Cognitive therapy was initially made popular by psychiatrist Aaron Beck in the 1960’s. The main idea behind cognitive therapy is that how we think about the situations in our life helps to determine how we feel.
For example, if you are laid off from your job and think to yourself “This is terrible. I will go broke and lose my house!”, you are likely to feel pretty scared and depressed.
But if instead you think “This is certainly unexpected, and I will have to cut back on expenses for a while, but maybe this is a good opportunity to go back to school and improve my career in the long run”, then you will not feel as bad. You may even feel excited about going back to school.
Sometimes, cognitive therapy is confused with “positive thinking” but they are not the same. Cognitive therapy helps you learn very specific ways to recognize your unhelpful thinking patterns and change the core beliefs that underly the thoughts that create unpleasant emotions.
