This week The Wise Family clinical team helps explain Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT for short) and STRATEGIES to implement at every age. Read on to learn more!
Kasey Cain, Resident in Counseling – Therapist for The Wise Family: As the name indicates, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, often referred to as CBT, looks at the way people think (cognitive) and act (behavior). Central to this practice is the belief that our thoughts impact our emotional and physical feelings and those drive our actions.
Many children and adults seeking therapy have gotten into an unhealthy pattern of cognitive distortions – thinking errors. There are many types of thinking errors. Depending on the book you reference, they may be called by different names. However, a thinking error occurs when something you are thinking does not match up with the actual reality of the situation. Here are just a few examples:
– Negative Glasses: This type of thinking filters out all of the positives and focuses only on the negatives. Ten good things could have happened throughout the day with one negative experience like a disappointing grade. This type of thinking can lead to another thinking error…overgeneralizing.
– Overgeneralizing: Where someone takes one event and applies it to everything. “I am bad at everything/” or “I am so dumb and will never learn!” are examples of overgeneralization.
– Predicting Failure is another type of faulty thinking where someone convinces themselves not to even attempt something because they “know” they will fail – “If I ask them to play with me they will certainly say no!”
– Mind Reading is another thinking error that I encounter with children all the time. “They were talking about me!” is a common sentence I hear in my work. In reality, the child has no idea if they were being talked about and are making guesses about other people’s perceptions.
To combat thinking errors, I like to challenge the thoughts and work to re-frame them with a more positive/realistic lens. One of my favorite tools to use when discussing thoughts with children of all ages is my thought bubble dry erase board. This double-sided board makes it easy for clients to display a thought, look at it, read it, examine it (with support), and then flip to the other side and re-frame that thought.
Changing harmful/hurtful thoughts into helpful thoughts takes practice and perseverance. Kids and adults need to be kind to themselves and be willing to learn from mistakes. Carol Dweck, known for her work/book Mindset talks, about “The Power of YET.” Everyone can continue to learn and grow. We might not have mastered a skill in the moment but that just means we can’t do it YET. CBT can help reshape thinking so if a child hasn’t overcome his or her thinking errors YET, there is still hope and success will come.
Dominique Adkins, EdD – Therapist for The Wise Family: CBT techniques help teens to recognize the vital role their thoughts play in their life experience. The negative and egocentric thinking patterns of teens combined with the developmental pressures can be a hinderance and a challenge for teens.
Teens tend to forget these damaging thought patterns are within their power. Educating teens on how their thoughts are affecting their emotions and behaviors is beneficial and empowering. Together we can support teens to develop healthier ways of thinking to achieve their desired outcomes. Let’s empower teens to have positive thoughts and positive results!
Amanda Beyland, LCSW – Therapist for The Wise Family: Using CBT interventions helps kids to understand that there is a connection between the way that they think and the things that they do, or their actions. CBT encourages kids to look at how their thoughts and feelings may lead to certain behaviors. Our thoughts, feelings, emotions, and behaviors all intersect!
When I start working with a new child we talk about the “toolbox” that we are going to build during our time together. Most of the tools in the CBT toolbox encourage kids to replace their negative thinking with positive, and usually more realistic, thoughts. While CBT is known as a “talk therapy” sometimes the talking part can be difficult for kids. While working on CBT tools, it’s helpful to make it into something the child may enjoy, like creating a story with alternative endings.
Lynlee Tanner Stapleton, PhD – Evaluator for The Wise Family: CBT is an umbrella term that represents many specific and general treatments for mental health concerns. A key feature is that CBT generally focuses on a specific set of symptoms or problems to improve, and it has been well-researched to treat many common childhood conditions, such as ADHD, depression, anxiety and OCD.
The website www.effectivechildtherapy.org profiles the evidence base for treating a variety of concerns, symptoms, and conditions, with many of the best-supported approaches based on CBT techniques. Some of these treatments are even “manualized,” meaning that there is a standard, consistent approach to the intervention that has been well-tested but still allows for individualized adjustments. For many concerns, this solid foundation of research means that there is a very good chance you and your child will see significant improvement in the issues of concern, often within just a few months, and learn helpful strategies that can be applied across many situations and problems.
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I love your tip about how you should put a thought bubble on a dry erase board. That seems like a good way to organize your thoughts when you are having a hard time concentrating. I’ll have to consider getting a counselor to help me through my anxiety.