Week1. Setting Your Goals & Getting Started. 

Develop and write out a solid treatment plan. To initiate the process, ask yourself the following questions: 

• What brought you into therapy or how did I get to this situation; why now, what made you decide it’s time to take action?
• We are more than our struggles; we also have strengths that have kept us going and get us through new challenges – what are your strengths?
• Are your basic human needs being met in terms of autonomy, relatedness, and competence? This includes physical activity, food, sleep, and relaxation.

Review your responses. How do your responses make you feel – happy, stressed, anxious or grateful? 

Ask yourself, “How do I want my life to be different?”

Remember, these goals are your own goals that you want for yourself, not goals that you think someone else wants for you. 

A good place to start is to identify how you spend your time.

Week 2. Getting Back to Life.

What activities bring value to your life? For example, going to the park with your family. 

Do activities that are rewarding to you, it should give you something that you value. 

Anxiety and depression often cause people to be less active. How does one get out of this state, should you wait until you’re “better” before you participate in an activity, or should you participate in the activity with the hope that it could add value to your life and make you feel good?

Week 3. Identifying Your Thought Patterns. 

CBT addresses both thought and behavior patterns. Changing our behavior can change our thinking. 

A good place to start with identifying thought patterns is to ask yourself, “What went wrong with the activity? What could have gone better with the activity? 

Every thought stems from an event and causes an emotion. 

Week 4. Breaking Negative Thought Patterns. 

Thinking errors have been described in various ways

• Irrational – Doesn’t make sense
• Dysfunctional – Doesn’t serve us well
• Biased – One Sided
• Distorted – Doesn’t accurately reflect reality

Try to identify evidence that supports your thought(s) and evidence that contradicts your thought(s). Based on the evidence, how accurate is the thought you had? Ask yourself, how can I modify the thought to make it fit a better reality?