What Is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?

What Is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a type of psychotherapy that works to alter your thinking and feelings. It identifies negative perceptions and distortions that may lead to emotional distress as well as mental health concerns like depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder or substance misuse.

It helps you comprehend how your thoughts, emotions and behaviors shape every area of life – including relationships. Furthermore, it offers guidance on how to alter these aspects of yourself through awareness.

The first step in CBT is to identify whether certain thought patterns and behavioral habits make it harder for you to get through each day. During therapy sessions, you and your therapist work on altering these habits and improving how they impact your quality of life.

In some cases, you and your therapist may utilize visualization tools to help you recognize thinking errors. For instance, if you suffer from panic attacks, they could show you a visual representation of what occurs during an attack.

By doing this, you’ll gain a fresh outlook on what causes a panic attack and be better equipped to cope with it more effectively.

Your therapist will work to alter the way you think about certain situations, such as when you feel scared or someone does something to hurt you – these are known as automatic negative thoughts (ANTs).

Altering your antidepressants may take some time, but your therapist can offer support and guide you through the process. While it can be a challenging task, the end result will be worth all the effort in the end.