Exploring Therapy: Cognitive Behavioural

When you consider starting therapy, it can often be a daunting process. There’s just so much information, you’re spoiled for choice for therapy styles, plus hundreds of local practitioners for you to sift through, in order to hopefully find someone good, who can help you with your problem.  Over the next few weeks I’ll be exploring some popular therapy models and giving a broad overview of how they work, and what problems they might work well for.

Today, we’re talking about Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).  CBT has, by and large, become recognized as the gold standard for talk therapy since the 1970’s.  CBT is widely recognized and respected, and is likely the type of therapy you envision for yourself, if you’ve never been a therapy client before.  We know from enough research that CBT works, and it’s used to treat a myriad of mental health issues including depression, anxiety, panic disorders, phobias, insomnia, substance use disorders, and more.

While in CBT, clients can expect to:

·         Figure out skewed or problematic ways of thinking

·         Learn to differentiate between thoughts, feelings, and facts

·         Have their thoughts and beliefs challenged and reframed

When clients go through these processes in CBT, they come out of therapy with greater insight into why they are the way they are, and therapists can help clients learn new approaches to challenges in life.  Since CBT is so well-loved in the mental health treatment space, many therapists either draw from elements of CBT to inform their work, or make CBT a preferred approach to counselling.  All in all, CBT is a wonderful approach to mental health treatment, and if you’re working with a skilled clinician, you’re likely in good hands and good company.