CBT for anxiety: Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (or CBT) is a tried and tested therapy method. It offers psycho-social intervention to improve various mental health conditions.
As well as cognitive behavioural therapy for sleep anxiety, it can also help with stress, depression, and phobias.
In this post, we look at how CBT offers coping skills for anxiety. We’ll explore the effects of anxiety on daily life and how you can support your employees in managing it at work.
Due to the changing nature of the work environment, it’s not uncommon for employees to experience work-related stress and anxiety about going to work.
According to the HSE, one in four people in the UK will have a mental health problem at some point.
With anxiety and depression being among the most common mental health problems, it’s no wonder employers are embracing the growing availability of cognitive behavioural therapy to help support their employees.
As well as CBT strategies for social anxiety, this form of therapy also helps with many other conditions including:
- Bipolar disorder.
- Borderline personality disorder.
- Eating disorders.
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
- Panic disorder.
- Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Supporting employees with cognitive behavioural therapy for anxiety
Providing your staff with access to CBT services can have a variety of positive effects for your employees and business in general.
CBT for anxiety therapy examines the employee’s problems, thoughts and behavioural patterns to work out ways of changing their negative thoughts and behaviours. Its aim is to control, reduce or stop damaging thought cycles by making them more manageable.
As well as maintaining and improving their general health and mental wellbeing, these CBT steps for anxiety also provide an outlet for any negative thoughts and a means of balancing the pressures of work with the needs of home and personal life.
By using a professional service, your staff can engage with an expert who’ll offer effective CBT techniques for anxiety.
Three techniques often taught are:
- Focusing on how feelings aren’t permanent and are able to change with time.
- Thinking it over and acting like normal. This involves controlling the feeling of anxiety with behaviours that alter the feedback to the fear response system.
- Investigating the underlying assumption and coming to logical conclusions.
- When done correctly, anxiety counselling should be able to identify and breakdown problems into five areas. These are the main basis on which CBT was built.
Experts believe these areas are interconnected and can affect each other. These are:
- Situations.
- Thoughts.
- Emotions.
- Physical feelings.
- Actions.
CBT for anxiety: worksheets
While the time the employee spends with the counsellor is important, a key aspect of the change process is independent homework.
It involves using tools and resources to help sufferers consider their thinking.
Worksheets, for example, are a series of questions designed as a systematic guide. It aims to lead employees through the process of identifying their negative thinking patterns and changing them.
If you need any assistance with these resources, you can get in touch with us for support.
Further Learning
Maudsley Learning offers a course called: Psychological interventions for adolescents with psychosis or distressing unusual experiences. By the end of this two-day course, learners will be able to:
- Appreciate the research base in CBT for psychosis as it applies to adolescents
- Understand how adolescents might experience a psychotic episode and the particular impact on individuals at this stage of life
- Know how to assess distressing unusual experiences or Psychotic Like Experiences (PLEs) and how they differ from psychosis
- Be able to adapt and apply a CBT model for your work with adolescents experiencing a spectrum of symptoms from PLEs to psychosis
- Know how to use a CBT framework to engage, assess, formulate, and treat adolescent clients
- Understand the role and application of effective family interventions in psychosis
- Understand the role and application of art psychotherapy approaches with young people with psychosis
To book this course or learn more, click here.
You can also book on to our cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for functional neurological disorders course.
Expert support
If you’d like to find out more information on any of the topics mentioned in this article, please contact Health Assured on 0844 891 0357.
This article was first published on healthassured.org