Any substance addiction can be difficult to break, but reliance on alcohol can be especially nefarious given its widespread acceptance and frequency in society. It is not unusual to be invited to alcohol-attached functions such as work happy hours or date nights. For those struggling with their relationship with alcohol, cognitive behavioral therapy is a powerful tool.
Cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, is a type of guided therapy that focuses on teaching a person new skills to help them overcome difficult situations as they arise.
Rather than functioning like talk therapy, which requires an individual to hold onto challenges they have faced until they can share them with a therapist, CBT equips a person to act in the moment to make choices that they are proud of.
Here are some of the many life skills that cognitive behavioral therapy can teach you to support your alcoholism recovery.
What Life Skills Can You Learn in CBT?
CBT is a highly personalized form of therapy. What works for one person may not be appealing or effective for you, so the therapist will get to know you individually, enabling them to recommend strategies that work with the way you view the world and the things you value.
In general, some of the skills that are most important for those participating in CBT include:
Functional Analysis (Cause & Consequence)
For those struggling with alcoholism, functional analysis is a valuable tool. Also called the “cause and consequence” model, functional analysis teaches a person how to identify the cause of a behavior and what happened because of that cause.
What were you doing when you experienced a desire to drink? Were you experiencing any particular emotions, such as sadness or anger, immediately before you had alcohol?
These are the potential causes or triggers for the behavior, and breaking them down and naming them gives you the power to identify them later and subvert the behavior before it starts.
Next, you will think of the consequences of those causes. Did you enjoy something positive after you had a drink, or were you disappointed and upset?
Did you experience any negative consequences, such as missing an important event or meeting because you lost track of time while drinking? By mapping causes to their consequences, CBT can help people break those patterns of use.
Habits and Routines
Another life skill learned in CBT is how habits work and how to create new ones. For instance, many people have become accustomed to getting a drink as soon as they get home from work. By identifying this habit, a person can learn the skills necessary to replace it with something else.
Perhaps instead of getting a drink, you change the time of day in which you take the dog for a walk, slotting it into the time when you would normally be drinking. This replacement strategy is just one way to rewrite habits into something more productive.
Distress Tolerance
For many people, drinking is a coping response to an inciting incident, such as stress or sadness. Cognitive behavioral therapy can help a person gradually build tolerance to these emotions so that they do not feel the need to cope as easily.
This skill takes time and practice; however, by building up a person’s tolerance to distressing situations, they are less likely to turn to outside influences such as alcohol as a means to ease their discomfort.
Distress tolerance can be partnered with other strategies, such as routine reformation, to substitute another, healthier coping mechanism in place of alcohol for times when the distress would benefit from soothing.
Mindfulness and Judgment
Struggling with alcoholism can lead to shame and regret, which by itself can be enough to trigger a person’s low tolerance to distress and further the cycle of drinking.
Cognitive behavioral therapy strives to equip participants with skills in mindfulness, or the practice of calmly reflecting on the self and the situation.
CBT encourages non-judgment — or, in other words, willingness to understand that we are still learning about our own behaviors and that we should offer compassion to ourselves because we are making these choices for a reason, and we are not failures.
Equip Yourself with the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Skills You Need to Succeed
If you are facing the challenge of alcoholism, the road to recovery can be a difficult one. However, with the skills learned in cognitive behavioral therapy, you can equip yourself with multiple tools to reduce the burden of alcohol on your life and make more satisfying choices that support your goals and dreams.
The experts at Aquila Recovery Clinic can guide you through CBT to practice the skills you need to succeed. Contact Aquila Recovery Clinic to schedule a cognitive behavioral therapy appointment at our Washington DC location.