Social Anxiety Disorder, anxiety, anxiety attack, stress management, anxiety social, shyness

Cognitive Therapy is a very effective way of understanding how you think, and therefore feel. Cognitive Therapy helps us to explore our underlying belief patterns that result in negative, irrational and unhealthy thoughts. It then allows us to explore our thoughts and replace them with more useful ones in order to manage our emotions more effectively.

Basically, we can think of our mind as being a suitcase which over time has collected many beliefs, thoughts, memories and past experiences. Some of these thoughts and beliefs are helpful, and some of these thoughts and beliefs are not so helpful and are causing us much discomfort. Cognitive Therapy assists us to examine what we are carrying around in our suitcase, and then helps us to remove that which is causing us difficulties, and replace it with more useful thoughts and beliefs that help us to gain control over our emotions and behaviour.

Albert Ellis identified 10 major beliefs, which tend to emerge commonly in people who live with anxiety.
These are as follows...

	1.	I must be loved or liked and approved of by every person in my life.
	2.	I must be completely competent, make no mistakes and achieve all the time if I am to be considered worthwhile.
	3.	Some people are bad, wicked or evil, and they should be punished for this.
	4.	It is dreadful, nearly the end of the world, when things aren’t how I want them to be.
	5.	My bad feelings are caused by things outside of my control, so I can’t do anything about them.
	6.	If something might be dangerous, unpleasant or frightening, I should worry about it a lot.
	7.	It’s easier to put off something difficult or unpleasant than it is to face up to it.
	8.	I need to depend on someone stronger than myself.
	9.	My problem was caused by some event in my past, so that’s why I have it now.
	10	I should be very upset by other people’s problems and difficulties.

Reference: Davis, M., Eshelman, E., & McKay, M., (1999), The Relaxation and Stress Reduction Workbook, 4th Edition, p. 145 - 147 passim.

Every one of the above beliefs is unhealthy and are commonly found in people who live with Social Anxiety Disorder. If you can change our unhealthy beliefs and thoughts and replace then with more healthy and realistic beliefs and thoughts, you can therefore change your emotions (Anxiety) and hence your behaviour (Avoidance/Drug and Alcohol Dependence etc).

The techniques used to assist you in this process are very simple, yet practical and are the foundation of helping you overcome your anxiety. Used in conjunction with some of the other therapies and treatments they become even more powerful. Cognitive Therapy helps you to take control of what you think and believe, and helps you to look at situations for what they really are - more realistically and rationally. When you can, you often realise that there is not really anything to fear as you previously thought, and as a result your anxiety diminishes. When you gain control of your thoughts and emotions you are then in a position to make choice about how you respond to situations.

This site is not intended as a means of disseminating medical advice. If medical advice is required it is advisable to seek expert medical assistance. This site contains links to other sites, practitioners and therapists providing health related materials, treatment and therapies. However, the content and materials, treatment and therapies provided by these third party sites, practitioners and therapists, are not produced by nor are they the responsibility of the author of this site.