Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) has many benefits, not only for individuals but for teams and workplaces as a whole.
CBT in the workplace has many benefits and can enhance employee well-being by addressing stress, improving resilience, and fostering a positive mindset. It also promotes better problem-solving skills, effective communication, and helps manage work-related anxiety. Overall, CBT contributes to a healthier work environment and increased employee productivity.
Employees are people and people have habitual subconscious patterns in the way they think and react to situations they are facing on a daily basis. CBT in the workplace is imperative as it can contributes to a positive work culture, increased employee satisfaction, and improved overall mental health, leading to higher productivity and job performance.
Organizational Development Specialist, Coach and CBT Practitioner Mickey Roothman says:
By incorporating CBT principles, workplaces can create a more supportive and psychologically healthy environment, fostering the well-being and resilience of employees. Training sessions, workshops, and ongoing support can help reinforce these principles and contribute to a positive workplace culture and increased Psychological safety at work.
Implementing CBT in the workplace involves several steps:
1. Assessment: Conduct an initial assessment to identify areas where CBT can be beneficial, considering factors such as stress levels, communication challenges, and overall well-being.
2. Training Programs: Provide training programs, workshops and coaching on basic CBT principles for employees. This may include understanding cognitive distortions, recognizing negative thought patterns, and learning coping strategies.
3. Employee Support Services: Offer access to mental health support services, such as counseling or therapy, either through in-house resources or external partnerships.
4. Promote Awareness: Create awareness campaigns to reduce stigma around mental health. Encourage open conversations about well-being and emphasize the importance of seeking help when needed.
5. Leadership Involvement: Encourage leadership to lead by example in embracing CBT principles. This can include managers openly discussing stress management techniques or participating in training programs.
6. Provide Resources: Make resources available, such as self-help materials, apps, or online platforms that support CBT practices. Ensure employees know where to find and access these resources.
7. Integrate CBT into Policies: Consider integrating CBT principles into workplace policies, such as promoting a positive work environment, encouraging work-life balance, and addressing issues related to workplace stress.
8. Feedback Mechanisms: Establish feedback mechanisms to gauge the effectiveness of CBT initiatives. This can include surveys, focus groups, or individual feedback sessions to understand the impact on employee well-being.
9. Create a Supportive Culture: Foster a workplace culture that values mental health and well-being. This involves recognizing and appreciating employees’ efforts, providing constructive feedback, and creating a supportive environment for personal and professional development.
10. Regular Check-Ins: Schedule regular check-ins to discuss mental health and well-being, both individually and within teams. This helps identify ongoing challenges and allows for timely interventions.
Practical Application of CBT principles in the workplace involves integrating the following concepts:
1. Cognitive Restructuring:
Encourage Positive Thinking: Help employees identify and challenge negative thoughts, promoting a more positive and constructive mindset in the workplace.
2. Problem-Solving Skills:
Teach Solution-Focused Approaches: Equip employees with effective problem-solving techniques to address work-related challenges and enhance their ability to find solutions.
3. Behavioral Activation:
Set Realistic Goals: Assist employees in setting achievable goals, fostering a sense of accomplishment and motivation in their work tasks.
4. Stress Management:
Mindfulness Techniques: Introduce mindfulness and relaxation exercises to help employees manage stress and stay focused in high-pressure situations.
5. Communication Skills:
Address Cognitive Distortions in Communication: Train employees to recognize and modify distorted thought patterns that may affect their communication with colleagues, clients, or superiors.
6. Self-Monitoring:
Encourage Self-Reflection: Promote self-awareness and reflection, helping employees monitor their own thoughts, emotions, and behaviors to identify areas for improvement.
7. Graded Exposure:
Gradual Exposure to Challenges: Facilitate a gradual approach to facing workplace challenges, allowing employees to build confidence and resilience over time.
8. Time Management:
Break Down Tasks: Teach employees to break down larger tasks into smaller, more manageable components, promoting a sense of control and reducing feelings of being overwhelmed.
9. Social Skills:
Role-Playing Scenarios: Conduct role-playing exercises to enhance interpersonal skills, enabling employees to navigate social interactions more effectively.
10. Positive Reinforcement:
Recognition and Reward: Implement systems for recognizing and rewarding positive behaviors and achievements, reinforcing a culture of positivity and accomplishment.
Get Professional Help:
Great leaders know that they don’t need to know how to do everything, or spread their time too thin by trying to do things or figure it out themselves.
Don’t deprive your organization or your employees from this essential tool, by procrastinating on incorporating CBT in your organization or team due to a lack of time or knowledge. CBT is a very specialized field, so get specialized professional help from an Organizational Development Specialist or a CBT Practitioner who specializes in CBT in the workplace.
If there’s one thing that is essential for organizations to implement in the workplace in 2024, its CBT. Don’t wait. Start today.
Need professional help? Book a consultation with Organizational Development Specialist, Coach and CBT Practitioner Mickey Roothman click here now
This whole Covid-19 lockdown thing and so many people being in fear got me thinking…
So we’ve all been locked up inside our homes for quite some time now, partially because we were told to, but some choose to stay there by choice and out of fear.
We’ve been told that there is a life threatening danger outside the walls of our homes and we’ve had our eyes fixed on the media who continuously provides us with more and more evidence that supports our belief that locking ourselves within the confines of our homes is the way for us to take control over and avoid the perceived threat and danger that is outside of it.
Although the fact that we are locked down in our homes is very real to us at present, we’ve actually really locked ourselves up in our own hearts too.
We’ve all experienced being hurt, disappointed, rejected and mistreated by others or experiences. We’ve all seen some things in the world out there that were not so good to see or experience. We’ve all read and heard the stories of how “evil & dangerous” the world outside is. And that has caused many of us to lock our hearts away behind big walls to keep anything out that would cause us any discomfort or pain.
We’re told by society that the way to keep ourselves emotionally and mentally safe is to put walls around our hearts and lock ourselves in there to take control of never being hurt, rejected or disappointed. And life has given us more than enough evidence to support that. So we keep our hearts locked up in order to protect ourselves and feel like we are in control of keeping any danger out and at bay.
But just like remaining locked up in our homes out of fear cannot indefinitely be sustained and will eventually lead to us running out of much needed resources for survival, our hearts being locked up behind walls will eventually also be depleted of much needed resources for its survival, causing our hearts to grow hard, selfish and cold.
And once we’ve locked our hearts behind those walls, we never go beyond the walls because that feels “unsafe” so we keeps our dreams, hopes, desires and love locked up inside, slowly depriving it of what it desperately needs to thrive.
If you want to know how restrictive your walls around your heart really are, imagine yourself for a second walking straight in the direction of what you fear to allow in (or project out from it).
Does that feel uncomfortable? Notice for a moment what your chest area is doing. You can literally feel your heart closing up, shrinking and it doesn’t feel good at all right? That’s because you’ve taught your heart to close which goes against its natural state of being.
If life has taught you that when you love someone you’ll get hurt, chances are that if you try to move beyond the wall you built around your heart because of it, you’ll intuitively want to pull back to avoid smashing into it. And that’s what keeps you bound up and locked inside your heart’s perimeters. You become a prisoner to your fears.
And if you’re really honest with yourself, what you really desire is to break free and to let it out right? What you really want is to love and be loved without any fear or restriction. But you deprive yourself of it and lock all of that love and all of that desire up in there out of fear of what your mind fabricates and tells you will happen if you do.
So its one of “those” days where everything that could possibly go wrong; does, and your emotions are off the charts, in fact your emotional well being seems severely under attack and at risk.
You wake up only to see that its 06:30 AM and that’s the time you’re already supposed to be leaving for work. Your alarm clock didn’t go off for some inexplicable reason and no matter what you do, you’re going to be late!
You hustle to shove yourself into the outfit you luckily laid out for work already last night, but as you grab your coffee to get one sip in on the way out, you spill it all over your brand new, crisp white Chanel shirt.
So you rush to change only to find that your back-up preference is in the washing basket and your washing day is only tomorrow..
You eventually make it to the car with no further delays only to realize that you forgot to fill up your tank last night and the petrol light seems like its deliberately trying to be snarky flashing the words “EMPTY” in big red letters at you!
You finally make it to the office and it appears that all hell had broken loose in the mere 10 minutes that you were late.
To top it all off, the boss is in a bad mood and glaring at you (you think its probably because you’re late) and he piles yet another crisis that is on deadline onto you.
At this point the “drama queen” inside your head revs it up a gear, kick into overdrive and she’s like:
“He’s probably testing me to see if I will manage. He’s just setting me up to fail. He never liked me anyway. I bet he is just looking for a reason to fire me and my being late just added another bullet to his arsenal. Oh my gosh how will I find work again. The job market is so over-saturated as it is. I’m going to starve and end up living as a bum on the street. Why didn’t I just take my phone in last time it did that? Oh yes it was because I had to work late to finish that project. That my boss doesn’t remember. He doesn’t even see the value I bring to the team and all of the extra things I do. Why the heck do I do them anyway? They don’t appreciate me. No one does. Its because I’m not good enough. Just like my ex. Nothing is ever good enough. Maybe I should just resign before he fires me” – EASY THERE GIRL! STOP & BREATHE!
We’ve all had a day, at times a week and some are even convinced a life like this, right? Okay that may have been a little bit over dramatized but you get the gist. And it serves the point I’m getting to.
When you read that, how did it make you feel? A little anxious perhaps? Did your heart start racing or your stomach turn into a knot? Changes are that it absolutely did.
That wasn’t even happening for real and it wasn’t even happening to YOU, yet your body reacted to it physically anyway and here’s why.
Let me explain. So you already know that our thoughts cause our emotions. But what are emotions? Just like thoughts, emotions are vibrational energy. And Science and in Quantum circles it has already been proven that energy attracts the same energy to itself. So whatever vibrational energy you are sending out through your emotions is really what you’re attracting more of to yourself then.
Right about now you may also be having a little “AHA’ moment going on inside of you as to why it is that when one bad thing happens it can feel like it caused a snowball effect causing an avalanche of sh*t bombs rolling your way. But, this doesn’t have to happen. See if you re-calibrated your energy after the first shitty thing happened, you wouldn’t have attracted more drama into your experience.
Re-calibrate your what now? Well basically if you chose a better thinking thought in that moment like: “Well, stuff happens. I couldn’t control the alarm clock not going off. I’m never late and I’m a hard worker so I’m sure my boss will understand. Everything happens for a reason and I am thankful for whatever this experience was here to teach me or protect me from” , none of that other stuff would have happened.
You would have pivoted from a low negative vibrational energy (thoughts and feelings) to a high vibrational energy in an instant and that would have been the end of it. The rest of your day would have gone a lot smoother and you would have had a lot more joy and inner peace too.
So what we attract then really starts with our thoughts. But here’s the big whopper! We think around 80 000 thoughts a day and only 5% of those thoughts are thoughts we are consciously aware of. The other 95% are subconscious thought patterns based on our upbringing, past experiences and beliefs that are running on auto-pilot.
Hang ten now, don’t get discouraged just yet!
The title of this blog said that this was about showing you how to do it and I always deliver on my promises.
Okay, so if we we’re not even aware of our thoughts like 95% of the time and they’re running on auto pilot, how do we then know when we are thinking a low vibrational thought that will attract more low vibrational experiences to us?
QUE DRUM ROLE PLEASE ….. Through our EMOTIONS!
Like I said in the beginning, our emotions are really our GPS for what we are busy attracting to ourselves and creating in our lives. And lets face it. It’s a heck of a lot easier to be aware of how you feel than it is to try and manage 80 000 thoughts a day of which 95% are subconsciously on autopilot.
We usually know when we don’t feel well emotionally because our body reacts to it physically in manifestations like stomach knots, headaches, neck spasms, ground down teeth, chest pains and so much more. The important one to mention here is that it may manifest as debilitating and even serious physical illnesses.
Emotions are energy but they also cause chemicals to form in our body. This is really the body’s way of trying to protect us, our built in protection and self preservation mechanism. But these chemicals were meant to protect us for short term threats we experience in our environment and they were never meant to be present for extended periods of time. So when we are not aware of low vibrational thoughts causing low vibrational feelings and manifesting as toxins in our body that aren’t dealt with over an extended period of time, our body will eventually warn us that something needs to get “processed” and worked on that is causing it to malfunction in the form of illness.
if we can learn to become aware of our emotions and to process them, we can nip it in the bud straight away and not wait for more bad experiences to show up or for physical illness to set in to tell us that we are headed for disaster.
Now you may be thinking, “what about all the other times I didn’t do this because I didn’t know about it yet? “Fact is there may be some old trapped emotions in your body that you need to release.
Its time for you to do an Emotional Detox! Clean the slate and pivot!
You’ll experience tremendous emotional freedom and as a bonus your energy levels and health will increase as well. Overall you’ll just be feeling GREAT and attracting more of the experiences you DO want into your life as a result.
Like everything in life it takes some commitment and action on your part, but I promise you it is easy to do and so damn worth it!
Wholeness is something we all desire. Yes, even that person you look up to or secretly envy whose life just looks amazing on social media.
The dictionary describes wholeness as:
1) the state of forming a complete and harmonious whole; unity
2) the state of being unbroken or undamaged.
But what is wholeness really?
After almost 10 000 hours of one on one coaching and mentoring with clients, I would say that what represents a state of wholeness to each of us is different.
For some wholeness is represented by inner peace, direction & purpose and for others it is represented by their external circumstances and achievements.
One of my favorite quotes by the Sufi Poet Rumi is: “Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.”
Whatever represents a state of wholeness to you personally there is only one path to achieving it ….. turning inward!
Wholeness is an internal state. It can only be achieved through our own actions, choices, thoughts & beliefs and never by external factors outside of our control.
Further below n this blog I share the 7 Principles to achieving tangible, lasting wholeness that I learned from the poet and teacher Rumi. I modified them slightly based on my own experiences and research and have integrated these principles with great results and success into my own life.
The results I’ve seen from implementing these 7 principles on a daily basis in my own life as well as the lives of my coaching clients has been consistent and nothing short of miraculous!
