CBT Health Journal – Coping with Long-Term Illness

 

This journal entry shows how Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) can be used to manage health-related worries. Each section highlights a worry, identifies cognitive distortions, and provides a balanced response.

I am completely trapped in worsening agony and it’s only going to get worse, and there is nothing I can do about it.

Discounting the Positive. Fortune Telling Error.

There are options. It could completely be cured, like when your friend Michael’s grandmother had an operation and it healed her.

I simply don’t have the money for what I will need.

Fortune Telling Error.

You don’t know what you need. You could easily have enough to get one hip done as a test – and this is from the reserved investment you set aside for health emergencies. Perhaps they would do a bilateral replacement as a deal? Much of the pain could be circulation and actually cheaper to deal with than you are expecting?

But the muscle is wasting, only weakness can follow.

Minimisation. Discounting the Positive.

This whole condition has been a very slow process. You noticed this a decade ago. The actual weakness was sudden and hasn’t progressed, and previous doctors said the muscle issues were actually linked to slimming. You get stronger with physio. AI could come up with a solution.

How can I get any help, like an operation, when there’s no one to look after me?

Fortune Telling Error.

You always found help when you needed it before, like the digestive issues that cleared up.

The place where all my social life and friends has gone. Now I have no support network.

Mental Filter. Discounting the Positive.

It’s only two bucks more to ride somewhere to a different place. You have other things than friends, like meditation and trading. Happiness doesn’t revolve around friendships.

My health only gets steadily worse and it can’t change.

Fortune Telling Error.

It could be an unknown genetic issue that will stop or reverse. You have no definite diagnosis; you could be wrong and it can be cured.

What about when I can’t walk at all?

Magnification.

You go up and down stairs now, and can walk quite far before pain. It’s very slow. In a year you could be rich from trading? You can still do all of the physio you were given.

I’ll never have a romantic walk with Phoung again.

Magnification.

She would have been happy riding.

Buddy, you have been all around the world and fulfilled your dreams.