Hi everyone

[Beachgirl]

A girl from my cbt group told me to sign up and check out this site so that's what I'm doing. I finished my group last summer and my life has never been better. I have not had an anxiety attack since my group ended and I am managing my life's stress and anxiety better that I thought I ever would. I'm more of a lurker type but I'll try and help because I never heard about cbt before my group and it's TEA forms are the greatest thing since sliced bread as my mom would say ;)

[RabidBadger]

Hi Beachgirl

Welcome to the forum.

It's so good to read success stories and I'm glad the CBT helped you.

Many people on this site ask questions about CBT and what it involves. Maybe you can give us all the benefit of your experiences.

Best wishes

Chris

[Robbed]

I'm more of a lurker type but I'll try and help because I never heard about cbt before my group and it's TEA forms are the greatest thing since sliced bread as my mom would say ;)

One thing. What exactly is a TEA form? Also, what type of CBT are we talking about here?

[Beachgirl]

Thanks for welcoming me. Before i try and answer your questions, Robbed I have a question for you. Are there more than one kind of CBT? Mine was cognitive behavioral therapy where you learn to process your thoughts so they are more realistic and less upsetting and anxiety causing.
TEA forms are the main thought countering exercise in cognitive therapy where you list your anxiety causing thoughts then identify the thinking errors that are contained in each offending thought and analyze and replace that thought with a more realistic and less upsetting thought. They are a struggle to get used to doing but once you get the hang of them the new ways of thinking start to become ingrained and keep a lot of the day to day anxiety away. The more I do them the better I feel and when my group ended our therapist told us to keep doing them the rest of our lives and we'll feel better and better. My therapist studied with the leading panic disorder person in the world at UCLA doctor Michelle Craske and I think she was the one who originally developed the TEA form exercise. My therapist said Craske cured Kim Bassinger and a bunch of other celebs of their panic and anxiety.
Rabid, cool name, let me know if you have any cbt questions. It's really cool but it's a lot of hard work initially. If you have not tried it yet I think it would be a good idea. It has a really high success rate for those who stiuck with it like 90% I think. Chow :D

[Robbed]

When it comes to CBT, there are several different therapies that fall under that label. In your case, it sounds like you underwent traditional CBT. In traditional CBT, you examine negative, anxiety-provoking thoughts and re-assess them in a more realistic way. I guess I basically knew about TEA forms, but did not recognize the name or know what 'TEA' stands for. I know them as 'ABC' forms. This particular form of CBT works well when you can easily identify the negative thoughts that tend to keep you in an anxiety state. However, this form of CBT does not work so well when negative thoughts either do not exist, or are not apparent. Indeed, traditional CBT can actually cause INCREASED anxiety in this case, as the sufferer fruitlessly searches for negative thoughts that just aren't there. This can cause increased stress, as it causes the sufferer to believe that syptoms MUST be caused by something MUCH more serious, and that treatment has failed them. Also, traditional CBT is not helpful when it comes to dealing with obsessive thoughts.

In cases like this, mindfulness/acceptance methods are MUCH more useful. With this type of CBT, the anxiety sufferer is taught to simply accept that free-floating anxiety (ie anxiety that spontaneously arises, and is NOT provoked by negative thoughts) and other disturbing symptoms are a part of the anxiety condtion. And that the way out is to accept your bad feelings rather than over-react to them (or try to rationalize them), and to try to go about your life as well as you can despite your symptoms. Also, it is important to realize that these bad feelings do not lead to anything worse than what you are already feeling. And that if this is practiced over the long term, the mind will settle down from its anxiety state. As I said, this type of CBT is better suited for those who don't tend to worry about everyday things as much as having anxiety OR the anxiety symptoms themselves. And this type of CBT is VERY helpful if you have intrusive type obsessive thoughts. Dr Claire Weekes was an important pioneer of this method of anxiety treatment.

Yet another treatment that falls under CBT is exposure therapy. This is most valuable if you are afraid of a specific thing, like airplanes, elevators, the dark, etc. And, as the name suggests, it is simply a matter of exposing yourself to that which you fear. Over time, the mind becomes used to it. And the fear subsides. I should also note that this treatment is very helpful in overcoming obsessive thoughts as well. And if used for intrusive obsessive thoughts, there is actually considerable overlap with acceptance, as acceptance also implies that you are willing to expose yourself to your thoughts.

Of course, I am probably leaving out yet other CBT methods for treaing anxiety. Anyway, it is best to practice all three when appropriate. But most therapists seem to stick to traditional CBT and ignore the other two. Apparently, this worked well for you, as I am guessing it seemed to fit the type of anxiety from which you suffer well. But I didn't do so well with traditional CBT alone myself. Acceptance has produced the best results for me.

[Beachgirl]

Thanks Robbed for taking the time to type all that. We actually used all three in my group but the focus was on the TEA forms and then we went into exposures pretty heavily. The third part that you said helped you most we did through another exercise where we put things back into perspective and built up our belief that we could handle whatever comes. Kind of like when you have the thought I can't handle all this anxiety and you counter it with I can because I am, in effect taking your power back rather than giving it away.

Thanks again for the great answer :D