Cognitive Therapy: It Works

Cognitive therapy-do you know what it is? It’s a fancy way of saying that changing your thoughts can help your mood. In fact, thought patterns can often fuel depression. A recent study suggests that cognitive therapy can help even the worst cases of depression.

Changing your thoughts begins with mindfulness. After all, you can’t change what you haven’t identified yet. Moment to moment mindfulness simply means that you’re aware of your own thoughts. Right now, I am thinking about this topic and the word metacognition, which means “thinking about what you’re thinking.”

Positive thinking helps. One of my favorite positive thoughts is, “Things almost always turn out much better than I ever expected.” The *trick* is remembering this thought when it matters! The queen of positive self talk is Louise Hay, who founded her own publishing company and wrote several books on this topic.

There’s more to cognitive therapy than positive thinking, though. Much of it has to do with identifying your core beliefs about yourself, others, and the world. That may sound simple, but your beliefs can be tough to reach-kind of like digging for the biggest root of a 200 yr old oak tree. Byron Katie, best selling author of The Work, writes beautifully on this topic and has an excellent website at thework.com.

You will find that irrational thoughts usually stem from 2-4 underlying beliefs. Here are some of the most common:

1) I am not good enough 2) I am not lovable 3) I am unlovable.

These negative beliefs are like the roots of weed growth in your garden. The beliefs spawn hundreds of negative thoughts, and negative thoughts beget negative self talk (ie, “I’ll never get that far,” or “I’m ugly,” or “I’m fat”). Negative thinking can decrease serotonin levels; conversely, low serotonin levels would support negative thinking patterns.

Conversely, positive thoughts increase serotonin. Modifying a thought isn’t just a mental change-thought changes create new neural pathways in your brain. New thoughts are like alternate highways that bypass the negatives. The more you use them, the deeper those neural pathways get and the better your mood will be.

The neat thing about cognitive therapy? It begins working in the prefrontal cortex of your brain. Antidepressant medication begins working at the stem of your brain, moving forward to the prefrontal cortex. Physical exercise, an excellent behavioral medicine for depression, starts at both points and moves toward the middle of your brain. The UK utilizes exercise far more than the US, which is a real shame. Exercise happens to be one of the most cost effective, excellent treatments for depression (Blumenthal has published many studies on this topic).

That’s all for today, folks. I think I'm done with this post.