Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)

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Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is based on the idea that your thoughts, emotions, and actions are connected. In other words, the way we think and feel about something will often affect what we do. This is paired with another core concept - that these thought and behaviour patterns can be changed. CBT is one of the most widely-used tools that psychologists implement to help clients reframe their negative emotions and thought patterns into positive feelings and behaviours to develop effective coping strategies, and improve the way that they feel about themselves.

Psychologists can use CBT to help to break down the things in your life that might make you feel down, anxious, scared, or angry, and provide you with tools to make these problems more manageable. CBT is usually a short-term process that addresses the here and now, focusing less on what may have happened in your past. One of the goals of CBT is to help clients get to a point where they can achieve this reframing on their own, and use it to effectively tackle problems they may encounter in future.

In certain cases, your psychologist may find that alongside CBT, you might benefit from more targeted techniques which can include:

• Mindfulness: Mindfulness techniques can help you to become more aware of your emotions and feelings, without placing judgement on them or getting caught up in what could have been or might happen in the future. It can also help you to let go of negative thoughts more easily and align your thoughts more closely with reality. It can be a particularly effective tool to help people with chronic depression to avoid relapses by not returning to their automatic thought patterns that can prolong and worsen their depression. It can also help to reduce cravings for addictions.
• Exposure Therapy: Exposure therapy (ET) can be used to help people confront their fears and anxieties. When we are afraid of something, we tend to avoid that particular object, activity or situation, whether it’s a phobia of spiders or flying in an aeroplane, remembering a traumatic experience, feeling the need to avoid germs with compulsive behaviours, or experiencing crippling anxiety in social situations. Even though avoiding the fear may reduce our feelings in the short term, over time it can serve to only make the fear grow even bigger. ET can help to break this pattern.  A psychologist can create a safe environment to gradually “expose” clients to the things that they fear and avoid, which helps to confront your fear by reducing the fear reaction and creating more realistic beliefs.

CBT is one of the most studied therapy approaches, and many experts consider it to be the best treatment available for a number of mental health conditions.

• A 2018 review of 41 studies found that CBT significantly improves symptoms in anxiety disorders, stress, PTSD and OCD.
• A 2018 study found that CBT had very good long term results when used in young people, and half of the participants no longer met the criteria for anxiety 2 or more years after they completed therapy.
• Research shows that CBT is an effective treatment for depression, and may also reduce the chances of relapse. 
• CBT was found to help people with OCD to resist carrying out their compulsions by rewiring their brain function. 
• CBT can also help improve cognitive function for people with major depression and PTSD.
• CBT can be an effective tool when treating substance misuse. 
• CBT can also be used to help people cope with addiction and avoid relapse after treatment.
• Mindfulness-based CBT has been found to prevent depression recurrence as effectively as antidepressant medication.
• Research has found that exposure therapy is the most effective psychological intervention for people with anxiety disorders.