Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a Foundational Writing Skill
How Therapy Can Improve Your Writing, How Reading can be Avoidance or Restful Escape, and More ... Guest Post by Christopher Gerlacher
Today I have a guest post for you from
of :“Each week, Applied Knowledge Book Reviews reveals the best ideas from the best books. Mondays are the free reviews which reveal the key ideas from the week’s pick. Thursday is the paid review that shows how the book changed the reviewer’s thinking. It’s the easiest way to access your home library’s most valuable knowledge without cracking into your nightstand’s book pile.”
As you can tell, Christopher is a reader. In this essay, he shares how reading was sometimes a form of avoidance for him but, when other mental health issues related to panic attacks were resolved, thanks in large part to CBT practice, reading returned to being a beautiful, intentional, restful escape. He also explores how this form of therapy actually helped to improve his writing. Here’s his guest post in his own words.
I want to add a note here about the first line of Christopher’s piece … At first, I cringed over and considered asking for an edit. One of my goals here is to break down the binary thinking that depicts creatives as “crazy.” However, I tend not to edit guest posts much, because I believe there is value in the way the initial ideas land on the page. As I read, I realized the sentence makes sense for the author, and the sentiment it offers - that creatives often struggle because of various symptoms and life challenges - is certainly in line with my own approach. So it stays.
Writers are anxious and depressed by nature. We’re highly sensitive and good at building worlds on paper. But the ideas we have in our heads are always better than what we can put on paper, even if we get paid for what we write.
No wonder reading is an escape for us.
It’s also no wonder that therapy is in so many of our futures. I’ve been through it for panic attacks, and it took a long time to treat them. Over a few weeks, the panic became less severe. A few months later, I woke up, and my throat didn’t feel like it was closing. It was easy to breathe. I took my corgi puppy for a walk and enjoyed a meal at a Greek restaurant around the corner from my townhouse.
I recovered with months of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). It’s a process of recognizing cognitive distortions - unreasonable beliefs - and changing them.
It’s easy to find explanations of what it is online, but few examples of what that means in practice. So, here are a few of my own CBT entries.
CBT is Just Writing About Your Thoughts
When my therapist brought up CBT, she directed me to a worksheet called a dysfunctional thought record. (Yes, that’s they’re really called. My therapist laughed about the name when she introduced the form.) The form had three main steps:
Identify the dysfunctional thought.
Challenge the dysfunctional thought.
State what’s likely true instead.
There were other details like how I felt and a timestamp for the panic attack I was doing an entry for, but those were the three meaty sections.
Here’s what it looked like in practice:
A CBT Example for Anxiety Patients
In the summer of 2021, my uvula swelled up, sat on my tongue, and didn’t respond to steroids. It was a COVID side effect. I had it removed a month later. It was nice to sleep on my back again, but I’d feel a gagging sensation after meals.
Unsurprisingly, my panic attacks feel like my throat closing. My throat has never closed, and I have no allergies, much less severe allergies that would lead to anaphylactic shock. The logic doesn’t stop the panic, but the logic is the key to treating it.
Here’s an abbreviated CBT entry:
Dysfunctional Thought
My throat will close and kill me.
Challenges
I have no allergies.
My breathing is normal.
Nothing has ever made my throat close.
Truth
My throat is just sensitive after meals.
Throat sensitivity is normal after a uvulectomy.
I’m safe in my own body.
The real entries are longer and go deeper into each dysfunctional thought that precedes panic attacks. However, this short example shows the two main skills that therapists teach their patients to do these entries correctly.
The first skill is targeting thoughts, not feelings. You may have a thought that makes you feel scared or angry or some other emotion. That feeling isn’t driving the panic, though. The thought that leads to those feelings leads to the panic attacks, so expect to spend a lot of time exploring those thoughts and fears in therapy.
The second skill is harder. Challenging the panicky thought requires an understanding of where your own thoughts are going wrong. That means when your therapist tells you that you’re being unreasonable, you have to be open to changing your mind about fears you have or resentment you hold.
You can still challenge your therapist if you believe they’ve misinterpreted something, and this isn’t an excuse for them to be endlessly antagonistic. However, panic attacks stem from a misbelief about the danger your body is in, and the attacks won’t end without confronting dysfunctional thoughts.
Great Writing is the Key to Great Therapy
CBT demands writing and thinking skills that stretch the abilities of any writer. It takes a level of self-awareness that helps turn thinking into insightful paragraphs.
I didn’t expect therapy to enhance my writing skills. But after months of paying attention to my thoughts, my journalism skills were improving too. I thought of better interview questions. My analyses were more incisive. I brought better story ideas to my editors. Paying attention to my most unreasonable thoughts culled unreason in my professional life as much as my personal one.
Successful CBT can also be used to target unreasonable self-doubt in writing. We’ve all pitched our writing to a million outlets that haven’t taken it, and we’ve wondered whether we should write at all. After I got laid off from my full-time journalism job, I had those doubts. But CBT isn’t just for personal problems. It can train away any dysfunctional thought, and give you a better grasp on reality.
Obviously, there’s a balance between confronting dysfunctional thoughts and standing by what you believe. That balance must be negotiated patient to therapist. It can be difficult for anyone unaccustomed to criticism. For this reason, many TikTok influencers will try therapy and fail. But writers are uniquely equipped to not only learn this skill but also apply it.
Confrontations, Escapes, and Other Interludes
At the beginning of my freelance career, I used to read voraciously. I spent my largely unemployed time at Pete’s Coffee with large books, searching for the ideas that would make my writing worth money. If that was all that I used the books for, then perhaps I could have monetized my reading habit.
More often, reading was avoidance. I was afraid of failure and didn’t know how to pitch articles. I lacked the journalism skills that I’ve used to find jobs as an experienced freelancer. Reading was a way to avoid writing words that were sure to be rejected.
After successful treatment, my reading habit is balanced with my writing job. I can produce work as much as I can consume it, and I still read a great deal. My Substack newsletter would be empty and my story pitches would be worse without my growing library.
Now reading is an escape from thinking. Fiction is a chance to inhabit new worlds and explore interesting people. Non-fiction is a chance to do the same, but with practical knowledge and interview opportunities that don’t always accompany fiction.
Today, I get to imagine new leads to chase and harder questions to answer. I have hope that there is a market for my ideas. I also know that another world of experts and sources is out there to add substance to the ideas I get to play with in my head.
It’s a joy for reading to be an escape again.
Author Bio
Christopher Gerlacher is a freelance writer who has covered the sports betting industry, broken down political history and applied ethics, and written religious criticism. He lives in the Colorado foothills with his wife and corgi.
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"Writers are anxious and depressed by nature. We’re highly sensitive and good at building worlds on paper."
Or we have grown incredibly thick skins and DGAF😆
Thank you for your words!