It’s been covered by everyone from Walk Off The Earth to babies. It’s spent 21 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100. It’s arguably one of the most positive tracks of 2014. It’s now 2015, and it’s showing no signs of slowing down. However, we couldn’t help but wonder, is Taylor Swift really dispensing the best advice when she tells us to “Shake It Off”?
To answer that query, we hit up someone who knows just a little bit more about mental well-being than we do: Simon A. Rego, director of the cognitive behavioral therapy (or CBT) training program at the Montefiore Medical Center. CBT — for those not in the know — is a kind of talk therapy that targets the way you think about things or the way you do things to uncover the root of your emotional distress. Translation: If you can figure out how to bust out of harmful patterns, it’s possible to feel a whole hell of a lot better.
According to Rego, Swift’s “Shake It Off” kind of fits the CBT model to a T (pun intended). To explain what he means by that, Rego first targeted the lyric, “I keep cruisin’/Can’t stop, won’t stop moving,” which he said is a “behavioral principle.”
“She’s saying basically, regardless, of the chitter-chatter or buzz around her, ‘I’m going to focus on moving on to what’s important in my life or things that I value or goals that I have,’” Rego told MTV News. “That’s a behavioral principle that helps point our compass to what’s important despite what life’s throwing us at the moment.”
“So that’s good advice — doing what’s important to you regardless of what the world around you is giving you helps you get through those inevitable potholes on the road to your goals,” he added.
[For more of this story, written by Brenna Ehrlich, go to http://www.mtv.com/news/205439...dvice-mental-health/]
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