What Is Cognitive Restructuring & Social Skills Training?

Cognitive restructuring and social skills training are both treatments used in the course of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). The use of CBT originated with Albert Ellis in the 1950s. Ellis believed that mood and behavior are not based on external events themselves, but on how those events are perceived by the person responding. Today, cognitive restructuring and social skills training, along with other aspects of CBT, are used to help people who have a hard time interacting appropriately with others --- at-risk youth and adolescents, recovering alcoholics and drug addicts, people with head injuries, and people with other mental health issues.

Principles of Cognitive Restructuring

• Albert Ellis pioneered the "ABC Model" of behavior. The ABC model holds that people respond to an external "activating" event with their own "beliefs". It is the beliefs, not the event that will determine the "consequence" or the resulting mood or behavior.

Cognitive Distortions

• Ellis hypothesized that many people's beliefs were distorted or irrational. Cognitive distortions he or his disciples identified include all-or-nothing thinking, over-generalization, discounting the positive, minimizing or maximizing the event, and making unwarranted judgments.

Therapist as Debater

• In the 1960's, Aaron Beck used many of Ellis's ideas and thoughts to provide "cognitive therapy" to depressed clients. Beck believed that it was the therapist's place to point out cognitive distortions and errors in thinking and to argue/debate assertively with the client to get the point across. This was a far cry from the far more passive psychoanalysis which had been in vogue since Sigmund Freud.

Social Skills Training

• Another tenet of CBT is that if a client lacks a skill, such as the ability to interact properly with others, the effective therapist teaches it to her. Social skills instruction can be done in an individual setting, but it is used more frequently in groups. These groups often resemble a class listening to the instructor, more than a therapy group where everyone shares feelings.

Homework

• Another trait that made cognitive therapy unique in its day were the homework assignments that therapists gave to their clients. For instance, after educating a recovering alcoholic about how to deal with people while sober, the therapist might send the man home with instructions to initiate five social interactions with people. A client working on cognitive restructuring might be asked to keep a journal to record instances of irrational or distorted thinking.