Cognitive Behavioral Principles

Over the past 20 or 30 years or so, scientists have discovered several principles that help people overcome their fears. These principles have to do with how thinking affects or colors emotional responses and how specific behaviors contribute either to helpful and adaptive emotional responses or painful and difficult ones. These principles contributed to the formation of a new type of therapy called Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. This type of therapy works in two ways. The Cognitive part (which means thinking) works by teaching people to change harmful, overly fearful, and non-realistic anxious thinking into more positive and realistic ways of thinking. The underlying assumption is: If you change the way you think, you will change the way you feel. The Behavioral part works by teaching people to engage in behaviors that have a calming effect to reduce anxious arousal, and by learning new behavior to face, rather then avoid (see Avoidance) fears through a process of Therapeutic Exposure to the fears. Over 30 years of research, and literally hundreds of studies have demonstrated that this approach works especially well for anxiety, but also for depression!