Cognitive Behavioral Therapy versus Prayer, Results versus Process, Scientific Studies

In cognitive behavioral therapy, the trainers of this method will oftentimes remind their apprentices to focus on the process of the method rather than the results. The reason is that the results of cognitive behavioral therapy are almost never immediate and are almost always delayed.

A practitioner of cognitive behavioral therapy can sometimes be working with a patient for months without seeing any significant improvement in the patient's depression, anxiety, anger, or whatever else the patient is being treated for. This can be frustrating for the practitioner, sometimes causing the practitioner to quit and declare that cognitive behavioral therapy doesn't work.

In fact, cognitive behavioral therapy has been proven to be one of the most effective forms of psychotherapy. There have been many scientific studies done to prove this.

Prayer is very similar to cognitive behavioral therapy, in that it induces a change in thinking, inducing a change in emotion, inducing a change in behavior, finally inducing a change in environment. Since cognitive behavioral therapy has been validated by scientific studies, prayer likewise is validated, because prayer and cognitive behavioral therapy are almost one and the same.

There have been studies that seemingly proved that prayer doesn't work. But these studies have been seriously flawed, in that they wrongly assumed that prayer is strictly a mental activity, and didn't allow for the behavioral expression of prayer in the studies.

Prayer without its corresponding behavioral expression isn't prayer at all, just as cognitive behavioral therapy without its corresponding behavioral expression isn't therapy at all.

Just like cognitive behavioral therapy, prayer tends to have delayed rather than immediate results. This has caused many practitioners of prayer to give up in frustration and declare it doesn't work.

Like the practitioners of cognitive behavioral therapy, the practitioners of prayer must focus on the process rather than the results. In focusing on the process, the results will eventually come.

This is a scientific fact!