What Is Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy?
CBT is a type of mental health counseling that holds that emotional and behavioral problems may arise due to inaccurate thoughts or perceptions. The goal is to challenge these distorted thinking patterns and replace them with more realistic, healthy ones.
1. CBT is an evidence-based form of mental health treatment.
Many people find it helpful for various reasons, such as depression and anxiety disorders. This non-invasive, goal-oriented approach may be successful in treating certain mental illnesses.
2. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is a structured and time-based approach to mental health treatment that seeks to teach you new ways of thinking about your issues.
The initial step of this strategy is to identify what’s causing you to experience difficulties. While this may be challenging, your therapist can assist in making this determination. After that, you and your therapist can discuss strategies for altering your behaviour accordingly.
3. Your therapist will employ a variety of techniques during sessions to teach you new skills.
These may include guided discovery or questioning, behavioral experiments, role-playing, and journaling. Moreover, they’ll assist in teaching you effective ways of communicating with others.
4. The therapist can give you new skills to manage stressful situations and emotions.
CBT helps you recognize and alter unhealthy thought patterns, behaviors, and emotions. It teaches coping strategies that can be used in the future to respond more positively to challenging situations and enhance overall wellbeing.
5. Your therapist will assist you in setting goals and working towards them.
Setting objectives is an integral part of cognitive-behavioral therapy, as it makes sessions more efficient and productive. Together, you and your therapist will devise SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-based) objectives. Together, you’ll devise new methods to reach these objectives while staying motivated along the way.
You will be asked to keep a journal of thoughts, feelings and behaviors so they can monitor progress over time. Doing this helps them assess whether there has been any progress made and how long it is taking you to reach goals.
7. The therapist can assist you in comprehending how your thoughts shape and direct your decisions and beliefs.
A therapist can also help you recognize the connection between your thoughts and behaviors, so that you can gain insight into how those actions impact you. For instance, if you believe you will fail an exam, then not studying or trying to do well on it might lead you to believe that failure is inevitable, leading to feelings of anxiety, embarrassment or depression.
8. Your therapist can also assist you in practicing these new skills outside of therapy sessions.
