Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Techniques: Enhancing Life Satisfaction & Achieving Goals

Introduction

Cognitive behavioral therapy techniques are methods used to change behavior, feelings and thoughts, attitudes to improve life satisfaction and enable one to face difficulties and achieve set goals. It requires the therapist and the client to participate actively and invest in the process to identify the problems the client could be struggling with to come up with positive solutions. The following are among the techniques of cognitive or behavioral therapy used to improve behavior and mood.

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Activity scheduling: this is a technique of cognitive behavioral therapy that helps individuals to be able to increase behaviors that they should do more often. He or she identifies and schedules helpful behaviors, for example, exercising, doing some project work, meditating, etc. which increases the probability of them being done. The technique is especially helpful for individuals who do not get involved in many activities due to stress or have the habit of postponing tasks due to procrastination caused by carelessness or laziness.

Cognitive restructuring technique; this technique is used to assist individuals to establish thinking patterns that lead to irresponsible behavior or undesirable moods. There are various ways used during this technique where the most commonly used include creating a healthier plan, identifying thoughts that may be dysfunctional on a thought record form and patterns of thinking that are more flexible.

Skills training: many real-life problems occur due to lack of effective and appropriate skills to achieve the set goals. This technique helps to remedy such deficits of the required skills. The most basic skills training include assertiveness, communication and social skill training. The training is especially done by instructing the individuals, role-plays and modeling.

Successive Approximation: This technique works best for individuals who have difficulty in completing tasks either because they are not familiar with the task or it is overwhelming due to some reasons. It assists individuals to work on a more straightforward task that is similar to the task that difficult to them hence making it look more manageable.

Graded exposure assignments: the technique helps people to be able to face what they maybe fearing to approach. Fear makes people avoid particular situation making them maintain the feeling of anxiety and fear to face situations. The technique enables an individual to get exposed to situations that are likely to be feared one by one and hence with time, they can tackle exposures that may be difficult.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the main aim of cognitive behavioral techniques is to guide the clients that even if they cannot control everything around them, they can change how they deal and interpret things in their environments. Every cognitive behavioral therapy technique gives or offers its approach and each aims at addressing the underlying thought of patterns that lead to psychological distress.