiety. Behavior therapy assesses how one behaves and
reacts in situations that trigger anxiety. The basic premise is that our thoughts
affect the way we feel. The goal of CBT for anxiety is to identify and correct these
negative thoughts and beliefs. That is if one changes the way one thinks, they can
change the way they feel.

Thought challenging in CBT for anxiety:

Identify your negative thoughts
Challenging your negative thoughts
Replacing negative thoughts with realistic thoughts

Three simple techniques of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Anxiety:

CBT Technique 1: This involves focusing on how the feelings will change.
CBT Technique 2: Chew it over and act normal – For instance during
emergency situation calm yourself by:-
 Talk softly and calmly
 Smile
 Salivate
 Breathe deeply
CBT Technique 3: This involves catching the underlying assumption and chasing them.

Techniques of CBT for OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder):

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is driven by anxiety and fueled by stress.

Learn to not pay attention to that bully or call
Learn lots of skills to help you deviate from those thoughts
Learn mindfulness techniques to help learn to control your focus of attention
Learn to change our behavior
Expose yourself to that what makes you feel anxious and learn not to do the
compulsion to retain
Learn and use coping skills

The CBT diamond – Four interlinked processes taken into account for CBT for
social anxiety: All these are interconnected

Symptoms of bodily sensations in social anxiety:

 Blushing
 Dizziness
 A fast heartbeat
 Difficulty in breathing
 Difficulty in swallowing
 Trembling
 Sweating
 Nausea
 A cracked voice
 A need to cry
 Difficulty in concentrating
 Numbness or tingling in the body
 Blurred vision
 A feeling of derealization
 Warmth sensations in your body and face
 Dry mouth
 Chest pain or a feeling of tightness in the chest muscles
 Weakness in the body

Feelings:

 Disappointed
 Depressed
 Shame
 Isolation

Thoughts and behavior:

 Thinking of oneself as dumb
 Avoid social relationships
 Not making new acquaintances
 Socially incompetent
 Feeling of panic
 Avoid social gatherings and conversations
 Thought of everyone thinking you as pathetic
 Sadness

The aim of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for anxiety is to break the destructive
chain process affecting your thoughts, feelings which in turn affect your behavior
and bodily sensations with targeted interventions.

Tackling anxieties:

Learn about anxiety
Cultivate your connections with other people
Adopt healthy lifestyle habits
Reduce stress in your life

How Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for anxiety works?

Problems are solved by breaking them down into parts as:-

Situations
Thoughts
Emotions
Physical Feelings
Actions
It is more pragmatic.
Highly structured.
Focused on current problems.
It aims to stop the negative cycle of thoughts.
CBT can help you to get to a point where you can tackle problems without a
therapist.
Exposure therapy, which is a form of CBT helpful for treating phobias and
OCD.
CBT sessions which would include:-
- Questioning upsetting thoughts and replacing them with more helpful
  ones.
- Recognizing when you are going to do something that will make you
  feel worse and instead of doing something more helpful.
- Confronting your fears and anxieties.
- Online CBT sessions with therapists are equally useful as a number of
  interactive tools are available now.