CBT: Organically Managing Stress, Anxiety & Depression

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.“

Buddha

Introduction

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or “CBT” is a psychological term used to describe a method of therapy originating in the 1950’s that centers around learning how to cope and control anxiety and depression rather than simply treating the symptoms through medications. This is not to dismiss or deny the fact that medical interventions are often needed and completely necessary. However, CBT attempts and often succeeds in getting to the root cause of mental disorders and naturally remedies the symptoms and negative outcomes. I felt compelled to write an essay on this topic is because I have firsthand experience in the power and effectiveness of CBT. I am lucky enough to have a fiancé and partner who has two graduate degrees in school psychology and although school psychology and clinical therapy are very different from one another, she is familiar with various psychological concepts based on her years of courses in the field. My fiancé was able to examine my patterns of stress and anxiety and without my knowledge, planted seeds in my brain that allowed me to quite literally, “Critically think” my way through my self-induced stress and anxiety. Although my anxiety was not to the point of needing medical intervention, the symptoms that I was exhibiting were effectively treated. Over the weekend, I watched an online lecture from New York University professor of Psychology Dr. Johnathan Haidt discussing his best-selling book, “The Coddling of the American Mind.” Haidt talks about the sky rocketing trends of Anxiety and Depression among adolescents and young adults. Although the lecture was not specifically about “CBT,” he alludes to the practice as an effective means of solution and it was upon learning this concept that I realized my then girlfriend, tricked me into improved mental health. The fact that every single American is not exposed to this well-established psychological concept is absolutely mind-blowing to me, rather than attempting to get to the root of our rising mental health disorders, we’re treating the symptoms with interventions that are often not needed. I thought this was important to share because CBT was a benefit to me, I’d imagine it may benefit someone else as well.

Conditioning

Cognitive behavioral therapy is a “Type of psychotherapy in which negative patterns of thought about the self and the world are challenged in order to alter the unwanted behavior patterns or treat mood disorders such as depression.” Our own personal experiences often shape the manner in which we think and view the world, because of this, there is an importance of understanding how past experiences shape present beliefs, behaviors and thinking. What CBT does is rely on empiricism and critical thinking rather than our senses to guide our emotional responses. To first understand how this works, you must know the definition of “Classical Conditioning Theory of Fear Acquisition” which states, “Neutral stimuli that are associated with fear-producing state of affairs develop fearful qualities and become conditioned-fear stimuli, automatically producing a conditioned fear and avoidance response.” What this essentially means is that we have innate stimuli in our brains that recognize potential harm and triggers a physiological response so that we have a subconscious aversion toward this potential threat. The real-world practical use of this trait within us is for survival, our brain stimuli tell our body to avoid potential dangers that could harm or kill us. For example, when we touch the stove top as a child and it hurts us, for the remainder of our life the stimuli in our brains teach us to avoid touching the hot stove. To tie this into CBT, if the thoughts in our minds are habitually negative, we train the stimuli in our brain to trigger a physiologic avoidance response which in-turn produces symptoms of anxiety and depression. In short, negative thoughts = negative reaction and the more you negatively think, the more you are training your brain to produce stimuli that classically trains us toward negative behavior and outcomes and an avoidance to solving the issues that we’re presented with.

Real-Life Application

To use a real-life example, in the past when romantic relationships were going very well, I would allow negative thoughts to creep into my psyche. Creeping thoughts of failure such as “this is too good to be true,” “How long until this goes bad.” When things were at their best and I was as happy as I could be, I would allow these negative cancerous-like thoughts to creep into my mind and what it did was trigger a self-sabotaging behavioral response. I would make myself emotionally unavailable. What I was doing was at a subconscious level so I did not recognize it, my negative thinking triggered the fear-stimuli in my brain used to protect ones-self from harm which in-turn caused self-sabotaging behavior. I am a person that likes control and to not be in control is to believe that things will soon spiral into chaos. In my relationships, I was emotionally vulnerable and I did not like that loss of control so rather than letting my relationship playout, I would subconsciously sabotage it so that “At least I am in control of my own emotions and outcomes” even if those emotions and outcomes were negative and to my detriment. A similar concept can be applied to golf. If someone is shooting the round of their life they’ll start thinking, “Don’t mess up.” This often quite literally results in the golfer messing up his score with a blow-up hole. The initial thought of self-doubt quite literally produces a physical response that resulted in a triple bogey.

Radical Self-Honesty

For CBT to be effective it demands self-awareness, self-accountability, and above all, honesty with oneself. I think of an analogy using the movie “Inception.” The whole movie is based off of planting the seed of an idea in the mind of someone to influence a decision that the man makes decades later. So, what happens when we “Inception” ourselves with seeds of negative thought? It inevitably triggers the avoidance response which results in negative consequence in the real world. CBT relies on empiricism and critically thinking to produce an emotional response or opinion rather than our senses. Personal beliefs or emotional responses should be based on the actual evidence of the situation and not our raw emotional responses that ultimately shape our perceptions. Rather than simply going with an initial instinct that can often produce negative outcomes, you take a step back and look at the issue through an objective lens. It is of human nature to often exaggerate or distort the objective reality to satisfy our (often subconscious) wants and needs. When you’re experiencing a particular emotion (Sadness, stress, anger, self-doubt, etc.) it is important to step back and ask yourself if the particular emotion you are experiencing is justified and based off of the evidence or if how you are feeling is to satisfy something deeper below the surface that is often negative. This includes empathy, looking at it from the perspective of the others as well. If you are feeling anger or resentment about something, is the reason for your anger justified and supported by objective fact or are you exaggerating the reason of your anger or sadness for a reason that you may not even yourself understand? If you come to the honest realization that your anger or sadness is not fit for the current situation you can ask yourself, “Why am I angry? Or “Why am I sad?” “Why am I incredibly stressed?” Once you get to this point, you start getting to the root of what it is driving your emotional response. When you find out the fundamental root of what is driving your negative emotional responses, you can then learn the thought patterns that are conducive for the root of negativity to take hold in your mind and train yourself to reject these negative thought patterns and re-direct them into something positive. The inverse of this is true with positivity. When we plant seeds of positive thought processes, they manifest themselves in the real world with positive emotions and outcomes. The same neutral stimuli that were once classically training us toward negativity have now been transformed into positive stimuli that is classically training positive and healthy responses that ultimately result in positive outcomes. This is not to be confused with native optimism, there is no reward in naivety, rather a realist-optimism. Not living in a bubble of false positivity but instead having an understanding of oneself and knowing when to interject. Knowing your negative patterns of thought that lead to negative emotional responses that lead to negative outcomes and learning to swap-in positive thought which will then reverse the course of action.

Fishing Pole

This is just a baseline; elementary explanation of cognitive behavioral therapy as I understand it, I am obviously in no way a medical or mental health professional. However, I realized that this is information worth sharing when my fiancé and I were out to eat talking about “The Coddling of the American Mind” and the topic of CBT came up when I turned to her and said, “Why the hell are we not taught this?” CBT has not only changed my life but it has altered the lens through which I see the world. Rates of anxiety and depression are sky rocketing in this country, particularly in the Gen Z age demographic. I think that CBT can be a natural remedy that may give people the tools to work themselves through the mental obstacles that they inevitably face. Although my stress and anxiety were never serious enough to seek medical or professional therapeutic intervention, as a country we are greatly overmedicated because of the emphasis on treating symptoms rather than the root causes. The power of critical and positive thought can quite literally un-train the negative stimuli in our brain that illicit our conscious and subconscious responses and outcomes. While medication is often needed to treat symptoms it can be the metaphorical “fish” that feeds for a meal while cognitive behavioral therapy is the “Fishing Pole” that feeds us for a lifetime.