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Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Saved My Life

How did I beat severe anxiety and depression? How did I lose seventy pounds? How did I take my destiny into my own hands and save my life? Of course the answer is complicated but the first step is not. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a fairly simple process that transformed the way that I think. Over the course of six months, I learned how to eliminate poisonous, debilitating thoughts from my mind. I ended a lifetime of crushing fear and began a new life of freedom, peace, and joy. Now I am going to teach you how you can do the same.

(Scroll down to the bottom if you are interested in some back story.) After several years out of therapy (reliant on medication) I decided to return. My therapist was an angel. She told me that I was suffering from anxiety and depression and that it was very treatable. I thought that she was insane. It just could not be that simple or logical. I had been depressed and suicidal forever. Things had gotten so bad that sometimes I lost touch with reality. When she told me that I could get better and that it was only a matter of changing my thought processes, I nearly walked out of her office. I knew that I was screwed up, perhaps schizophrenic, definitely a lost cause.

Today, I know that I was very wrong and she was very right. My depression was severe but it was a direct result of negative, irrational thoughts. My anxiety was also severe (so severe that it caused me to disassociate at times) but it too was a direct result of negative, irrational thoughts. Though I had tried CBT years earlier, this time it would be different. This time it would save me.

Every single person experiences negative, irrational thoughts to some degree. But what varies from person to person is the frequency and the intensity of these thoughts. If you are reading this post because you want help, there is a good chance that negative, irrational thoughts are destroying your life. You will change that. If you are reading this post because you want to fill your life with joy and eliminate pain, you will achieve that. Taking control of your thoughts will enable you to obtain emotional freedom and to live a life of peace and joy.

“The present moment is the still point around which the universe arises and subsides, only to be reborn again, fresh as a new born child.” —Deepak Chopra

CBT means something different to every therapist, to every person that practices it, and to every person that studies it. If you do a quick search you will find countless articles on CBT. It can really get quite overwhelming. I am going to ask that you don’t go there. For me, CBT is extremely simple and extremely powerful. Simply put, CBT is changing your negative, irrational thoughts into positive, rational thoughts. Here’s how you do it.

Recognize and Admit
First, you have to recognize two types of thoughts: negative-irrational and positive-rational. Here are some examples.

Negative-irrational:
a. It is raining out this morning. I am definitely going to have a bad day.
b. My parents are on the verge of losing their house. This is all my fault. I should have never been born.
c. That guy just hit my bumper. Just my luck. I can’t afford this. I’m going to be late for work. I’m going to get fired. Bad things always happen to me. I am doomed.

Positive-rational:
a. It is raining out this morning. Good thing, the flowers really need the water.
b. I am sad about my parents financial situation. I am grateful that I have been such a good daughter. I will give them love and support but I will also recognize that their problems are not my own.
c. That guy just hit my bumper. Thank God I am not hurt and we were both doing the speed limit. This could have been a lot worse.

Negative thoughts like the ones above might not be debilitating but when a person becomes consumed by such thoughts, mental illness thrives. When I was suffering from depression and anxiety, I had no idea that 99% of the thoughts passing through my mind were negative and irrational. I had been living unconsciously for so long and because it was all I ever knew, I didn’t know that there was something wrong with it. I thought that it was normal. Meanwhile, my mind and my thoughts were killing me slowly.

Once you have recognized these two thought types you have to admit that you experience them both. You have to admit to what degree you practice negative, irrational (NI) thinking. To what degree are your thoughts NI? Do you have a NI thought once or twice a day or are the majority of thoughts that pass through your mind NI? Admit the truth to yourself, next you will deal with it.

Change by Practice
I was not going to be so easily convinced. Yes I was anxious and depressed but I was not sure that changing my thoughts was going to fix anything and even if it would I wasn’t sure that I would be able to do it. My therapist gave me homework and I am about to give you some. Pay attention here, this is the single most important step to initiate CBT. These are the actions that will change your life:

*Every time you start to feel anxious or depressed, write down the thoughts that pass through your mind.

*Later, analyze these thoughts. How many of them are NI? Change the NI thoughts into positive, rational ones. Write down the positive rational ones.

*If you want to eliminate poisonous, debilitating thoughts from your life, you must do this every single day until it becomes automatic.

Automatic Positive, Rational Thoughts
I remember the first time that I automatically converted a NI thought to a positive, rational one. After months of writing my thoughts down on paper and changing them later, one day it happened automatically. I was on a walk through a forest and suddenly overcome by a sense of doom, panic set in. Something terrible is going to happen, I started but then I stopped myself, No. I am on a walk. It is a beautiful day. I am safe, happy, healthy. And that was how it started, that was when my life began to change.

With time, patience, and practice it gets easier and easier. One day you will wake up and find yourself automatically changing your NI thoughts into positive, rational ones. You will have taken back control of your mind. It really is that simple. My story can be your story. Most people have no idea what an impact the human mind has. We can not conceive that negative thought processes are capable of ruining our lives, our spirits, and our bodies — but they are! With CBT you will stop the cycle.

“As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence actually liberates others.” —Marianne Williamson

Your life of freedom, peace, and joy is waiting for you. Get on the path. Begin your journey now.

Back story: Until CBT, I suffered from mental illness my entire life. From the time I was a girl, I endured anxiety and crippling panic attacks. One example is the year that I developed a terrible preoccupation with my younger sister. I had to know where she was at all times. If I could not get to her I would become hysterical, convinced that something tragic had happened. Later in life I became depressed. Through my adolescence suicidal thoughts were a constant. I wrote pages and pages of poetry on the subjects of blood and tears. In elementary school I became significantly overweight. These problems worsened as I got older. During my junior year as an undergraduate, I decided that something needed to change.

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  • · · · ·

    My Journey to Financial Freedom | Part 2: The Climb

    Emergency Fund

    Three years ago, I was nearly $60,000 in debt. I had a Bachelor’s degree that didn’t appear to be worth its weight in salt and a job that couldn’t cover a fraction of my monthly bills. I was terrified.

    Today, I am closer to complete financial freedom than I ever dreamed possible. Last week, I paid off my last remaining credit card balance. This two-part post is a celebration of this incredible milestone in my journey.

    In part one, I explained how I got to that terrible place. In part two, I will explain how I’m getting out of it (and how you can do it, too).

    ————————————————————————

    1. Change the way you think about spending money. For most of my life, I believed that money was made to be spent. I believed that I *deserved* to spend every dollar that I earned on some material thing that would “make me happy.” I coveted material possessions—clothes, jewelry, electronics, cars. What I realize now is that money is not meant to be spent. You only need to earn enough money to survive. You should have enough money to buy only what you need. There is no need for excess.

    “You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your fuc*ing khakis.” (Fight Club)

    This shift in mindset is hard to adjust to at first. You may not like the reactions that you receive from people. Believe me, I’ve been called cheap a few times, but I pay no mind to it. I would choose cheap over poor any day.

    2. Keep a budget. I highly recommend using Mint.com. I started using it in September and it has been one of the most transformational and useful tools throughout my journey to financial freedom. It allows you to sync up all of your accounts (loans, checking, savings, etc.) in one place. Then it keeps track of every transaction that you make and sorts/organizes all of the data for you. It allows you to track your spending over time and by category. It gives you incredible perspective and insight about where your money goes each month/year. It has been a truly eye-opening experience for me.

    If you’re unwilling to try Mint, you can keep a budget on a spread sheet or even by hand. However, the important thing is to be completely conscious about where every dollar you spend is going.

    3. Use a debit card. To reap the full Mint.com experience you should use a debit card for every purchase you make. Using the debit card will automatically flag each transaction you make into the appropriate category. So if you go to Shoprite, it will get marked as groceries. If you go to Home Depot it will get marked as home. If you stop at the gas station it will get marked as automobile, and so on.

    I use my debit card (linked to my checking account) for almost every single transaction that I make. I also have all of my monthly bills (like my auto insurance, utilities, and gym membership) automatically debited from the same checking account each month. It makes keeping track of my spending that much easier. Plus, I do not like dealing with cash. The debit card is quick, easy, and is accepted almost everywhere now.

    Whether or not you use Mint.com it is a good idea to use a debit card simply because you can review all of your purchases and purchase amounts on your monthly statement. Trying to keep track of receipts is a hassle that I don’t have time for.

    4. Pay off credit cards and cut them up. Paying off my credit cards was my first priority. For awhile I tried “credit card surfing.” Let me just tell you from experience, it’s overrated and it really doesn’t work. The idea is that you surf from credit card to credit card by transferring balances. A lot of companies will give you 0% APR for 6 months if you transfer your balances over to them. After the 6 months, you “surf” to a new card with another promotional rate.

    The problem with this tactic is that it gets messy quickly, it becomes difficult to keep up with, and if you lose track you will end up getting burned by high APRs, finance fees, cancellation fees, etc. Also, it probably doesn’t look great on your credit report if you’re opening up a new card every 6 months or so.

    It is much safer and wiser to just stop using credit cards! My theory is simple and has taken me very far: If you can not afford to buy it, then you can not afford it. Period. It is simple logic.

    5. Eat in. This is one of the easiest changes to make, but it also comes with an enormous, positive impact. When I started closely tracking my spending habits, I was shocked to see how much I was spending on eating out. A meal at a decent restaurant goes for about $25 per person. If you eat out twice a week, that is $3,120 a year. If you grab lunch out during the work week, it’s about $8 a day. That’s $2,080 a year. Put those together and you could be spending $5,200 a year or more on dining out! That is outrageous and completely unnecessary.

    Since I started eating in and packing lunches, I’ve taken my monthly food spending from $500 down to $200 or less! Over time, that means enormous savings. Check out 5dollardinners.com for some awesome, inexpensive recipes. I love it! Also, investing in a crock pot was one of the wisest decisions I ever made—chili, sausage & peppers, and goulash will be your new (delicious, cheap) best friends. (Here are some more tips for eating healthy & mindfully.)

    6. Direct deposit money into savings every month. This is my final—and perhaps most important—tip. When I began my journey to financial freedom, I opened a savings account with ING Direct. It is an easy-to-use online savings account and it gives you interest on the money that you save. It also allows you to set up easy direct deposits.

    I started out small, depositing $50 a month into my savings. As I learned to keep my budget tighter and tighter, I increased the amount that I put into my savings each month. Currently, I am putting away $500+ per month and hope to get closer to $1,000 per month in the very near future.

    When you direct deposit the funds, it comes out automatically. It is painless because you don’t have to do a thing. Because it’s automatic, after awhile you don’t even notice that it’s missing. (I remember reading that on another blog several months ago and thinking, “Are you out of your mind?! I’m not going to miss it? Yea right!”) But I can honestly say that after a few months, you adjust to the missing money. You truly do not miss it once it becomes normal for that amount to be deposited into savings automatically each month.

    It has been one of the best decisions that I’ve made and because I’ve worked so hard to get to this place—I don’t touch that money! I am keeping it there for a rainy day or to pay off my student loans someday in one fell swoop.

    ————————————————————————

    As I stated at the start of this post, three years ago I was almost $60,000 in debt; I was twenty-three years old; and I was scared to death. Today, I have my finances under control! I am on the road to financial freedom and you can get here, too. Truly, it is not as hard as it seems. With common sense and a bit of dedication, it will happen. Paying off my last credit card balance was like taking chains off of my wrists for the first time in seven years. The feeling was completely priceless. If I can do it, anybody can.

    So, what are your financial goals? Have you ever been in financial prison? How did you free yourself? If you’re still there, what are you going to do to break free?

35 Comments

  1. I have been reading your blog and I have to say that you are a special person with a lot to offer. Thanks so much for sharing your story; it has helped me so much!

    I am a recovering alcoholic (I came to this site from Jared's). I was in serious emotional pain and I was empty inside. I knew that something had to change BUT I didn't know how or what to do. For me, I first had to removed the alcohol and give my mind, heart and soul time to heal. It was almost 10 months ago since my last drink. I also joined a website/forum that helped me sober up by reading about how others beat alcoholism and I shared my story as well. That place saved my life. Those two actions – stopping drinking and taking time to heal – gave me the opportunity to see everything in a different light. The door was now opened and I knew now that I needed to explore. So I went out on the web looking for other resources and hence here I am.

    I don't know if I was depressed and drank to relieve that OR if my drinking made me that way (chicken / egg). This question used to scare me because I didn't want to be "depressed." But now it doesn't matter so much because I am no longer consumed with how bad I feel and why. I took action (quit drinking and looked for helped) and it is all starting to pay-off. I am becoming calm and serene and I know now that alcohol is not good for me; it guts my core. I now also know that I don't have to feel bad (think negatively). I am in control of my thoughts / moods / emotions / feels AND perceptions if I allow myself to be. This is so freeing and I am becoming happier than I thought I could ever be.

    You helped me in my transformation and I just wanted to say thanks!

    mk

    Reply

  2. @mk – I can not tell you how much it means to me to know that my words and thoughts meant something to you. I am so proud of you for coming this far in your journey. Keep up the amazing work. I will keep you in my thoughts and send you love and positivity from afar.

    Reply

  3. I know its been a while since you posted this, but thanks for doing so.

    Only just recently have I realised that the treatment I had been receiving was CBT ( we just never discussed the name in our sessions )

    I think you have explained it really well, so well in fact that I have bookmarked this post so that I can keep refering back to it.

    Regards
    Greg

    Reply

  4. @Greg – I am so happy that my explanation of CBT has helped you in some way. CBT is ruly a revolutionary method for treating all sorts of problems. It is a light in the dark so to speak.

    I hope that the treatment continues to help you on your path. I am wishing you light, love, & happiness.

    Thank you for visiting Evolution!

    Reply

  5. Dena, you rock. You are beautiful!

    I have a similar story (depression, identity issues), and the path to health that you discuss was absolutely instrumental for me.

    I did not have all of this great language to help me at the time. It must have been a sub-conscious pulling toward being the ultimate Me.

    Thanks for standing on this message. It is VERY powerful and will spark and light many people's lives!

    Reply

  6. @Grant – Thank you so much for your kind words and for sharing your own inspirational story. I am headed over to your site now.

    Thanks again!

    Reply
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  14. Ive been on medication without therapy for the past two years due to a reoccurance of depression and anxiety.  The medication has helped me realise that Ive suffered anxiety my entire life and never knew it wasnt normal.  Ive started seeing a CBT and trying to keep a mood diary but Im not really sure what my mood is, apart from probably unattached.  Im looking forward to getting off the meds and handling life normally.  I dont have irrational thinking, but I do worry a lot. Thank you for your article.

    Reply
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  16. Hi Dena, Your personal account in overcoming severe anxiety is inspirational. If you remember, how long did it take to begin to notice a difference in your symptoms?

    Reply

    1. Hi Daisy. Thank you so much for your comment. When I started practicing CBT it took a few months for me to notice tangible results. Within six months, my mind started to rapidly transform. You can read more about the journey in my book: http://evolutionyou.net/book/

      xo

      Reply

  17. I have a question – did you find you had to keep writing the same fears down until they disappeared? I’m doing something similar, and finding I’m having to write down and rationalize some of the same old stuff. Just wondering when it will start to sink in.

    Reply

  18. OMG it sounds like me. I’m 43 and been having trouble since I was 14yr. I’m all but exhausted with trying to get myself out of this emotional rollercoaster. I have an 8yr son, and 6yr daughter. Sometimes I don’t know if I’ll be around another year living like that. Will get your ebook! Thanks for sharing!

    Reply

  19. Hi Dena ive been battling anxiety and depression for a few years now but always thinking it was normal and was to scared to do anything about it, had a bad turn a few days ago told a friend about it and she told me to check your page out. Had a read and feeling soooo much relive that you were going through the same things and that you can actually change it makes me so happy. I see my first psychologist next week 🙂 cant wait to change my life

    Reply

    1. Hi Ryan! Thanks for stopping by. I am thrilled for you. You are about to experience some extraordinary, positive change. Best of luck on your journey!!

      Reply

  20. I just found your article today. I have been lost in anxiety and depression for over 10 years now. I appreciate your post and your explaination of CBT. I am working with a counselor now but what you described has enlightened me. It is hard to believe that 10 years have been impacted by negative thinking. I am going to change that. I think my biggest obstacle is realizing it takes time. Thank you!

    Reply

  21. Dear Dena,

    I was indeed scrolling through the disorder and CBT pages and feeling overwhelmed before coming across this post of yours! Thank you so much for writing this, being so honest in sharing your experiences and giving advice and guidance! I feel much better already after merely reading this short post, even without doing anything:) Am much more clear about what I need to do now to live a fuller life :>

    Reply

  22. Hi Dena,

    Just want to say a massive thank you for sharing this article. I’ve been in and out of CBT therapy for about 3 years now, and apart from a few rare glimpses of normality I’ve never really felt any benefits as Ive always ended up confused and overwhelmed followed by giving up. You have helped to make me see it so simple and from this moment I will start practicing the basics again. I never thought a stranger would have such an impact on my life! Thanks again.

    Reply

  23. Hi.. I’m so thankfull today because I found your article, read it step by step… and it is like wake me up from some situation I use to do. Thank you so much! I’ll learn to think positive from now on.. God bless! 😉

    Reply

  24. I have a severe health anxiety. A symptom that seems normal to others is always something serious for me. Though I know that my fears are irrational , they come again and again to haunt me. I hesitate to tell my parents to take me to a psychiatrist. Please help. What to do???? Its is ruining me

    Reply

    1. I don’t know enough about your situation to give you good advice. However, there are almost always mental health services available to students through their educators if you are in school. If you are not, then local county offices should be able to point you in the right direction. I am sending you prayers that you can get the help that you need, friend. Best wishes.

      Reply

    2. Dear Navneet, please do:) I struggled with health anxiety too and unfortunately, did not seek help for it- to the detriment of my studies and work! Looking back, my problems could have been solved much earlier had I just sought help from the start and saved myself all the grief and trouble! It’s really alienating to have everything simmer underneath, feeling alone in having an extra burden of worries, nerves and chaotic fears no one else seems to be afflicted by. I would like to encourage you to grit your teeth and go for a counselling/psychotherapy session.

      I’m not that sure about psychiatrists though- where I’m from, they are more inclined towards dispensing drugs and medications so I would recommend a therapy session first! Drugs shouldn’t be your first course of action, though they’re fine if along the course of treatment you and your therapist decide that they would be a good supplement and make an informed decision! If you do decide to go through with a psychiatrist, gotta do some reading up and research beforehand.

      Reply
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  28. Hi,

    Such a great article.

    I’m wondering with the tracking of negative thoughts, how soon after you have tracked all your NI’s would you sit down and address them?

    For example is this something you would do at the end of the day?

    Reply

    1. Hi Sascha, Yes. Doing this at the end of each day is a great idea. That is how I used to do it. Best of luck to you. If you have any more questions feel free to message me on Instagram @denajoan.

      Reply

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