Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Unhelpful thoughts and beliefs are often culprits for people who suffer with chronic distress, worry, hopelessness, and strife. Negative and reinforcing thought and belief patterns underlie many mental health disorders. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) teaches clients how to change thoughts that cause unwanted behaviors and feelings as well as overcome barriers to goals. CBT is often combined with other forms of treatment.

During CBT sessions, your therapist will first learn about the situations or conditions in your life that are troubling you most. Together, you will decide which ones you want to focus on first. Then your therapist will want you to describe and explore the thoughts, emotions and beliefs that are associated with the identified issue. You’ll look at how you talk to yourself about it, what meaning you make out of it, and what you believe about yourself, others, or events because of it. The next step in CBT is to recognize negative or inaccurate patterns of thinking and behavior that may be contributing to your problem. Through learning to pay attention to your physical, emotional and behavioral responses in different situations, your counselor can help you reshape these thinking errors, or “cognitive distortions.” You begin to practice checking your perceptions to determine if they are based in reality or a result of a distorted view. This part of the therapy can be difficult because we usually are pretty convinced of our long-standing points of view. With practice, helpful thinking and behavior patterns will become a habit and won’t take as much effort. To learn more about CBT, please visit this site.