Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
What is CBT?
The term Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) refers to a group of evidence based psychological therapies that focus on the interactions between thoughts, emotions and behaviours in response to life events and experiences. The general principle is that understanding these interactions, and making changes in one or more of these areas (thoughts, emotions, behaviours) will have an effect on the others. This can have the effect of moving us out of cycles we can become ‘stuck’ in which prevent us from moving forwards and can lead to highly distressed states.
The focus of so-called ‘standard’ CBT tends to be around identifying and reflecting on unhelpful thinking patterns that trigger powerful emotions and self-defeating behaviours. Therapy often involves keeping records of thought patterns, weighing up the evidence for these thoughts and identifying alternative perspectives – as well as identifying behaviour change strategies which can have a significant impact on how we perceive events.
For example, people who experience significant social anxiety might have powerful beliefs about the negative consequences of ‘saying the wrong thing’ in public. This triggers significant anxiety, which is then managed by avoiding social situations. The person becomes more isolated and loses their support network and never receives more positive feedback about how people see them in social situations. In therapy, we might identify alternative ways of thinking about this using thought records, or carrying out surveys about how other people might think about these situations.
We are also likely to devise ‘behavioural experiments’ to test out beliefs about people’s responses if we said the ‘wrong’ thing, and take a graded approach to re-entering the social world.
CBT has been proven to be effective with people experiencing a number of mental health conditions, including mild-moderate anxiety and depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, OCD, psychosis and sleep disorders. In addition, a CBT approach is shown to be effective with people experiencing a whole range of life experiences such as grief and chronic health conditions.
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