Depression is caused by chemical disbalance in the brain, how come cognitive behavioral therapy can work for depression? How does this work? Does this mean our thoughts affect our chemicals in our brain?
In: Biology
OK let me try to do a true eli5 explanation
– depression might or might not be caused by a chemical imbalance (no one is actually sure) but we shouldn’t let that distract us because, there will surely be some physical explanation of it.
– cognitive behavioural therapy is a therapy which aims to change your beliefs, and it is effective against depression
– the reason this works is, exactly as you say, because our thoughts and actions affect the chemicals in our brains
– some people would say our thoughts and our brain’s biology are really the same thing, at different levels of zoom. From space, the earth looks one way, but from your front porch the ground looks completely different. If you zoom in again with a microscope to look at the ground in more detail, you’ll see more again. Some people think the mind is like that too. Beliefs are a very zoomed out way of looking at minds, and when we think in terms of beliefs, we can easily look at the whole person. When we talk in terms of cells, chemicals and synapses, we’ve zoomed in, and although the words we use to describe things are now completely different, we’re describing the same piece of ground as when we were talking about beliefs.
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