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I Didn't Deserve To Be Happy — Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT)

In this video, part 2 of 4, Veteran Christopher Tyler shares a snapshot of his experience with Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), a type of PTSD treatment.

Transcript

- A stuck point to
me is thoughts that

prevent you from being yourself.

Almost like a dark
cloud that you keep

over you or something,
and you can't

seem to push your
way through it.

(solemn music)

A lot of my stuck
points that I had from

the war carried over
into my civilian life

into my relationships with
my family, my friends.

I had a list of
stuck points that I

had no idea that I
even had, you know,

30, 40 or who knows.

But one of my biggest ones was I

didn't deserve to be happy,

I didn't deserve to be loved.

You know, I made it home,

maybe I shouldn't be here.

People that didn't
get to make it home

probably deserve to be
here more than I do,

and why them, why not me?

(solemn music)

And so I did an ABC
worksheet for my stuck point,

which is my belief was I don't
deserve love and happiness.

You take that stuck
point, and you analyze

all the reasons why you feel
you didn't deserve to be happy.

You're like, "Well, why don't
you deserve to be happy?"

And I wrote down I've
done terrible things,

I've let people down,

and I have failed
in a lot of ways.

My therapist asked
if my belief was

habit-based or fact-based,

and are you thinking
in all or none terms?

Which made me re-think
everything again.

Someone did marry me once,

I've been loved
before (chuckles).

It makes you re-think everything
in your thought process,

and you kind of take
your blinders down

for a second and examine
the whole situation.

You have to challenge
yourself in order to change,

look at the whole 360
instead of just the

narrow-minded point of
view with blinders on.

Then you come out
feeling so much

better than you
ever knew you could.

Treatment definitely
helps a lot with that.

(electric guitar)

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