CBT Guide For Anxiety

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Getting help: We know from studies that many people get most from self-help books if they have help and support from a therapist or therapy assistant as they work through them. If you do not have a therapist, then you may want to try to get a friend or family member to help you with the book, to read it along with you and support you as you try to make changes. For this reason we have added ‘Tips for supporters’ throughout the text. These come from our experience of supervising therapists, and from the feedback we’ve received from family members of the people we have treated. Don’t worry if you don’t have support; just try to be as objective as possible as you read through the book, and try to be your own therapist – just apply the tips to yourself.

Making a commitment: If you want to make real changes in your life then it will not be enough to simply read the book. You will need to really commit yourself to doing the tasks and exercises in the specific chapters. Otherwise it is rather like exercise – reading about going jogging doesn’t make us any fitter!

Understanding common factors: The good news is that you do not have to read the whole book, though it would be sensible to read Part 1 on common ideas and techniques before moving on to the chapters that are relevant to your particular problem in Part 2.

Identifying your problem: It may be that you don’t know which chapters are relevant for you, or think all of them could apply. Each chapter opens with some information about the nature of the specific problem being considered, which should help you decide how relevant it is to you. Don’t try to decide if that’s the only one for you – just see if the problems they are describing would be good for you to try to tackle. You might find that you need to work through more than one chapter in Part 2. If so, then you should find that the skills you’ve learned from the first one make it easier to work through the next one.

If more than one chapter is relevant to you, there are two ways to decide which chapter to start with. The first is to start with the problems that are causing you the most difficulties in your life – perhaps you feel that if this was sorted out, your day might be a lot easier for you. Alternatively, you could start with something that you think might be reasonably easy to tackle – that way you will start to see changes quickly and hopefully your confidence will grow. If you have a supporter working with you, you can discuss together where to start, but there’s no golden rule – as long as you start somewhere then you will have begun to overcome your problems.