Using CBT to Overcome Addiction

People who set out to beat an addiction often discover the process looks nothing like what they pictured. A common stumbling block shows up early: many don't ask for help, or they fail to hold onto the support and tools that are sitting right in front of them. Staying clean and sober, and actually moving your life forward, tends to go better when you lean on whatever resources you can reach.

Cognitive behavior therapy is one of the stronger approaches for working through an addiction. Most people associate it with kids being treated for behavioral issues, but its reach goes well past that. Plenty of people in recovery have gotten real traction from it. If you want it to do something for you, it pays to understand how it works and to fold it into whatever personal development plan you're building.

So what is it, exactly? Boiled down, CBT runs on two parts. The first is functional analysis. Here your feelings, emotions, and thoughts get examined, usually alongside a therapist, with the goal of pinpointing the behaviors that need to shift if sobriety is going to hold. The second part is skills training. This is where you drop habits and patterns you no longer want and pick up healthier ones to replace them.

There's a particular idea about thinking that CBT drives home: you are not your thoughts. It also teaches that how you frame a situation shapes what tends to happen next. The familiar version of this is that steady negative thinking tends to pull more negativity toward you, and the reverse holds too. What makes the therapy useful is that it hands you a way to change how you think, which in turn changes how you act. For someone in recovery, that shift matters.

What does CBT actually get used for? The list is long, but treating addiction is one of its most common jobs, largely because the whole method is built around changing behavior. The things people in recovery most want to change often include anxiety, depression, and panic. If you carry an addiction, there's a decent chance you also live with some of these: anxiety symptoms or attacks, panic episodes, depression, related diagnoses. Getting on top of those isn't a side quest. It can decide whether recovery sticks. Less anxiety, less depression, less stress and panic generally translates into a better shot at staying clean.

Building a personal development plan while you work through addiction can help a lot, and there's a good case for centering that plan on cognitive behavior therapy. It has worked for a great many people already. Put it into your recovery plan and watch what it does.

- Cara Gilmore

References: alcoholrehab.com/drug-addiction-treatment/cognitive-behavior-therapy/; lifecounselor.net/cognitive-behavioral-therapy/; moodsmith.com/cognitive-behavioral-therapy-cbt/