COGNITIVE BEHAVIOURAL THERAPY
WHAT IT IS
Cognitive behavioural therapy is an umbrella term that encompasses a variety of more than 20 approaches within the cognitive and cognitive behavioural model. All cognitive behavioural therapies derive from a prototypical cognitive model and share some basic assumptions, even when they present different conceptual approaches and strategies for different disorders.
PROPOSITIONS
Three fundamental propositions define the characteristics that are at the core of cognitive behavioural therapies.
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Cognitive activity influences behaviour.
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Cognitive activity can be monitored and altered.
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Desired behaviour can be influenced through cognitive change.
CREATORS
Aaron T. Beck and Albert Ellis
THE THERAPY
Unlike psychoanalysis, CBT does not interpret the contents, the material brought to the session is worked with the patient to identify, examine and correct the distortions of thought that cause emotional suffering. Cognitive Therapy focuses on identifying and correcting conscious and unconscious thought patterns.
APPLICATIONS
The Beckian approach, originally developed for the treatment of unipolar depression, is applied today in a wide variety of disorders and populations, including anxiety disorders, chemical dependencies, personality disorders, eating disorders, bipolar disorder, couples and families, children and teenagers, among others.
PREMISE
Cognitive therapy is based on the premise that the interrelationship between cognition, emotion and behaviour is fundamental for the normal functioning of the human being, particularly in psychopathology. A common event in our daily lives can generate different types of feelings and responses in different people, but it is not the event itself that generates emotions and behaviours, but what we think about the event, because our emotions and behaviours are influenced by the way we think. We feel what we think. Events activate thoughts, which consequently generate emotions and behaviours. The objective of cognitive therapy is to correct the distortions of thought and thereby make emotions and behaviours more functional and adaptive to the subject's life. (KNAPP, 2004).
COGNITIVE DISTORTIONS
MIND READING
Thinking you know what others think, without having evidence.
FORTUNE TELLING
Making negative predictions about the future
CATASTROPHIZING
Believing that an event is terrible and inevitable
LABELING
Ascribing negative traits that encompass the person completely.
DISCOUNTING THE POSITIVE
Downplaying positive aspects of self or others.
NEGATIVE FILTER
See only the negative side of the person or situation.
OVERGENERALIZATION
Negative global pattern based on a single event.
DICHOTOMIC THINKING
Evaluate facts and people in all-or-nothing terms.
"SHOULD"
Emphasizing how things should be rather than realizing what they are.
PERSONALIZATION
Blaming yourself for negative events.
BLAME
Considering only another person as the source of your negative emotions.
UNFAIR COMPARISONS
Set unrealistic standards by comparing yourself to levels too high.
LAMENTATION
Overemphasizing what you could have done rather than what you can do now.
WHAT IF?
To make several "if this or that happens" conjectures without becoming satisfied and assured.
FILTERING
Negar evidências que contradizem os pensamentos negativos.
SPLITTING
Evaluating everything in terms of good-bad or superior-inferior, exaggerating judgments.
SYSTEMIC THERAPY
WHAT IT IS
Family therapy, often associated with the couple therapy variant, is known as systemic family therapy. Systemic family therapy tends to understand problems in terms of systems of interaction between family members. Thus, family relationships are seen as the determining factor in mental health, and family problems are seen as a result of systemic interactions rather than a particular characteristic of an individual.
APPROACH
Family therapists usually focus their interventions on how patterns of interaction underpin a problem rather than on identifying its causes. The family as a whole is considered to be greater than the sum of its parts. Systemic family therapy is an alternative therapeutic approach to the limitations of more traditional forms of psychotherapy. This therapy treats the family as a balanced system, and what maintains this balance are the rules of family functioning. It is an approach applied to the family or couple as a group, resolving conflicts by understanding their rigid functional patterns, which cause inappropriate and undesirable consequences.
FOCUS
There are several ways of doing family therapy, and these different ways are related to the particular characteristics of the therapist. Systemic family therapy emphasizes the change in the family system, mainly by reorganizing the communication among family members. The past is not the central topic because the main focus is the mode of communication adopted at the present. The therapeutic unit grows from two people to three or more as the family is perceived as having organization and structure. It is based on problem-solving for the family as a system and for its subsystems, such as the marital, parental, and fraternal subsystems.
LOGOTHERAPY
WHAT IT IS
"Logos is a Greek word which denotes "meaning." Logotherapy, or, as it has been called by some authors, "The Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy," focuses on the meaning of human existence as well as on man's search for such a meaning. According to logotherapy, this striving to find a meaning in one's life is the primary motivational force in man." (Viktor E. Frankl, 1946)
PREMISES
Man has always sought to give meaning to his life and to deepen his existence. The frustration of this need is a symptom of our time. Suffering and the lack of meaning configure the existential emptiness that many people experience. For this evil, Frankl developed Logotherapy over decades.
GOAL
Logotherapy seeks to restore the human image by overcoming reductionism, making a proposal that is not limited to psychology, but encompasses all areas of human activity, and seeks to rescue what is specifically human in the person.
Logotherapy can be used as a supportive therapy and the logotherapist will help the patient to find the meaning of his life by himself.
POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
WHAT IT IS
Positive psychology is a recent movement within psychological science that “attempt to urge psychologists to adopt a more open and appreciative perspective regarding human potentials, motives, and capacities” (Source: Sheldon & King, 2001, p. 216), emphasizing the pursuit of human happiness rather than the study of mental illness. Created by Martin Seligman, it has roots in cognitive-behavioural and humanistic psychology.
PREMISES
To value human beings' potential more than the diseases they may have. Look at the human being as a complex being, far beyond mental illness.
GOAL
Peterson and Seligman (2004) developed a classification system for positive aspects, emphasizing strengths and character called Values in Action (VIA) - Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification. In this manual, the strengths were divided into emotional, cognitive, relational, and civic characteristics and six groups of virtues: wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence. From the result of the VIA test, we can within therapy strengthen the strengths that appear last so that the person can be as complete and functional as possible.