Dr. Barlow, the well known psychologist who developed many evidenced based therapies for anxiety, argues in his theory that experiences, often very early ones, create problems with the neuro-physiologic mechanisms that help us all to manage our emotions. The outcomes are problems with managing, or regulating, our feelings When the feelings become overwhelmingly beyond our control, the theory argues that it causes us to avoid or escape situations that are coincidental to the feelings. Usually, something in the situation is a vague reminder of our earlier experiences when we learned to react so intensely. The theory also argues that the impact of the learning experiences on our thinking is excessive estimations of the risk of harm that we assign to situations, people, future events, and ourselves. These mistaken ideas are often called cognitive distortions in CBT.
At CCBT, we believe that Dr. Barlow's theory is evidence-based and we use it to inform the approach we take to treatment. The theory may appear simple, but its application is far from simple; however, it is probably on-target to a great degree.
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