Living with a chronic disease means constantly managing recurring symptoms and adapting to a new, often unwelcome, reality. This requires not just physical, but also psychological and emotional adjustment. In fact, coping with this new condition often becomes even more important than coping with the physical symptoms themselves. Research shows that automatic thoughts accompanying chronic…
Many of us want to lose weight from time to time, but when the process does not go as expected, we become frustrated and start believing that we will fail. Focusing on this thought rather than our goal often makes the process more difficult than it already is. Let’s see how someone who thinks, “I…
Many of us are constantly on the go, to the point where we can’t truly rest except when we sleep. Yet, there’s that inner voice saying, “You should be doing more.” But how helpful is the belief that we must do a lot to earn the right to rest? Let’s take a closer look. Here…
In one of our previous posts, “Can We Control Our Thoughts?”, we examined if it is possible to stop or control our thoughts. Here, I give an example of how to challenge an automatic thought about controlling our thinking. I use the cognitive behavioral therapy techniques for challenging automatic thoughts. In her mind, Carol is…
A CBT session with a client who asked for our help for quitting smoking. We try to understand his desire to smoke when he feels bored, and uncomfortable.
Continuing our session with Claire. She is having images on her mind in which her house burns down, and these are followed by compulsive checking rituals. In the previous part, part 1, we tried to help her see that the image on her mind is a thought, not the reality. In this part, we are working…
Our session with Claire was supposed to start 15 mins ago. While wondering why she might have been late, I was sitting on my chair enjoying my cup of coffee as I heard a car engine stopped. She must have arrived. Less than a minute, she was there, standing at my office door. C: Hello,…