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May. 22nd, 2007 06:48 amI bought a book a few weeks ago called Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Dummies. Written by Brits, as you can see from the title's spelling.
CBT is awesome, and has lots of scientific evidence behind it. Yay!
But...damn. I remember mentioning CBT to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
infernarl ages ago, and asking his thoughts on the subject (he's a grad psychology student, after all) and he said something like, "You'll have a lot of homework." He wasn't kidding! There's an entire appendix of worksheets for you to photocopy.
A large part of CBT goes like this: Something happens (gasp! an "activating event!"). You have an emotional reaction, which leads to an action or feeling of some kind. When it happens, you try to figure out the self-talk to lead to your emotional reaction, and ask yourself: is that even true?
Say, for instance, you trip and drop something in front of a lot of coworkers. You feel like a huge idiot, and think to yourself, oh god, they think I'm a huge idiot. And then you get shy around those coworkers, or just feel bad about yourself all day.
So part of the CBT thing is you sit down and write it all out. And then you ask yourself: does tripping and dropping something actually mean I'm an idiot? Of course not! Everyone does it sooner or later! Are my coworkers really judging me like that? It's pretty unlikely, and if they are, that means they're jackasses anyway. So you're forced to remind yourself, in writing, that falling and dropping things makes you, uh, human, and that you're not a huge idiot.
That's not a terrific explanation--I'm not very far into the book. *LOL* But that's the general idea. There's an excellent study comparing CBT and an anti-depressant medication here.
I have plans for the rat cage. Bwah ha ha. They include getting a litter pan, as they tend to "go" in the same spot most of the time, and putting towels down in the rest of the cage. It would save me money on carefresh, for sure. Also, I know there are cutesy plastic baskets at the dollar store, and they are easily attached to the cage sides, and a lot of people's rats love them. I need to make their cage more interesting, maybe throw in more toys...a lot of rats like bird toys. *thinking*
CBT is awesome, and has lots of scientific evidence behind it. Yay!
But...damn. I remember mentioning CBT to
infernarl ages ago, and asking his thoughts on the subject (he's a grad psychology student, after all) and he said something like, "You'll have a lot of homework." He wasn't kidding! There's an entire appendix of worksheets for you to photocopy. A large part of CBT goes like this: Something happens (gasp! an "activating event!"). You have an emotional reaction, which leads to an action or feeling of some kind. When it happens, you try to figure out the self-talk to lead to your emotional reaction, and ask yourself: is that even true?
Say, for instance, you trip and drop something in front of a lot of coworkers. You feel like a huge idiot, and think to yourself, oh god, they think I'm a huge idiot. And then you get shy around those coworkers, or just feel bad about yourself all day.
So part of the CBT thing is you sit down and write it all out. And then you ask yourself: does tripping and dropping something actually mean I'm an idiot? Of course not! Everyone does it sooner or later! Are my coworkers really judging me like that? It's pretty unlikely, and if they are, that means they're jackasses anyway. So you're forced to remind yourself, in writing, that falling and dropping things makes you, uh, human, and that you're not a huge idiot.
That's not a terrific explanation--I'm not very far into the book. *LOL* But that's the general idea. There's an excellent study comparing CBT and an anti-depressant medication here.
I have plans for the rat cage. Bwah ha ha. They include getting a litter pan, as they tend to "go" in the same spot most of the time, and putting towels down in the rest of the cage. It would save me money on carefresh, for sure. Also, I know there are cutesy plastic baskets at the dollar store, and they are easily attached to the cage sides, and a lot of people's rats love them. I need to make their cage more interesting, maybe throw in more toys...a lot of rats like bird toys. *thinking*
