Episode Transcript
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Hello, this is Amy again from the EMDR SBT Trauma podcast.
We're back today. We are talking about some
misconceptions of CBT. I've been busy, so apologies.
I haven't been able to do more podcasts in recent times, mostly
because it's been the mental health awareness month and I've
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been working with things and people.
So today I heard a lot about CBTand what CBT is for and there is
a lot of misconceptions of that.So I decided I'm going to do a
brief podcast today on perhaps explain a bit more what is CBT
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and whether what you've been told the CBT is actual CBT or is
CBT skills, CBT sheets, CBT talk.
OK. So I hope that's enjoyable.
And then we'll do also some breathing exercises at the end
that is based on CBT so you can see how that changes.
OK, so let's start. So CBT is stands by cognitive
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behavioral therapy or psychotherapy, cognitive meaning
your mind, behavioral meaning what you do affects the way you
feel and the way you feel it in your body.
So your emotions and your somatic physical sensations.
First misconception I heard a few times is that CBT is not a
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somatic therapy. Maybe it's not a somatic therapy
in the context of breath work orsome art or expressive
therapies, maybe not that from that perspective.
However, CBT, if you are engagedin CBT, there is a big element
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of how you feel in your body, your thinking, your emotions and
then how the behaviours you do to manage those impact your
physical sensations. So for example, if we are, we,
if we were to talk someone who'shaving panic attacks in CBT, we
would sometimes increase some ofthe physical sensations.
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Someone said, I'm late, light headed and I think I'm going to
pass out. We in CBT can test that out by
increasing the sense of Lightheadedness, right?
So we are then helping your mindand your body to figure out that
those sensations may not lead tothe belief that you have.
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So if you are having CBT and there is no mention of your
physical sensations on your somatic feelings, then you may
not be having CBT or you may have a CBT in form or a CBT shit
thing. OK.
Likewise, some people is been I've been listening and hearing
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about is short term is for easy things or is not for more
profound work. That's once again it's a big
misconception. So CBT is designed for it's a
time limited, meaning that therapy is not open to be for an
unlimited amount of time. We are working towards getting
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you where you want to go. That could be 3 sessions, that
could be 20 sessions. There could be 40 sessions.
However, the majority of people might not need 40 sessions for
the difficulties they come to CBT.
If you come to the CBD or any ofthe CBT therapies that they are
third wave, such as acceptance and commitment therapy,
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compassionate focused therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy,
other therapies that they are also CBT based like schema
therapy or like before CBT was Arabt.
So rational emotive therapy, allof those can work on you having
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day-to-day difficulty or you mayhave an, you might feel
overwhelming anxiety. And it doesn't have to be
disordered orientated. So we don't have to work on your
anxiety and treat it as if it would be an obsessive compulsive
behaviour or a generalized anxiety disorder.
We don't have to be that disordered, right?
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So we can work on anything or anyone who has experienced any
anxiety. If the anxiety is due to life
experiences, upbringing, you maybe thinking that your CBT might
be lasting 203040 depending of the amount of adverse childhood
experiences you had. You will work with that doing
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CBT for trauma. And before doing that, you will
have a stabilization phase, meaning we will give you skills
on self compassion, self soothing, managing any, any,
any, any intrusive thoughts. So there'll be a lot of things
that we will help you, even if these things like the
personalization, the realization, we will work with
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that and that's your preparationphase.
And that is the majority of trauma therapies work like that
way. And then that would take as long
as it takes. And that would be depending on
you, the way you manage things and depends on many things, then
you would do it through the trauma process.
So if someone who's comes for a road traffic accident or an
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accident on a, on a, on a bike or doing a sport they love or an
accident that or a traumatic bereavement, right, That may
look like 1215 sessions, 20 sessions, 8 sessions because
that person has had that event. So you will be doing some
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stabilization, some processing, some reclaiming your life right
now if someone comes and they had a childhood of this
experiences from the age of 0 and they've been witnessing
domestic violence, there's been abuse, there's they've been in
the, and themselves in a business relationships, that
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piece of work may take much longer.
And you're still using CBT, right?
So you will be using all of these.
And that was, that would be yourtime limited, not your short
term, which is two different things.
So short term might be 12:15 session or long term therapy,
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maybe be 2025. If you have a complex OCD, most
of the people, the research shows 18 to 20 session.
That's a lot of session and and we and that's what most of the
people get better and improve. Some people need 25, other
people get 12 because they get better with both.
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So it's pretty much hand down toyou.
OK, so that is a normal misconception.
Likewise, where it doesn't work with complex trauma, they do
work. There are other therapies that
may work better or they might besuiting more for different
people. That doesn't mean that you
cannot do it in CBT. Again, CBT people say, oh, it's
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very, very meeting line. It's very structured.
Once again, that will be down to1 new preference.
So there are CBT is more structured than therapies
because we are aiming to get youwhere you want to be and where
your values are. And I do few other therapies and
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I do exactly the same with the other therapies.
There is a endpoint. There is a point that you want
to be and I am here or any therapist to get you through
that point in a way that suits you and is specifically designed
for you. If you've been given handouts
that they are not linked to yoursense of what you need, then you
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may not be having what is actualCBD, which is something that me
and many people who's trained for years, we do.
We do CBD. It's a structure.
Yeah. We set the plan in the session.
We know where you want to go. We know what we're going to
discuss. We know why we're going to
discussing it. We know why you're here.
We, we have agreed what you needand what skills you may need to
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get you where you want. And then we, we will time how
that's going to look like. Or we may think about what
memories you're going to work orwe are going to work and how
that's going to look like and what is going to be the change
once you you don't have this andhow you're going to feel it in
your body. So that is something that some
people say. So this is very meeting fair
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enough. Some may be submitting.
Maybe it's not meeting words. It's also good to know majority
of people like knowing what whatthey are going to be getting
from things, right? Once you invest in yourself, you
want to know this is what I likefrom this therapy and this is
what I like to be and these are my values and this is what it
matters to me. So yeah, there is a structure,
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there is always a review. How you doing?
Yeah, why you know, has been your week has been the things we
agreed. So we agreed for you to practice
some skill so we can do trauma work or we agreed for you to
practice some skill so you can go out more or reduce your your
CD or your intrusive thoughts. Then yeah, that that be let's
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check those out and see how thathow that works.
And then we several what do we need to discuss now to get you
when you want to go right or using understanding the the the
way you go here. And then we set a bit more
things for us to do for you to do in between sessions.
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Because if we expect people to well, if you want to feel
better, not if you want to feel better.
Once you feel better, we are under under the understanding
that some things that you find difficult, they'll be less
difficult and therefore you would like to do the things that
you are not doing and you they are missing in your life.
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Whether that's been feeling lovefrom within, whether that's
feeling assertive, whether that's have the confidence or
whether that's not having more panic attacks when you go to a
supermarket. If we work on your panic attacks
and go into a supermarket, we ideally would likely to go to
the supermarket because you haven't been going to the
supermarket. If you think you don't felt self
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love or self compassion in between the sessions, we would
like you to start being more kind, compassionate and loving
to yourself. That is where we want to see the
change where hope when we say weI'm talking about the client,
you and your therapist in case what we mean.
OK, so that's how you feel misconceptions about CBT.
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So one of the things I'm, I'm very, once you are very clear is
that not everything, what you'regoing to get is CBT and
especially some services they have what is low intensity CBT,
high intensity CBT or basic, a basic intervention where there
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is some handouts is very structured.
They tell you what you do, you're told what you're doing,
and then they give you what you have to do.
So that does have a good outcomes load of people, the
majority of people will get through that, right?
And they will will will have an outcome, a possibly good
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outcome. Other people doesn't suit them
because they need something else.
You still can do CBT. Now you may be needing to have
CBT that is actually not manualized, that is CBT as it
was done and it was it's been developed.
OK. So I hope that clears some of
the misconceptions on CBT. If you would like to drop me a
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comment with a question or in the e-mail, which is podcast at
onlinehyphencbt.com with any questions about the conceptions
or any further queries that you have, well, this is what I've
been told and I'll be more than happy to answer that to you
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through comment or through an e-mail.
OK, so now Sam, I am very, I do a lot of imagery and there is a
lot of people who have CBD that uses imagery, right?
So what I'm going to ask you nowis if you are in a place that
feels safe. You're absolutely not driving
any vehicle, right? And you're feeling safe.
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What I'm going to ask is to close your eyes for a second.
I'm going to ask you to close your eyes and breath in into
your abdomen, noticing your ACT and your abdomen expanding.
And then I'm going to ask you tobreathe out much longer.
I'm going to ask you to notice the breathing and the breathe
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out much longer and actually doing so I'm going to ask you to
take a opportunity to have an image of what or how compassion
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will look like. How what?
It could be a famous person, a mythological animal, could be a
religious person, a spiritual person.
It could be anything or anyone. And I'm going to ask you to
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breathe in and breathe out. I'm going to ask you how he
feels that compassion in your body.
And when you're doing that breathing in and breathing out,
feeling that compassion, I'm going to ask you to notice,
would that person, that animal, that entity would think or say
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that is compassionate? What would they, in that
unlimited compassion that they have for the world and everybody
else in that would say, how would they think about some of
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the difficulties they experienced?
And most importantly, how would they feel that compassion
towards everyone and everything?And as you notice in those
thoughts, I'm going to ask you to notice how they feel.
And I'm going to ask you to let that compassionate imagery and a
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compulsory figure to turn aroundtowards you with a smile, with a
warm, kind attitude and give youthose thoughts, those words, and
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for them to be able to embrace them.
So if you need it, for them to be with you, around you, how he
feels and as you're doing so. But I'm going to invite you as
continue breathing in and breathing out.
I'm going to be now. He's in silence for a minute.
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And what I'm going to invite youis to think about the way that
feels in your body. And how does compassionate
person with those compassionate thoughts would invite you to
change something in your day, tochange something in your week,
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something that perhaps has been difficult to change or you find
challenge something that is slightly challenging in a scale
of zero to 10, perhaps a three or a four, or when you're
thinking about it, something youtry to change and you haven't
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been able to do so. What kind and compassionate
words this figure would tell you?
What would Dade say? And most importantly, how would
that feel? How would Phil having that grace
on compassion? I'm going to be now asking you
to imagine how that feels and how that looks like.
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Imagine how your week is going to look like with that
compassionate figure alongside you and take a deep breath in
and a long breath out and open your eyes.
And now as you open your eyes, I'm going to ask you to think of
a positive self referring, a statement about you.
So I can, I will, I have, I am. And then I'm going to think, let
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you think that and take it forward.
OK, so now that's for today. The Bosca hopefully enjoy it.
Drop me a message on the comments box if you have any
other questions about CBT. I do as I said other therapies
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and I do I work with a lot of people.
So not CBT is not for everyone. EMDR is not for everyone.
Schema therapy act DBT which is things you do, they are not for
everyone. Now it's very important to do
some research and to understand the misconception of certain
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things. OK so it was great.
Hoe you enjoy it?