Title: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Pdf Techniques for Retraining Your Brain
Why is it so hard to lose weight, stop smoking, or establish healthy habits? Why do couples argue about the same issues over and over? Why do so many people lie awake at night, stricken with worry and anxiety? Why is it so difficult to come to terms with a loved one's death, even if it's after a long illness?
The answers to these questions - and the path to lasting change in your life - lie in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), a well-tested collection of practical techniques for managing moods and modifying undesirable behaviors through self-awareness, critical analysis, and goal-oriented change. CBT illuminates the links between thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and physical health and uses those connections to develop concrete plans for self-improvement. Built on a solid foundation of neurological and behavioral research, CBT is an approach almost anyone can use for promoting greater mental health and improving quality of life.
In 24 engaging half-hour lectures, you'll build a robust and effective self-improvement toolkit with the expert guidance of Professor Satterfield of the University of California, San Francisco. You will explore CBT's roots in Socratic and stoic philosophy, build a toolkit of CBT techniques, and hear about the latest research about its outcomes. Additionally this intriguing and practical course allows you to take on the role of medical student, physician, psychologist, and patient.
Throughout the course you'll explore issues that cause people to seek out therapy. In some cases you'll get to hear Dr. Satterfield working with a patient, and in others you'll be delving into research to find what causes issues and how CBT helps to resolve them.
Everyone has something about their life that they would like to improve. With the tools in CBT and the desire to make your situation better, you can create lasting change in your life.
Limited, but still worthwhile Dr. Satterfield strikes me as a smart and caring clinician, and I think his clinical vignettes in the course work well. He clearly put a lot of effort into this course, and I suspect that he gets good results as a therapist. I certainly benefitted from going through this course.However, the course does have two key limitations.First, the target audience for the course isn’t clear. Sometimes it seems to address individuals who want to help themselves, other times it seems to address clinicians and therapists who want to get a basic understanding of what Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is. Neither audience will get detailed guidance for its needs.The second limitation is somewhat related to the first. CBT itself, while clearly helpful for many people and many problems, is based on a limited understanding of how the mind works (more precisely, the mind-body). In that sense, CBT can sometimes come across as a bit superficial and not all that different from generic ‘self-help’. If you expect this course to provide eureka insights, you may be disappointed.But, again, I did benefit from this well-intentioned course, and I’m sure that many others will benefit from it as well, particularly individuals dealing with chronic stress, anxiety, depression, anger, sleep problems, pain, etc. which have reached levels which warrant attention (if these problems are severe, probably best to skip this course and immediately seek professional help).Here are my notes from the course:• CBT has roots in ancient philosophy, especially Stoic philosophy.• CBT sets goals related to well-being, based on an understanding of what can and can’t be changed in terms of cognitions, behaviors, and emotions, and uses methods based on rationality and empirical data in order to achieve those goals. Quantitative assessments are helpful in gauging baseline starting points and progress towards goals. CBT is arguably more pragmatic than theoretical.• CBT can be done with or without the help of a therapist, and can be combined with other methods. CBT can require considerable effort, can take time to show results, and may require ‘maintenance’ in order to sustain results. The results of CBT correspond to changes in brain images.• CBT focuses on how particular events trigger automatic and dysfunctional thoughts, behaviors, emotions, and possibly also physiological responses in individuals, and then tries to modify those relationships between triggers and reactions; much of the emphasis is on changing ‘habits of mind’. Third-wave therapy, such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), differs from standard CBT by focusing on the process of cognition rather than the content of cognition.• In general, CBT methods include being resilient, cognitively flexible reappraisal of situations (which may involve looking at the big picture, endowing our experiences with meaning, and viewing adversity as an opportunity to learn and grow), cognitively flexible reappraisal of our ability and resources for coping with situations, taking action to change situations (and accepting when situations can’t be changed), seeking help from others, distracting ourselves, cardiovascular exercise, and relaxation methods such deep slow breathing, guided imagery, and mindful meditation.• ACT differs somewhat from standard CBT by emphasizing not ruminating and wrestling with seemingly unwanted thoughts, behaviors, emotions, and physiological responses – which may actually exacerbate them – and instead accepting them in a detached way while staying in the present moment (like observing clouds passing in the sky). Mindfulness, including mindful meditation, is a way to achieve this state of being.• Stress is normal, but elevated chronic stress is abnormal and mentally and physically unhealthy. It can trigger or aggravate many other problems such as anxiety, depression, anger, pain, etc. Work is the biggest source of chronic stress for many people, and taking vacations is one of the best ways to recover from burnout.• Anxiety disorders (phobias, panic, social anxiety, generalized anxiety, PTSD, etc.) are quite common. A specific CBT method which is often effective in treating anxiety disorders is exposure therapy, in which individuals expose themselves to situations which trigger anxiety until they eventually become desensitized to those situations. By contrast, avoidance of those situations can worsen the associated anxiety, and the anxiety can become generalized to a wider range of triggering situations.• Depression is also quite common. It often spirals downward into increasingly negative thoughts, emotions, and inactivity. Fortunately, it usually remits on its own within one or two years, but it can recur, and each recurrence makes another one more likely. CBT methods aim to break the downward spiral and reverse it.• Anger stems from feeling unjustly treated, and tends to pick up steam if not controlled. Specific CBT methods for managing anger including not taking things personally, not magnifying things out of proportion, distracting ourselves, and relaxation.• Genetic predisposition accounts for about 30% of our health outcomes. That leaves about 70% open to other factors, and CBT methods can improve our health, including our ability to prevent and manage chronic diseases (which affect about half the US population).• Sleep problems are very common, can be worsened by stress, anxiety, depression, etc., and this interaction can become a vicious cycle. Specific CBT methods for improving sleep include progressive muscular relaxation, guided or unguided imagery, and other relaxation methods. Medications can help with sleep, but the benefit may be limited because they may not restore good sleep architecture. CBT methods are generally more effective than medications for improving sleep.• Chronic pain is fairly common, especially headaches, back pain, arthritis, and other musculoskeletal pain. Chronic pain and chronic stress can interact in a vicious cycle. Most CBT methods can help with chronic pain, and distraction and relaxation can be particularly helpful.• In general, social relationships are essential, and online relationships aren’t a substitute for live relationships.• Having an ‘attitude of gratitude’ has many benefits, including more positive overall emotions (people tend to be happiest in their twenties and sixties), better health, sounder sleep, less anxiety and depression, more kindness towards others, ability to think more broadly and creatively, and greater life satisfaction.SO - SO INTERESTING; Can help you more than you realize AMAZING! I have done a lot of reviews of books, videos, courses, etc over the past 30 years. Almost all of them very positive because if they were NOT good, I would not have finished read, watching or participating. The best review of this course would be in the form of a question. When you read/watch something, how often do you look ahead to see how much time is left before it is over? That would signal to me that the material being covered may be somewhat interesting but not interesting enough to hold my attention throughout the presentation. This course WAS NOT ONE OF THOSE TIMES. In fact I don’t remember ever looking ahead to see how much time was left. There were 24 lessons and I was trying to ascertain how I could watch more lessons in less time. My original goal was to watch just one a day. I have been watching 2 and 3 a day, total time for each lesson about 30 minutes. What does that tell you?Every course has multiple outcomes in regards to what each student takes away from the course and they are rarely the same. This is not about grading the course but rather what each student could benefit by taking the course. In my case, it was multi-layered. As a 33 year real estate broker, I saw definite potential for people in management to learn new interviewing skills – THAT WAS A BIG ONE FOR ME! Even though I am now fully retired, I can see where this course would have helped me tremendously in becoming a better interviewer by asking better questions that would get a person to think more deeply about the subject matter. So for management it would be a definite positive course to take.Then there was me as an individual. Did I have personal/emotional problems to resolve? Hard to admit this but yes, I had several. I have been athletic for most of my life and was average to better than average in most sporting events I participated in. Then came all the pains, knees, shoulders and I worked through those but then came the back and that affects almost everything I do including doing no activity at all. So this course applied to me in so many ways some of which I immediately recognized because of the course, not because I had thought of them prior to taking the course.We all have known people who have issues and this course has enlightened me to first recognize that people do have real issues and provided me with better ways for me to both help them and cope with them myself. The lecturer Dr. Satterfield included film clips of real and actual patients that he has interviewed. I found these clips to be mesmerizing and made the lessons fly by.There were times during the presentations that the Doctor used terms that I was unfamiliar with and at first left me questioning what he was talking about. In almost all cases he later would explain what he meant and in most cases used graphics to further explain. I have no medical training whatsoever other than CPR in the military. This course provides the student when a tremendous overview of so many medical issues, physical, emotional and mental and then how this course and more specifically CBT, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can and probably will help them.I do not believe that there is a person who cannot benefit, on multiple personal levels, from taking this course. That answers the first question I use to review anything, would I recommend it to others? ABSOLUTELY! Would I give it as a gift to others? Again, ABSOLUTELY!!!! Will I take the course again? Since the individual lessons are targeted to specific issues, I will ABSOLUTELY revisit several of the lessons as they would apply to me.Compelling I'm 18 lectures into this, it's about my 15th audio course I've taken from The Great Courses. This one is absolutely terrific. Satterfield explains this rational therapy method very clearly, includes the methods, evidence from journals of its efficacy,, and recordings from sessions in which some very articulate clients work on difficult personal issues. CBT, which I had known little about, is compelling. It incorporates thoughts and behaviors, yes, but also emotions. His 30 minute 'lectures' are content rich and crystal clear. Highly highly recommend.
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