Hello, and welcome to spirituality and mental health. I'm your host Don Mackintosh and with me today in the studio is Amanda anguish. She's a cognitive behavioral therapist here at beautiful minds medical. Welcome, Amanda. Thank you, john. I'm happy to be here.

We've worked together for a number of years. And today we're talking about spiritual cognitive behavioral therapy from a biblical perspective. But maybe what we should first do is define what cognitive behavioral therapy is. It does have a history. So I believe it was Aaron Beck, originally back in the 60s. And what did Beck's research indicate?

That psychoanalysis was not as effective as he thought. So he started doing what he started focusing on the thoughts of the depressed people and he found patients experience as he described as streams of negative thoughts that seemed to arise spontaneously. And what types of thoughts were these? They were negative thoughts about themselves negative thoughts about the world and the future? This is probably what you're dealing with every day in your counseling sessions pretty much. Yes.

So he helped them identify these automatic thoughts. And he found that by doing so patients were able to think more realistic or more truthfully about themselves. And this helped them change their underlying beliefs and actually brings change. Now the interesting thing is that they have two approaches, usually to depression. The first approach is usually medication. Not really that effective, it is effective 22 to 40%, but not as effective as we'd like.

How does CBT go do in terms of well CBT their outcomes are between 42 and 66%. If Effective. Hmm. So sometimes here we have a combination, but your specialty is actually looking at the CBT. A lot of studies done on this. I like that little, what's that sign that you have there in the in that group room?

It says, Don't believe everything you think I like that, because that's pretty much summarizing your job, isn't it? So, you know, as we've worked in another program, we've seen hope, you know, increase as a result of CBT therapy, as well as other things that we do here at the outpatient clinic as well exercise and nutrition, etc. But you're focusing on those thoughts and the thoughts of hopelessness, basically go away for most people, if they're following these principles. So let's talk a little bit about CBT. Explain what it is. I think they talk about the ABCs explain those to us.

Well, everybody has thoughts, but those thoughts often originate with some thing that happens we call those activating events and those activating events can be both internal or external activating events. We know the external ones, because those are the people. Not just people, but things that people do. So you can love somebody, like really care about somebody, but maybe they do something that gets under your skin or something like that might say something. But then we also have activating events that are circumstantial. So maybe I'm planning for something and it doesn't go the way that I want it to that would be a circumstantial activating event.

But then those are the external. We also have internal activating event. Sometimes we have these default thoughts and feelings that don't need to be triggered by something elsewhere, but they're just they pop up every so often, and they keep coming back and it might be a phrase about ourselves, it might be a feeling feeling of oppression or heaviness that comes over? So like, I'm like you always are, why do I always do this? Or then I've actually had these I wake up in the middle of the night and I say something I'm like, why did I say that? Is that?

Is that the kind of thing you're telling? Yeah. And nothing had to prompt it. It just came because it might be a default place that we go because we're so used to doing that, or we're so used to thinking it or feeling it that it comes up, almost without prompting. And you you start to uncover these because people are having maybe a negative time in their life and you're trying to figure it out. Absolutely.

Write them down. Yeah, we write down the activating events, or we call them triggers or stressors that we experience. And it doesn't have to be a big thing. This is what we don't realize. Often it could, it could just be the alarm going off in the morning, or the color of someone's dress. Yes, that could be that could be a trigger.

Maybe we don't like that color. Maybe we don't like to be interrupted in our minds. of the teacher that may be disciplined to you. Yes over dress Hmm. Okay, so activating events. So every time we have an activating event, what comes out at what that activates is a belief.

And the belief we don't realize, is a choice. We can choose what to believe. But most of the time, we don't recognize that we have a choice in it, we feel that's just who I am. That's just who I am. So the the belief could be, I can't do anything, right, something doesn't go right that you have that circumstantial activating event or trigger. And then the belief that comes out of that is see I can't do anything, right.

It's simple. It comes out very quickly and without any effort, but we don't realize that when we have that belief, thought or self talk automatically, to that belief is a consequence, and that's the C and the C is both a feeling consequences. A behavioral consequence. So What kinds of things do i do act out behave when I believe I can't do anything, right? So, saying to someone, how do you feel is not as effective as saying to someone, what are you thinking? That's absolutely true.

We feel all kinds of things. Some people deal better with feelings than people deal with thoughts and stuff. I can I can have a sad day. That can be an internal trigger that I'm experiencing. But inside I have, I'm thinking hopeful thoughts like this won't last all day. Just because I feel like it right now.

Doesn't mean it'll last the whole day. So then what kinds of consequences are Am I going to have because of that belief versus the belief that Well, today is going to be a horrible day because I woke up upset or I had this happen. There's a huge difference in the consequences based on what we believe about. thing now we're talking about, you know, cognitive behavioral therapy from a spiritual or biblical perspective. How do you bring that into the mix? I mean, you know, I've read some CBT books and things about emotions and many times they'll say, well tacitus said this or, or Plato said this.

In other words, some kind of authority source that maybe in history was, you know, they wrote books about them, Socrates or someone else. How do you bring the biblical aspect into it? And what effect does that have? Okay? Well, cognitive behavioral therapy isn't is not just an evidence based therapy, meaning there's a lot of evidence that it works, but it's also based on evidence too. So when we look at our beliefs, we don't want to believe something that doesn't have any evidence.

For instance, if you're a scientist, you're not going to come. When you have a hypothesis about something you're not going to disregard. The evidence in your scientific research and go well, because that was my hypothesis, I'm just going to believe that in write about it in the research, you're actually going to look at the evidence before you write that response to it. If you're a lawyer in front of a judge, you're not going to say, well judge, I hope you feel like my client is, you know, innocent, you're going to give evidences for that. So when, when biblical therapists do cognitive behavioral therapy, we're looking for evidence, but the most important evidence comes from God's word. Okay, so let me just put some science in here as well.

A large body of scientific work conducted by researchers worldwide, has revealed a relationship between religion and depression. And they had about 400 studies at the time this author wrote this book back in 2016. Of these studies, 60% reported that the more religious the individuals are, the less likely they are to be depressed. And if they do become depressed, they tend to recover more more quickly, and this is looking at a Judeo Christian thing. So we may want to look at the sources for that. And the highest quality studies actually had an inverse relationship that went up to 67%.

Sooner they got better. Only 6% of the studies reported greater depression among the more religious I mean, you can get guilty and different things can happen. Maybe it has to do with the irrational beliefs as well. Yeah. So you know, the founders of CBT modern founders, we would say, probably, when we get into this more than God founded and if it's good, right, yep, that's where we get the word good from God. Right.

So anyway, Albert Ellis maintained that religious belief was essentially synonymous with emotional disturbance. So this is like one of the founders of CBT and that there was a linear relationship between the degree of Orthodoxy and disturbance in other words, the more seriously it took religion, the worse off you are, but then he strangely changed when he actually started looking at the evidence or whatnot. Ellis who wants to spare his religious beliefs in 1980 now gives high regard for the therapeutic usefulness of the Bible. He says, I think I can safely say that the Judeo Christian Bible is a self help book that has probably enable more people to make more extensive and intensive personality and behavior changes, then all professional therapists combined except you, because you're not combined in that because you're actually using the Bible. So, but tell tell us how that works. You know, how do you bring the Bible and you get the patient's permission?

What do you do? What's the process? I know you do this all the time, and I know you have great stats because I've looked at that and you're doing a great job here. Probably one of the best counselors I've ever met. And I know you know those good reports, but tell me how it is that you bring the Bible or spiritual sources such as the Bible into your therapy. Well, a lot of a lot of my clients actually have a Judeo Christian background.

Some of them don't know it, some of them do know it. But we don't realize that when we have a belief system, and we're going against that belief system that can actually cause depression and anxiety and other maladaptive behaviors. But when we become when we come more in line with what we believe, and we realize, hey, the truth is actually, the Bible speaks the truth. I believe that I just didn't realize that the Bible is actually supporting the truth. I just needed to get in line with what the Bible said, which is part of what I grew up with. I didn't realize coming this far from it would actually make me feel this way.

Interesting. So, you know, I've had the same experience where I do a worldview clarification and it ends up that the people actually have a Judeo Christian worldview they didn't even know about, but Think it's respectful to go through that conversation to help them discover that. Yeah. And then you build on that. Mm hmm. That's great.

So any other things that you would say about? Give me an example about how you bring the Bible or a Bible concept, maybe into a client interaction? Well, for example, the the concept of forgiveness, that would be we have a lot of irrational or maladaptive beliefs about forgiveness. Some people they come from a Judeo Christian brat background, but they think that forgiving somebody means you have to go, you know, Free Willy into that person's life and not have any sorts of expectations on the relationship, because maybe they haven't read the Bible to see what it actually says about what forgiveness is. And so their beliefs about forgiveness aren't actually in line with what They suggest that they will. So you help them you show them love.

Have you considered this evidence and that evidence first that first what the Bible says about it, and then it's okay to, you know, ask for forgiveness if you're the wrong party, or the party in the wrong or it's okay to offer the opportunity for that other person to ask for forgiveness. So you want to give them the data from the scripture? Do you ever give them an assignment to read? I do sometimes, you know, people who are highly motivated, I'll, I'll even ask them to, you know, if if you were to have to give a sermon on forgiveness, I'd like you just to put together now most people are terrified of getting in front of people and in doing a sermon, I know you're not. But a lot of people are, but just thinking along the lines of what would I share with other people about forgiveness sometimes detaches me enough emotionally to the situation that I can start To see more clearly what the Bible says about it, you find the Bible is useful for case studies.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I the story of Joseph is a great case study and forgiveness. Sounds Excellent. Well, we're going to take a break, and we're going to come back and we're going to look at a actual story in the Bible that I think manifests cognitive behavioral therapy done by perhaps the most famous cognitive behavioral therapist, Jesus Himself. So we're going to dialogue through that story when we come back and you're ready for that.

I will be hope that you join us when we come back.