# The TEA Forms..(cognitive therapy)



## elmandelafoto (Jan 28, 2012)

Cognitive therapy, overtime has proven to have more effect than actual medications.. I was reading "the feel good handbook" by david burns or something, and i didn't get so far, because the book has a freaking 1,000 pages, and the author isn't short and concise, he rants and rants and he needs to talk at least 10 pages about every single point he makes, so i found it boring.. Anyway, the book has one a lot of awards in the psychology community, as the #1 Self-Help Book for People with depression and anxiety disorders..To the point, cognitive therapy, through out studies, has proven to produce the same results as many medications and anti-depressants out there in 3 weeks, and even better ones in the long run.. See medication is like drinking booze, you feel happy, but your problems are still there.. Cognitive therapy is brain training, that changes the way you think, from poisonous irrational thoughts that produce anxiety, depression and nervousness..to healthy- realistic thoughts that make us feel good and positive, how we should.. Anyway, cognitive therapy is the real deal, its equivalent of training your muscles in the gym, just now you are training your mind...

I find this fantastically amazing, and I have read about 5 times Dr. Thomas Richards "Overcoming Social Anxiety Step by Step Notebook" and the first hundred pages or so are focused on Cognitive therapy.. It suggests methods like thought stoppage, and replacing irrational negative thoughts with realistic rational thoughts... It teaches us to recognize an Irrational Negative Thought immediately, and cut them down. Overtime, you can feel the results and see how your brain habbits have changed. You no longer have the silly irrational negative thoughts that can upset you and make you worry for days. This form of cognitive therapy that consists in replacing the lying irrational poison, with an accurate realistic thought is a form of neuro-transmission, meaning that our brain chemistry changes... 
Example: Thought : "I will be rejected because other people are cooler than me and more interesting" 
Rational Statement to replace the thought : "This is another one of those hurtul thoughts. I've stopped my negative thoughts before and I'm going to do it again now. Im becoming better and better at deflecting my negative thoughts and that makes me very happy" 
Doing this and being rational to your brain, it actually becomes habbit and second nature.
This is a terrific method of training your mind to think rationally, but there is another one I would like to discuss that I just found that in my opinion is the evolution and the more advanced and effective way of the previously described "rational statement method"

Its called the TEA method, it stands for Thought-Error-Analysis
Doing this method alone can rid you of negative thought if you only push through it and it last about 12 weeks. All you need is a paper and a pencil, and desire to improve. I don't recall the authors name, but he mentions the 10 types of thought errors that the troubled worried minded people make. Those are the following: 1) *jumping to conclusions* 2) *blowing things out of proportion* 3) *extreme thinking *4) *globalising* 5) *emotional blocking* 6) *reality filter* 7) *ignoring the positive *8)*omnipotence error* 9) *counterproductive motivation* 10) *naming*
You can research on google for a description of each "thinking error" the anxious person makes. 
Once you get a negative thought that makes you anxious, what you have to do is get a pen and paper, and draw two vertical lines in the page... In one column goes the "*T*hought" in the next one, the "*E*rror", and in the last one, the "*A*nalysis"
Example:
Troubled Negative Thought: "People will make fun of me, i just don't fit in, because there is something wrong with me, i am doomed to be alone and a failure for the rest of my years".

Error: "blowing thingts out of proportion" and "extreme thinking"

Analysis: There is absolutely nothing wrong with me, every person is different and fantastic in their one way. I have socialized before thousands of times before I got SAD, I have achieved multiple successes in all areas of my life, this is a poisonous lie, i have great traits, and things i have to improve like everybody else, and if i can love an annoying sister, an angry father, and a stressed out mother i can sure love my own self as well!!! I can socialize, its been proven before HUNDREDS of times.

After analyzing your "troubled thoughts" they kind of loose power because you prove them false.

Conclusion: Both types of cognitive training are terrific.. Its like doing bicep curls vs doing pushups to improve strength.. I think they are perfectly compatible, but the TEA method is just a little bit more advanced and effective, because its more modern. Thomas Richards Handout was created around the year 2000, i think the TEA form is rather newer and probably used Thomas Richards' method and took it to the next level. One of the reasons the TEA method is better imo, is because of the categories. Thomas Richards tells you to replace the negative thoughts because they are false liars! (which they are) But an anxious person might believe the negative thought if they don't know better, just some one telling you its a lie, sometimes isn't enough to stop you from believing... The TEA method helps you give evidence that the thought is a lying negative thought that produces anxiety because it fits them in to categories! Every negative thought we get can fit into a category and then you have assurance and self faith that the thought is bullcrap!

Anyway, those are my 2 cents on those 2 types of cognitive therapy.. a link that talks more about the teaform is right below :

http://www.dailystrength.org/groups/anxiety-and-positive-thinking-and-choices/news/view/1478155

It is really up to us, if we heal completely or not. We have the tools, its much like having a car. But having the car is nothing without the gasoline(motivation and desire). Having the motivation without having the tool is also useless. Once you have the gas, and the car, you can go anywhere you want. Same with CBT, we have the "chemio" to the "cancer", we just need to have the desire to get healthy and overcome this worryness and stressed out life forever.


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