CBT can help you to change how you think ("Cognitive") and what you do ("Behaviour)".  It focuses on the "here and now" problems and difficulties and is focused on finding out practical ways to improve your state of mind now.

 

CBT can help you to make sense of overwhelming problems by breaking them down into smaller parts such as Situation, Thoughts raised, Emotional, Physical and Behavioural reaction.  Each of these areas can affect the others. How you think about a problem can affect how you feel physically and emotionally. It can also alter what you do about it. There are helpful and unhelpful ways of reacting to most situations, depending on how you think about them. 

 

So in CBT we will spend time identifying and challenging the thoughts, assumptions and beliefs that contribute to your problems. You will be encouraged to experiment with testing new assumptions and beliefs. In addition, you will spend time challenging your old behaviour and experimenting with new behaviour.

 

In addition to talking with your therapist about your problems, you will be asked to do homework each week. The amount of homework assigned varies but typically consist of ½ hour to 1 hour per day of some combination of monitoring your symptoms, monitoring your thoughts, challenging your beliefs and experimenting with new behaviour. In CBT your therapist acts as a “coach” who helps you to learn a variety of techniques that will help you to approach your problems in new ways.

 

CBT has been shown in clinical trials to help ease symptoms of various health problems. Research studies have shown that a course of CBT is just as effective as medication in treating depression and certain anxiety disorders. There may be long-term benefits of CBT as the techniques to combat these problems can be used for the rest of your life to help to keep, for example, depression or anxiety symptoms away.

 

 

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