All About Our Self Directed CBT Course for Mental Health Problems & Personal Improvement Goals

Module TWO delves into our beliefs and how they can influence the way that we ‘make sense’ of the World around us and how we percieve what happens in that World, including:

• The Genesis of Beliefs.
• Challenging the Evidence of Our Beliefs.
• Inherited Versus Created Beliefs.
• The Unique Character of Our Own Worldviews.
• Events DON’T CAUSE Feelings!
• The Trap of Confirmation Bias.
• The Underlying Coherence of Beliefs.
• The Three Key Sets of Beliefs that Modify Our Experiences.

Module THREE addresses one of the three primary belief ‘systems’ that can affect our perception of reality with a specific focus on what makes us ‘autonomous’ and how we understand the level of ‘control’ we have over our ‘life trajectory’.

Sections include:

• The Locus of Control.
• Sub-domains within the Locus of Control.
• Social and Cultural Influences.
• The Past, Present and Future as Mental Constructions.
• The Desire for Control.
• Responsibility and Blame.
• Developing Agency.

Module FOUR addresses our Self-Esteem, where it comes from and how it plays a role in the way that we feel. Sub-sections of this module deal with:

• What is Self-Esteem?
• The Origins of Self-Esteem.
• Our ‘Internal’ Dialogue.
• True and False Identities.
• How to Boost Your Self-Esteem.
• Breaking the Rules and Ditching the Past.
• Processing Your Achievements.
• Developing Greater Agency.

Module FIVE considers the impact of our beliefs which are related to the ‘social context’ in which we exist and includes consideration of the following concepts:

• The Social World.
• The Social Construction of Mental Illness.
• The Process of Socialisation.
• Social Pressures and social anxiety.
• External Validation.
• Authority.
• Collusion and Significant ‘Others’.
• Taking Emotional Responsibility.
• Developing Social Agency.

Module SIX discusses both Safety Behaviours (the strategies that we employ which are designed to keep us ‘safe’) as well as the common Thinking Traps that people can fall into when trying to cope with adversity in life.

The Module includes work on:

• Physiological and Psychological Safety Behaviours.
• Coping by Surrendering, Avoiding or Over-compensating.
• Thinking Traps and Unhelpful Thinking Styles.
• Catsatrophising.
• Over-generalising.
• Mind-Reading.
• Polarised Thinking.
• Emotional Reasoning.
• Blaming.
• Filtering and Magnifying.
• ‘Fortune-Telling’.
• Labelling and Categorising.
• Personalisation.

The module also provides tools and techniques for dealing with each of these maladaptive coping mechanisms.

Module SEVEN delves into the nature of language and how the words that we use can have a profound impact on both how we feel as well as how we form perceptions about our experiences.

Sections include:

• Language as the ‘Code’ of Reality.
• Words Produce Feelings.
• Cognitive Fusion.
• Deletion, Generalisation and Distortion.
• Negative and Catastrophic Language.
• Mediated Language (Language in the Media).
• Medicalisation.
• Pathologisation.

Module EIGHT gets into the ‘nitty gritty’ of the THREE most common expressions of mental distress and how what you have learnt in the course so far can be applied to each of them.

The module discusses:

• The Effects of Time.
• Types of Danger
• Anxiety
• The Biology of Anxiety
• The Role of Perception
• Appropriate Anxiety
• Anticipatory Anxiety
• Likelihood, Probability & Consequences
• Tackling Anxiety
• Depression
• Diagnosis & Medication
• Maintaining Factors
• Dealing with Depression
• Boost Self-Esteem
• Become More Internal
• Take Responsibility for Your Emotions
• Quit Ruminating
• Manage Sleep
• Activity Monitoring & Scheduling
• Understanding Stress
• Threat Perception & Power
• Workplace Stress
• Coping & Resilience

Module NINE provides more tools and techniques that you can use to tackle your specific problems, including:

• The Fundamental of Making Changes.
• What you Should Be Doing Already.
• Carrying-Out Behavioural Experiments.
• Tip for Successful Experiments.
• The Downward Arrow Process.
• Objective Inversion.
• Controlling the Controllable.
• Stepping Outside fo Your Comfort Zone.

Module TEN is designed to help you to sustain any of the changes that you have made. It provides tools, tips and advice so that you can continue to make personal improvements as an ongoing project including:

• Re-assessing Your Core Beliefs.
• Sustaining Changes.
• It’s All About the Journey, NOT the Destination.
• Towards What You Want OR Away From What You Don’t Want?
• ‘Needs’ Versus ‘Wants’.
• Goal Setting