What is Cognitive Emotional Behavior Therapy?

Cognitive Emotional Behavioral Therapy (CEBT) can help you understand the experience and expression of your emotions.   Then you can identify and challenge your beliefs and attend and respond to your emotions adaptively.

picture of a very calm, peaceful beach. The way you will feel when you can let your emotions flow with CEBT

Finding your inner calm

 

Many trauma survivors have maladaptive emotional coping behaviors.  CEBT draws upon a range of models and techniques, including:

  • cognitive behavioral therapy,
  • dialectical behavioral therapy,
  • mindfulness training, and
  • experiential work.

The experiential component and elements of mindfulness training add another dimension to treatment.  They give you the opportunity for creativity and self-exploration.

If you’re like many trauma survivors you tend to struggle with:

  • perfectionism,
  • extreme control,
  • harsh self-criticism,
  • depression, and
  • anxiety.

Finding Calm in the Emotional Storm

smooth stones on japanese sand circlesThe gentle, compassionate-mindful approach behind CEBT offers an alternative lifestyle approach that becomes a lifelong practice unique to each person.

You can benefit a great deal knowing and accepting that your emotions, feelings, and thoughts do not necessarily reflect reality.  When you allow them to pass through consciousness without judgment, the healing can begin.By learning to recognize and acknowledge negative emotions and feelings, you can avoid being overwhelmed by even strong emotions.

Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddhist meditation master, writes:

”Experiencing the pain in my body, I breathe in. Smiling at the pain in my body, I breathe out. Recognizing that this is a physical pain, I breathe in. Knowing that this is no more than a physical pain, I breathe out.”

Hanh, goes on to say;

“This exercise is to help us be in touch with all the feelings that arise in our minds. The feelings are either pleasant or unpleasant, or neutral. You will learn to recognize, acknowledge and welcome each one, and after that look at its impermanence. A feeling of emotion arises, persists, and then disappears. “Thich Nhat Hanh, in The blooming of a lotus: Guided meditation exercises for healing and transformation

CEBT enables us to be calm throughout the appearance and disappearance of feelings.  You can learn to not be attached to feelings, but also to not push them away.  To acknowledge feelings with an even mind is the very best way; while you are acknowledging them, slowly, slowly you come to a deep realization of their nature.  It is that insight which will enable you to be free and at ease as you face each feeling. See what you notice and how you feel…then let it go.