Challenge Your Thoughts, Improve How You Feel: CBT, Mental Illness, and Art Therapy

If you’re self-compassionate, you’ll tend to have higher self-esteem than if you’re endlessly self-critical. And like high self-esteem – self-compassion is associated with significantly less anxiety and depression, as well as more happiness, optimism, and positive emotions. ~David D. Burns

This is the month is all about therapies used to help improve mental health. Of course, I only cover some of the therapies out there because there are so many. Although I am not a counsellor, I worked as client support worker and administrative assistant in a counselling office for ten years. I have enormous respect for counsellors (including coaches and other mental health professionals). I also believe counselling can be an incredible tool for mental health recovery.

I will look at four therapies: Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Somatic Therapy, Dialectical Behavioural Therapy, (DBT) and Art Therapy. There is so much information on these therapies so I will stick to explaining what the therapy it, explore some of the research specific to mental illness, talk about my own personal experiences with the therapy, and talk about how art can be used in combination with the therapy.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (I’ll use the abbreviation CBT going forward) was founded by a man called Aaron Beck in the 1960s and 1970s. CBT introduces a triangle relationship between thoughts, feelings, and behavior. The premise is if we want to change how we feel and how we behave, the easiest way is to change how we think. Often our thoughts may be inaccurate or distorted and be negatively effecting how we feel and act.

An article, “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Anxiety,” clinical psychologist Steven Lucero states that CBT helps individuals identify the links in the chain of thoughts that lead to increased anxiety and depression (Kerslake, 2024). Furthermore, he says that people with anxiety tend to over generalize and assume the worst (Kerslake, 2024).

There was also a 2022 study that found CBT used to with people in psychosis was associated with positive changes in mood, and sleep quality (Agbor et al.). As well, CBT lowered number of hospitalizations and increased the number of voluntary hospitalizations (Agbor et al., 2022).