Tag: CBT
CBT can reduce risk of Perinatal Depression
If you have a history or family history of depression and are pregnant please let your healthcare team know. Evidence based treatments prior to delivering your child can significantly reduce your risk of perinatal depression. The Task Force reviewed 50 studies which examined a variety of different treatments including counselling, physical activity, education, and medication such as antidepressants and omega-3 fatty acids. They determined there was convincing evidence that counseling interventions such as cognitive behavioral therapy and interpersonal therapy were effective in preventing perinatal depression.In fact, both types of therapy reduced the risk of depression by 39 percent. Link
Make Decisions Like a Ninja
Decision making can be difficult when we’re struggling with a strong emotion and can be problematic when we’re coping with depression and anxiety. Pros and Cons is a flexible, easy to use and effective CBT skill that can improve our decision-making skills and increase confidence when making decisions. Pros and Cons can be helpful in the following areas: 1. Distress Tolerance: Comparing the Maladaptive coping mechanism to the Adaptive Coping Mechanism 2. Life Skills (exercise, medication compliance, eating well): Comparing, for example, Working Out v. Netflix. 3. Social Anxiety: Comparing Avoiding a Social Event v. Attending 4. Depression: Getting out of …
Social Anxiety and How to Kick its Ass
One effective way of becoming more comfortable with Social Anxiety is to expose yourself to social situations over and over again. When I say this usually the response I get is “How can I practice when I’m too anxious to show up to the kinds of things that make practice possible?” Before I answer that question I encourage you to consider five points: (1) Social anxiety may mean having to do things differently than everyone else in the beginning. (2) Defeating social anxiety is a matter of skill (knowing what to do) over comfort (doing it). (3) Because social performance is …
Challenging Irrational Beliefs with the Continuum Technique
The Continuum Technique is a tool used in CBT to help people challenge irrational beliefs about themselves or the world around them. It’s a pretty simple tool that acts as a contrast to harmful beliefs that we simply accept as true or allow to remain unchallenged. We’re going to apply the technique to a hypothetical situation that some folks with OCD may be able to relate to. This example involves someone who believes that contamination is going to create a threat to their baby which can then lead to reduced affection, touch, and play. The belief we are going to challenge is: …
Does Shame Work?
Before we get into whether shame is effective, we should probably talk about the purpose of shame. Shame has less to do with the morality of a behavior and more to do with the social impact of others knowing about it. The arbitrator of morality is guilt. Not a very effective or accurate arbitrator, but that’s its job. Shame is more about conformity. It is less likely to cause a person to change their behavior and more likely to increase a person’s efficacy in hiding it. Not because the behavior is wrong, just socially or economically harmful and its disclosure …
Progressive Muscle Relaxation
A couple of years ago I did a video on PMR and I can’t find it so I did another one based on a few requests from clients who preferred to be guided through the exercise. I used the cam on my computer (which is about 5 years old) so the quality isn’t terrific – also I hate doing video- but it’s a good exercise and might be worth checking out. If you are experiencing any pain or have an injury just avoid tensing that part of the body when we get to it during the exercise.
Brief video on what we do…..
A brief video describing the services we provide…
Designed For Crisis
The term crisis tends to bring with it thoughts of difficult events and our worst fears including our own mortality. Part of what amplifies our distress is how we approach a crisis cognitively and behaviorally. There are a few things you can do to tap into your own natural ability to cope with a crisis and perhaps even capitalize on it. Rethink How You Understand the Term Many things we consider good or positive events are in fact crises. The birth of a child, going to college, starting your first job, transitioning from one developmental stage to another all involve …
Freedom to Fail
“SpaceX — which Musk touts as replacing NASA and colonizing Mars — has been a literal failure to launch. So many of its rockets have burned up or crashed that Musk, for reasons unknown, has made a blooper reel.” link I’m neither a fan or critic of Musk, I’m not looking to defend his politics, recent comments or his behavior, however, the author of the article made a common mistake – we confuse things not going as expected with failure. Musk, whatever you may think of him, doesn’t appear to fall into this trap. The “blooper reel” of SpaceX seems …