What is CBT?
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a highly researched treatment that helps various mental health conditions by challenging negative ways of thinking. This multi-pronged treatment also includes education, coping techniques, and graduated exposure therapy to create and maintain long-term change.
The American Psychological Association explains that CBT interventions are founded on three core principles:
- Faulty or unhelpful thinking can lead to psychological problems.
- Patterns of unhelpful behavior can be relearned to help rather than hurt.
- Practicing the right coping mechanisms can help relieve symptoms and create long-lasting, healthy habits.
We all have negative thoughts from time to time, but some of us seem to get stuck in this limiting cycle. It’s hard to pull ourselves out, especially on our own. CBT can help you escape this cycle by changing how you react to challenges and cope with them.
What conditions can CBT help?
CBT is proven to be effective in treating people with many common mental conditions, including:
- Depression
- Trauma and PTSD
- Anxiety
- Phobias
- Anger Management Issues
- Eating Disorders
- Low Self Esteem
- Panic Disorders
- Addiction
- Chronic pain
CBT can also be helpful to anyone going through tough times and everyday challenges, such as relationship issues, divorce, job stress, grief, and life transitions.
How does CBT work?
In Cognitive Behavior Therapy sessions, a therapist helps you become aware of inaccurate or negative thinking and reshape those thought processes. You may feel improvement within the first few sessions, though treatment may require 5-20 sessions. depending on the person and condition. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to healing, and some negative behaviors are rooted deeply and require more time to resolve.
Treatments also vary depending on the person, but CBT generally follows these steps:
Step 1: Identify the problem. You and your mental health professional will explore troubling issues in your life, whether that means problems at work or detrimental thoughts that just won’t go away. This first step will help you choose a mental condition- such as depression- to focus on during the treatment.
Step 2: Explore your thoughts. Once you’ve identified the problem, your therapist will ask you a series of questions to help you explore your thoughts about it. Here’s a huge benefit of therapy: you get to be totally unfiltered. Talking about your interpretation of a situation, your beliefs about yourself and others, or how you respond to challenges will help you in the next step.
Step 3: Identify cognitive distortions. Cognitive distortions are incorrect views of reality our brain tricks us into thinking are true. For example, your therapist might help you notice you’ve been operating under the belief that you can’t land a decent job because you’re not good at anything. This kind of negative thinking comes from incorrect, black-and-white views about yourself and what you “should” be like. You might be surprised at what cognitive distortions have been holding you back.
Step 4: Adjust your thoughts. Easier said than done, right? That’s why CBT is not a treatment just anyone should do without guidance. A trained therapist can find the right techniques to help you fix that distortion by adjusting how you view that difficult situation, troubling memory, or even how you view yourself.
How can CBT treat depression?
Depression can rob you of motivation, joy, companionship, and so many more facets of life that you deserve to experience in fullness. The good news is that depression is very treatable- and CBT is one of the most highly proven treatments for depression. Because CBT uses both cognitive and behavioral methods, this therapy is able to target both thoughts and actions while treating depression.
Cognitive methods help you learn to identify and challenge harmful thoughts. As you keep this up, cognitive distortions lose their hold on your vision and allow you to find relief in reality. For example, a common cognitive distortion people with depression might experience is “personalizing,” in which you jump to assume you’re to blame. As you begin to recognize when you take things personally or blame yourself for things out of your control, you gain control over your thoughts and can build healthier patterns of thinking.
CBT also employs behavioral methods that can help about-face detrimental actions that accompany depression like lack of motivation and low energy. One CBT skill called behavioral activation uses “antidepressant behaviors” to improve the emotional state. The idea is that by shifting focus to external actions instead of mood, engaging in positive actions (like previously enjoyed hobbies) even in small doses can make someone feel good enough to want to continue the positive behavior. Behavioral methods can also help in reverse to curtail unwanted behaviors.
Read: Battle Depression with the Hero’s Journey
Do I need CBT?
If you want to feel better about yourself, escape downward spiraling, and effectively cope with life’s inevitable troubles, then CBT could be right for you. Anyone can benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy because it’s not just a single-purpose treatment: it’s a mental shift that can last a lifetime. Other proven therapies like Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) or Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT) are also effective in treating depression, so it’s important to talk to a qualified therapist.
Our therapists at Austin Anxiety and Trauma Specialists are CBT-trained and offer online counseling to all residents of Texas. Contact us today and we’ll match you with a therapist who can help you reclaim control over your life. It can get better. We can help.
