Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Workbook For Dummies^®, 2nd Edition

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Workbook For Dummies®, 2nd Edition

by Rhena Branch and Rob Willson

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy For Dummies®, 2nd Edition

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About the Authors

Rhena Branch MSc, Dip CBT, is an accredited CBT practitioner and qualified clinical supervisor. She has co-written several books in addition to those in the For Dummies series. Rhena teaches and supervises on the MSc in CBT at Goldsmiths, University of London and runs a private practice in central London.

Rob Willson, BSc, MSc, Dip SBHS, currently divides the majority of his work time between private practice and conducting research on Body Dysmorphic Disorder at the Institute of Psychiatry, London. Previously he spent twelve years working at the Priory Hospital, North London where he was a therapist and therapy services manager. He also trained numerous CBT therapists over a seven-year period at Goldsmiths, University of London. Rob’s main clinical interests are anxiety and obsessional problems, and disseminating CBT principles through self-help. He has made several TV appearances including in the BBC documentary ‘Too Ugly for Love’.

Authors’ Acknowledgments

Many researchers, fellow therapists and authors have influenced our understanding and practice of CBT over the years and therefore the content in this book. Founding fathers, Albert Ellis and Aaron T. Beck, of course merit special mention. Others include (in no specific order): Ray DiGiuseppe, Mary-Anne Layden, Jacqueline Persons, David A. Clarke, Adrian Wells, Stanley Rachman, Paul Salkovskis, Christine Padesky, Michael Neenan, David Veale, David M. Clark, David Burns, Kevin Gournay and many more. Special thanks goes to Windy Dryden for his extensive writings and for teaching us both so much.

Finally, a genuine thank you to all our clients (past and present) for allowing us to get to know you and learn from you.

Publisher’s Acknowledgments

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Introduction

Welcome to the Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Workbook For Dummies, 2nd Edition. Cognitive behavioural therapy, or CBT, is a form of psychotherapy found scientifically to be effective with depression, anxiety, and many other types of problems.

Quite often people accept a physical illness or accident that impairs their daily functioning but may fail to accept that they have become mentally unwell. Every human being regardless of culture, creed, class, background, race or any other distinguishing characteristic is likely to experience some form of emotional or mental disturbance during the course of their lives. The good news is that it’s totally normal to become psychologically disturbed and it’s absolutely possible to recover. CBT can really help.

We’ve written this book to bring the types of CBT exercises we use in our work with troubled clients to you. We know that CBT works because we’ve seen it work! And we want it to work for you too. Whatever your problem, we hope that you’ll find this book useful and informative.

About This Book

This book gives you an arsenal of skills and tools to help you beat a range of psychological problems. We try to give you just enough theoretical information to enable you to do the exercises contained in each chapter. All the worksheets and tasks in this workbook are indicative of the types of work we do with our clients in one-to-one CBT therapy.

You can use this workbook on your own to help you to basically become your own CBT therapist. Alternatively, you can use it alongside a course of CBT treatment with a qualified professional. Unfortunately we can’t cover every type of psychological difficulty in depth in this book or it would turn out to be encyclopedic in length! So we’ve endeavoured to touch on the most common disorders that CBT has been proved effective at resolving. You can use this book as a jumping-off point to better understand your particular problems and how to battle them. If you think that you need some additional professional input then don’t hesitate to get it!

Yep, it’s a workbook, and that means it involves – you guessed it – work. But if you really put your energy into doing the work and regular practice, you’ll get benefits. Is it worth it to you to sweat and struggle in order to feel and function better? If so, roll up your sleeves, do some preliminary stretches, put on your sweatbands and hurl yourself into the process!

A Serious Note About Humour

Embarking on a course of self-help can be daunting. Learning a bunch of new techniques designed to help you overcome your psychological problems is hard work, no question about it. In an attempt to lighten the mood we inject a bit of humour and irreverence into our writing. Please understand however, that we do take psychological disturbance very seriously and we know that feeling bad isn’t funny. Hopefully our writing style will make this book entertaining and accessible. Laughter can indeed be good medicine. But most of all our aim with this book is to give you some seriously useful advice and practice opportunities to help you get well and stay well.

How To Use This Book

Like most For Dummies books, you don’t need to read this book in order from start to finish. You can dip in and out of it, going to the chapters that seem most relevant to you. We’ve made efforts to cross reference a lot so that you’re guided to other chapters which complement or more fully explain concepts or exercises. The following table shows where to find information on specific issues CBT can help with, and you can use the Table of Contents at the front of the book and the Index at the back to locate the information you want as well.

Characteristics of CBT and relevant chapters

CBT Characteristic	Chapter Number(s)
Helps you develop flexible, self-enhancing beliefs and attitudes toward yourself, others, and the world around you	16
It is goal-directed	8
Offers skills and strategies for overcoming common problems such as anxiety, addictions, depression and more	9, 10, 11, 12, 13
Addresses your past with a view to understanding how it may be affecting your present day beliefs and behaviours	16, 17
Focuses on how your problems are being perpetuated rather than searching for a singular reason or root cause	2, 7
Encourages you to try things out for yourself and practice new ways of thinking and acting	4, 5
Highlights relapse prevention and personal development	18, 19, 20

Please use this book to write in, make notes and work! That’s what it’s written for! You’ve got our express permission to mess it up as much as you like; after all it’s your book and you’re the one who’ll benefit by using it.

What Not to Read

Don’t read anything that you don’t want to read. This book is for you. Read whatever you think will be most helpful to you. Perhaps you’ve had enough of this introduction chapter. Fair enough, move on. Ideally we’d like you to read the whole thing (if we’re honest) but that’s because we wrote it and we think that every chapter has something of value to offer. But hey, it’s up to you and you certainly don’t have to agree with us (or our egos . . . ).

Anything in this book that is relevant to you and helps you with your individual problems is what you should be reading. Focus on that. If it bores you, confuses you, or doesn’t seem to apply to you – give it a miss.

Foolish Assumptions

We assume that if you’ve bought this book then you’re interested in using CBT techniques on yourself. We’re guessing that you’ve heard of CBT before or had it recommended to you by a friend or professional. We’re also guessing that you’ve got one or two psychological problems that you’d like to be free from.

But even if our assumptions are completely wrong (or indeed foolish), this book may be of interest to you. You may have a friend or family member who you’re concerned about and want to learn more about CBT treatment. You may be feeling okay but still have an interest in CBT and how it may be able to further your enjoyment of life. So we assume, foolishly or not, that you’ll get something of use out of this book whatever your reasons for buying it.

How This Book Is Organised

The Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Workbook For Dummies has five parts.

Part I: Pinpointing Primary Principles

This part of the book gives you the groundwork for understanding your problems in relation to the CBT framework. Chapter 1 gives you an idea of what CBT is all about and how it applies to common problems. In Chapter 2 we show you how to recognise your problemtatic thinking patterns. Chapter 3 is all about how to get on top of toxic thinking and finding better alternative ways of thinking for the future. In Chapter 4 we show you how to act like a scientist in the interest of improving your emotional and mental health. We get a bit new age in Chapter 5 by introducing mindfulness and other techniques for directing your focus of attention.

Part II: Pinning Down Problems and Giving Yourself Goals

The chapters in this part are devoted to helping you to define your problems in specific terms and to choosing specific goals with regard to your identified difficulties.

Chapter 6 explains the CBT view of healthy and unhealthy negative emotions and gives you the chance to get to grips with your own emotional responses. Chapter 7 shows you how some of the ways in which you try to cope with problems may be in themselves problematic. In Chapter 8, we really focus on getting to grips with appropriate goals.

Part III: Putting CBT into Practice

The chapters in this part are all about putting CBT into practice on specific problems like anxiety, depression and low self-opinion. Chapter 9 deals with anxiety problems, Chapter 10 looks at exercises for overcoming addictions, and in Chapter 11 we deal with common body image problems. Chapter 12 covers tips for dealing a blow to depression, and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is addressed in Chapter 13. In Chapter 14 we look at ways to lift low self-esteem. Chapter 15 is all about improving interpersonal relationships.

Part IV: Forging into the Future

In this part Chapter 16 helps you to look at long standing beliefs and ways of thinking that may affect you in the present. We include a lot of worksheets to help you challenge old and unhelpful beliefs about yourself, others and the world at large. Chapter 17 deals with techniques to make your new beliefs more permanent. In Chapter 18 you get the chance to focus on further personal development. Relapse is a real possibility and in Chapter 19 we give you a chance to plan and trouble shoot for possible problem resurgence. Chapter 20 is about helping you to live in a positive way even after you’ve largely defeated your initial problems.

Part V: The Part of Tens

This part contains handy top ten tips for working with professionals, getting some sleep, and renewing your motivation to get better. Sometimes readers may like to start at the part of tens and then go on to other chapters and parts in the book!

Case Examples Used in This Book

All the characters used in case examples throughout this book are entirely fictional. However, the types of problems we use them to typify are very common and based on our clinical experience with real clients over the years. Our hope is that you’ll be readily able to identify with aspects of these made-up character’s experiences and relate them to your own difficulties.

Icons Used in This Book

We use icons throughout this workbook to bring different types of information to your attention and to clearly guide you through the book.

This icon signposts a case example and completed sample worksheet.

You’ll see this icon next to blank worksheets. It indicates your chance to put the work into workbook.

This alerts you to additional useful information that may help you to better understand a concept or to complete an exercise.

This icon is used to emphasise information worth bearing in mind throughout your CBT self-help work.

This icon is an alarm! It denotes possible pitfalls, common errors, or potential dangers.

Where to Go from Here

This workbook is designed to be a hands-on practical approach to using CBT. It contains lots of exercises and tasks to get you moving along the road to recovery. Because it’s a workbook we don’t go into great depth about theoretical CBT concepts and principles. It’s a book focused more on action. For more about background CBT theory you’re recommended to get the companion book, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy For Dummies, 2nd Edition (Wiley). It also has a section that suggests other useful CBT-based books to add to your library. Boosting Self-Esteem For Dummies (also written by us) has a lot of very useful CBT tips and techniques designed to help you learn to appreciate yourself more fully. We also recommend getting the CBT Journal For Dummies (we did this one, too), which is a valuable adjunct to all other CBT-based For Dummies books. You may also want to get Personal Development For Dummies All-in-One, edited by Gillian Burn (Wiley), which has a CBT section as well as sections based on other useful For Dummies self-help books.

Part I

Pinpointing Primary Principles

In this part . . .

You’ll get the groundwork for understanding your problems in relation to the CBT framework. We show you what CBT is all about and how it applies to common problems. We show you how to recognise your problematic thinking patterns, how to get on top of toxic thinking and how to find better alternative ways of thinking for the future.

You also get to act like a scientist in the interest of improving your emotional and mental health, before we come over a bit new age by introducing mindfulness and other techniques for directing your focus of attention.