Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
What is Cognitive Behaviour Therapy?
Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) is a structured and goal-oriented approach that helps clients cope with many different mental health challenges by evaluating the connection between thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. This type of psychotherapy looks at ways that our internal thinking patterns impact our beliefs about ourselves, others, and the world as well as the ways that these thoughts influence our behaviours.
CBT is a versatile and widely applicable modality. Backed by a well – researched body of evidence, it has been shown to be effective for a range of conditions, including depression, anxiety, PTSD, substance abuse, compulsive sexual behaviours and more. People dealing with life transitions, stress, chronic pain, sleep challenges, anger management and relationship problems can also benefit from CBT.
Apart from specific mental health challenges, CBT can be very useful for anyone looking to improve their emotional awareness, emotional regulation, and overall mental resilience offering tools to manage thoughts and emotions more effectively.
How CBT Works
CBT helps individuals recognize and change distorted thinking patterns and maladaptive behaviours that contribute to emotional distress. It is also a useful approach for identifying and understanding triggers that lead to emotions or habits. The focus tends to be on present issues rather than delving too extensively into past experiences.
The core premise of CBT is that our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are interconnected and that changing negative thought patterns can lead to changes in feelings and behaviours. The process of therapy is to Identify harmful thoughts, cognitive distortions, and associated emotions when they arise, challenge the accuracy and usefulness of these mindsets, replace these feelings and thoughts with helpful, positive thought processes and practice these new skills outside of the therapy context.
CBT’ s pragmatic approach can be helpful for lowering levels of anxiety, depression and stress, and increasing self- efficacy and self -confidence.
Our approach at The Therapy Collective
In CBT sessions at The Therapy Collective, you can expect a collaborative process that utilises evidence-based techniques to identify and challenge thought patterns and behaviours that lead to emotional distress and outcomes that clients wish to change. Your therapist will work together with you to first help identify and understand thought and behaviour patterns that you may not be fully aware of. These thought patterns are generally untrue/and or unhelpful (cognitive distortions) and impact negatively on emotions, behaviour and overall well-being.
Through cognitive reframing, your therapist will help you replace these thoughts with more balanced and accurate ones. You will learn how to question and evaluate the evidence for their negative thoughts and develop more rational responses (cognitive restructuring). Often take -home assignments are agreed upon that may involve observing thoughts, emotions and behaviours, journaling or practicing new skills learnt in real life situations not just in sessions.
At The Therapy Collective, our aim is to empower clients with insight, as well as specific skills and techniques, to take control of their thoughts and actions, manage their symptoms and improve their quality of life.