CBT Is Just the Application of Common Sense to Clients' Problems

This chapter examines Cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) Is Just the Application of Common Sense to Clients' Problems. This means that CBT simply encourages clients to think realistically about their problems instead of blowing them up out of all proportion; once common-sense thinking prevails, then emotional relief achieved. Beck's book, Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders, has a chapter called 'Common Sense and beyond' where he says that each person 'by virtue of his personal experience, emulation of others, and formal education learns how to use the tools of common sense: forming and testing hunches, making discriminations, and reasoning'. The therapist can urge her clients to draw on their common sense in tackling their emotional problems. However, common sense has its limits and fails 'to provide plausible and useful explanations for the puzzling emotional disorders'. Salkovskis points to the safety behaviours in maintaining anxiety and panic.