CBT What’s It All About?

Why do people keep talking about CBT

Much is written and much is talked about CBT or Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. What is it? And how does it work?

What is it about?

CBT is based on the idea that our feelings, thoughts and actions are all connected. By changing one of these, we can change the others.

So, with CBT, it is important for you and your therapist to work on understanding how your thoughts and actions affect the way you feel. It’s similar to other psychological therapies, in that it is a type of talking treatment that will focus on how your thoughts, beliefs and attitudes affect feelings and behaviours.  It’s also great at teaching coping skills and techniques for dealing with problems.

What’s in the Name?

The reason it’s called cognitive behavioural therapy is that it combines two things – cognitive therapy, which examines the things you think, and behavioural therapy, which examines the things you do.

Most commonly, CBT is used to treat anxiety and depression, but it can be useful for other mental and physical health problems.   The treatments have been demonstrated to be effective for a range of problems including anxiety, depression, alcohol and drug use problems, relationship problems, sleep disturbance, to name a few.

What happens in Treatment?

Commonly, CBT will address unhelpful thinking styles and unhelpful patterns of behaviour. So, during treatment there will be a focus on these styles, such as thinking in black and white, overgeneralising, catastrophising, either/or.  Most of us use many different thinking styles, so early CBT work can involve identifying which ones we use and the impact these have on our behaviours.

Over time your CBT therapist will help you learn techniques that acknowledge and challenge thoughts that are problematic and teach you strategies such as problem solving, confronting situations that create anxiety and challenging assumptions.

In a nutshell, CBT works by identifying, tackling, and changing unhelpful thinking so your mindset, behaviours and wellbeing improve.

Learn More About CBT Therapy

If you’re interested in reading more about CBT the following links may be of interest:

Learn how KlearMinds Therapists provide CBT Therapy: CBT Therapy at KlearMinds
Read our indepth Guide to Cognitive Behaviour therapy: CBT Guide