CBT activity

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) Activities Reflection Student’s Name Institutional affiliation Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) Activities Reflection Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is a well-established psychotherapy approach that has been growing in use in social work. Partly, the success in the use of CBT within other disciplines coupled with the transferability of its outcomes have made it a useful technique in social work. CBT techniques allow individuals to identify and change unhelpful thoughts, emotions, and behavior patterns (Bieling, 2022). It is widely used to treat anxiety, depression, and stress-related disorders. In the last few weeks, I have completed three CBT exercises: a daily mood chart, a wellness assessment, and challenging anxious thoughts. In this paper, I elaborate on my experience with these activities, their effectiveness, their application as an SSW, and what complementary approaches can aid the effectiveness of CBT approaches in social work. Most Helpful CBT Activity Of the three activities, the one I found most useful was the challenging anxious thoughts exercise. Anxiety often interferes with reason and leads to negative assumptions. This activity showed me how to take a step back from my anxious thoughts and look at the worst-case, best-case, and most likely case. For example, one prospect that triggers my anxiety is preparing for exams. I often exaggerate the chances of failure and downplay my readiness. Through this exercise, I identified my irrational thought to be “I will fail my exam and have to repeat the entire course.” It was followed up by a rational alternative such as “I have studied well and while I might not get a perfect score, I am likely to pass”. Challenging anxious thoughts exercise was effective because it gave me a framework to respond to the anxiety rather than letting the anxious thought control me. The activity helped me to take charge of my reactions and learn a useful life skill that can be replicated everywhere. Least Helpful Activity The daily mood chart was the least helpful activity for me. I found this activity to be a little difficult to execute. That is because I did not always manage to fill it out properly. Moreover, although the chart helped give insight into trends, it did not shed light on the triggers or reasons behind the mood fluctuations. Just tracking when I felt anxious, happy, and angry was helpful, but it did not ...