Back Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
What is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a type of psychotherapeutic treatment that helps people learn how to identify and change destructive or disturbing thought patterns that have a negative influence on behavior and emotions.
Cognitive behavioral therapy focuses on changing the automatic negative thoughts that can contribute to and worsen emotional difficulties, depression, and anxiety. These spontaneous negative thoughts have a detrimental influence on mood.
Through CBT, these thoughts are identified, challenged, and replaced with more objective, realistic thoughts.
Types of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
CBT encompasses a range of techniques and approaches that address thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. These can range from structured psychotherapies to self-help materials.
There are a number of specific types of therapeutic approaches that involve CBT, including:
Techniques
CBT is about more than identifying thought patterns; it is focused on using a wide range of strategies to help people overcome these thoughts. Techniques may include journaling, role-playing, relaxation techniques, and mental distractions.
Identifying Negative Thoughts
It is important to learn how thoughts, feelings, and situations can contribute to maladaptive behaviors. The process can be difficult, especially for people who struggle with introspection, but it can ultimately lead to self-discovery and insights that are an essential part of the treatment process.
Practicing New Skills
It is important to start practicing new skills that can then be put in to use in real-world situations. For example, a person with a substance use disorder might start practicing new coping skills and rehearsing ways to avoid or deal with social situations that could potentially trigger a relapse.
Goal-Setting
Goal setting can an important step in recovery from mental illness and helping you make changes to improve your health and life. During CBT, a therapist can help with goal-setting skills by teaching you how to identify your goal, distinguish between short- and long-term goals, set SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-based) goals, and focus on the process as much as the end outcome.
Problem-Solving
Learning problem solving skills can help you identify and solve problems that arise from life stressors, both big and small, and reduce the negative impact of psychological and physical illness.
Problem solving in CBT often involves five steps:
Self-Monitoring
Also known as diary work, self-monitoring is an important part of CBT that involves tracking behaviors, symptoms, or experiences over time and sharing them with your therapist. Self-monitoring can help provide your therapist with the information needed to provide the best treatment. For example, for people coping with eating disorders, self-monitoring may involve keeping track of eating habits as well as any thoughts or feelings that went along with consuming that meal or snack.
What CBT Can Help With
Cognitive behavior therapy can be used as a short-term treatment to help individuals learn to focus on present thoughts and beliefs.
CBT is used to treat a wide range of conditions including:
Contact therapists & counselors now.
Source: Cherry K., What is cogntive behavioral therapy. Updated May 2021; Hofmann SG, Asnaani A, Vonk IJ, Sawyer AT, Fang A. The efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy: A review of meta-analyses. Cognit Ther Res. 2012; Rnic K, Dozois DJ, Martin RA. Cognitive distortions, humor styles, and depression. Eur J Psychol. 2016; Lazarus AA, Abramovitz A. A multimodal behavioral approach to performance anxiety. J Clin Psychol. 2004; Tsitsas GD, Paschali AA. A cognitive-behavior therapy applied to a social anxiety disorder and a specific phobia, case study. Health Psychol Res. 2014; Lincoln TM, Riehle M, Pillny M, et al. Using functional analysis as a framework to guide individualized treatment for negative symptoms. Front Psychol. 2017; Sburlati ES, Lyneham HJ, Schniering CA et al. Evidence-based CBT for anxiety and depression in children and adolescents, a competencies based approach. John Wiley & Sons; 2014; Lindgreen P, Lomborg K, Clausen L. Patient experiences esing a self-monitoring app in eating disorder treatment: Qualitative study. JMIR Mhealth Uhealth. 2018; Kumar V, Sattar Y, Bseiso A, Khan S, Rutkofsky IH. The effectiveness of internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy in treatment of psychiatric disorders. Cureus. 2017; Trauer JM, Qian MY, Doyle JS, Rajaratnam SMW, Cunnington D. Cognitive behavioral therapy for chronic insomnia: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Ann Intern Med. 2015
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a type of psychotherapeutic treatment that helps people learn how to identify and change destructive or disturbing thought patterns that have a negative influence on behavior and emotions.
Cognitive behavioral therapy focuses on changing the automatic negative thoughts that can contribute to and worsen emotional difficulties, depression, and anxiety. These spontaneous negative thoughts have a detrimental influence on mood.
Through CBT, these thoughts are identified, challenged, and replaced with more objective, realistic thoughts.
Types of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
CBT encompasses a range of techniques and approaches that address thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. These can range from structured psychotherapies to self-help materials.
There are a number of specific types of therapeutic approaches that involve CBT, including:
- Cognitive therapy centers on identifying and changing inaccurate or distorted thinking patterns, emotional responses, and behaviors.
- Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) addresses thoughts and behaviors while incorporating strategies such as emotional regulation and mindfulness.
- Multimodal therapy suggests that psychological issues must be treated by addressing seven different but interconnected modalities: behavior, affect, sensation, imagery, cognition, interpersonal factors, and drug/biological considerations.
- Rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT) involves identifying irrational beliefs, actively challenging these beliefs, and finally learning to recognize and change these thought patterns.
Techniques
CBT is about more than identifying thought patterns; it is focused on using a wide range of strategies to help people overcome these thoughts. Techniques may include journaling, role-playing, relaxation techniques, and mental distractions.
Identifying Negative Thoughts
It is important to learn how thoughts, feelings, and situations can contribute to maladaptive behaviors. The process can be difficult, especially for people who struggle with introspection, but it can ultimately lead to self-discovery and insights that are an essential part of the treatment process.
Practicing New Skills
It is important to start practicing new skills that can then be put in to use in real-world situations. For example, a person with a substance use disorder might start practicing new coping skills and rehearsing ways to avoid or deal with social situations that could potentially trigger a relapse.
Goal-Setting
Goal setting can an important step in recovery from mental illness and helping you make changes to improve your health and life. During CBT, a therapist can help with goal-setting skills by teaching you how to identify your goal, distinguish between short- and long-term goals, set SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-based) goals, and focus on the process as much as the end outcome.
Problem-Solving
Learning problem solving skills can help you identify and solve problems that arise from life stressors, both big and small, and reduce the negative impact of psychological and physical illness.
Problem solving in CBT often involves five steps:
- Identifying a problem
- Generating a list of possible solutions
- Evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of each possible solution
- Choosing a solution to implement
- Implementing the solution
Self-Monitoring
Also known as diary work, self-monitoring is an important part of CBT that involves tracking behaviors, symptoms, or experiences over time and sharing them with your therapist. Self-monitoring can help provide your therapist with the information needed to provide the best treatment. For example, for people coping with eating disorders, self-monitoring may involve keeping track of eating habits as well as any thoughts or feelings that went along with consuming that meal or snack.
What CBT Can Help With
Cognitive behavior therapy can be used as a short-term treatment to help individuals learn to focus on present thoughts and beliefs.
CBT is used to treat a wide range of conditions including:
- Addiction
- Anger issues
- Anxiety
- Bipolar disorder
- Depression
- Eating disorders
- Panic attacks
- Personality disorders
- Phobias
- Chronic pain or serious illnesses
- Divorce or break-ups
- Grief or loss
- Insomnia
- Low self-esteem
- Relationship problems
- Stress management
Contact therapists & counselors now.
Source: Cherry K., What is cogntive behavioral therapy. Updated May 2021; Hofmann SG, Asnaani A, Vonk IJ, Sawyer AT, Fang A. The efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy: A review of meta-analyses. Cognit Ther Res. 2012; Rnic K, Dozois DJ, Martin RA. Cognitive distortions, humor styles, and depression. Eur J Psychol. 2016; Lazarus AA, Abramovitz A. A multimodal behavioral approach to performance anxiety. J Clin Psychol. 2004; Tsitsas GD, Paschali AA. A cognitive-behavior therapy applied to a social anxiety disorder and a specific phobia, case study. Health Psychol Res. 2014; Lincoln TM, Riehle M, Pillny M, et al. Using functional analysis as a framework to guide individualized treatment for negative symptoms. Front Psychol. 2017; Sburlati ES, Lyneham HJ, Schniering CA et al. Evidence-based CBT for anxiety and depression in children and adolescents, a competencies based approach. John Wiley & Sons; 2014; Lindgreen P, Lomborg K, Clausen L. Patient experiences esing a self-monitoring app in eating disorder treatment: Qualitative study. JMIR Mhealth Uhealth. 2018; Kumar V, Sattar Y, Bseiso A, Khan S, Rutkofsky IH. The effectiveness of internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy in treatment of psychiatric disorders. Cureus. 2017; Trauer JM, Qian MY, Doyle JS, Rajaratnam SMW, Cunnington D. Cognitive behavioral therapy for chronic insomnia: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Ann Intern Med. 2015
