What is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy?

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is a way of helping people to cope with stress and emotional problems. It helps us to look at the connections between how we think, how we feel and how we behave. It particularly concentrates on ideas that are unrealistic. These often undermine our self-confidence and make us feel depressed or anxious. Looking at these unrealistic ideas can help us work out different ways of thinking and behaving that in turn will help us cope better. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy looks at the “here and now” issues rather than focusing on things from the past. It helps people to learn new methods of coping and problem-solving, which they can use for the rest of their lives.

What makes Cognitive Behavioural Therapy stand out from other forms of therapy or types of counselling is the emphasis on evidence based practice and you can read more about this here - Evidence for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. To the patient this means that they are receiving up-to-date professional therapy based on the very latest research.

Over the years the evidence for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy has grown that has made it clear what problems it can help with.

The practice of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is a craft. It is constantly integrating the art of therapy with the science of best practice.

CBT has two main driving assumptions:

• Firstly it is the assumption about thinking (cognitions).

• It is not what happens to you but what you make of that experience that matters.

For example here is an exercise you might like to try to explain this:

• The secondary assumptions are about how we behave or act in a situation.

• What you do or how you act effects what you think and how you feel.

Here is another exercise you might like to try to explain this.

Understand How Your Problem is Maintained

Although it is not a dominant part of therapy it’s sometimes useful to look at how or why the problem developed. In fact it is usually very important to understand how problems have developed to help come up with solutions – but sometimes insight is not enough. For example, if you broke your leg and went to hospital you might expect the doctor to fix your leg and stop the pain rather than ask you questions about how you broke it. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is similar, the focus is on the solution of the problem, but a bit later into the therapy it might be important to find out how you broke your leg to prevent you from doing it again.

In Cognitive Behavioural Therapy we try to understand how the problems are maintained. This could be because of:
• Unhelpful Behaviours (e.g. avoidance or substance use);
• Thinking distortions (like catastrophising or always looking at the worst part of an experience).
• Negative emotional states (like hopelessness, shame or guilt).
• Physical symptoms (such as lack of energy or palpitations).
• Life events (such as consequences from assaults or redundancy).

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy offers specific interventions or techniques to help overcome the difficulties in all the above areas.