❌I notice that many people don’t reach out for help, because they are not aware how many mental health issues can be eliminated or alleviated such as depression, anxiety, bipolar, BPD, eating disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, phobias, PTSD, psychosis, schizophrenia, sleep problems and many more.
❗️Please don’t suffer in silence feeling helpless, when there is such a powerful therapeutic method out there that can turn your life around.
🙏🏼This post is to honour Dr. Aaron T. Beck, the father of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. Sadly, he passed away on 1st November this year. I kept delaying writing this post, because it is very important to me and it is hard to find the words.
🔁When I first heard about Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) I was about 19, doing my BA in Psychology, and I was fascinated by how our thinking can affect our emotions and behaviour, I chose cognitive distortions as the topic of one of my assignments. Even though it was great, somehow it did not sink in back then, I believe I was just too young and inexperienced.
📖However when I rediscovered CBT while doing my Masters, with more maturity and cognitive framework, I was immediately pulled in. I loved how much scientific research backed it up and how successful the method was.
📚Beck was a psychiatrist and also named as one of the most influential psychotherapists of all time. Working with depressed patients, he noticed some common patterns of thinking which he named `Negative Automatic Thoughts` that usually were about the self, the world and/or the future. When he helped his patients to identify these thoughts and reevaluate them in a more realistic and balanced way, it positively affected the patients emotions and behaviour too. The process of course goes deeper and CBT can work on different levels such as assumptions, attitudes, core beliefs.
🧐Many of us don’t naturally check our way of thinking, we are in the bubble of our own thoughts and just accept them as truth without questioning. So the theory and methods of CBT opened up a great reflective way to amend distorted ways of thinking and enjoy all the benefits of improved mental wellbeing.
👏I was so grateful to Dr Beck and all his research and therapeutic methods that he developed that can help and already helped millions of people.
🙌🏼During the last few years I had this childlike enthusiasm wishing that he would reach 100 years old. So I was very happy that it did happen on 18th July this year. What a long and fruitful life! I am so grateful for the legacy he left for us.
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