Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is the most common talk therapy (psychotherapy) option out there. You generally work with a mental health counsellor/therapist in a structured way and attend a few sessions. Overall, CBT helps you be more aware of inaccurate and negative thinking, allowing you to view your challenging situations clearly to respond to them more effectively.
In a sense, CBT is a helpful tool, either by itself or in combination with various other therapies. It can help you treat mental health issues, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, eating disorders, and depression. However, you don’t need a mental health condition to benefit from CBT, as it’s an effective tool to help everyone learn to manage stressful life situations better.
Let’s get a better understanding of what CBT involves:
Why Is Cognitive Behaviour Therapy Done?
Cognitive behaviour therapy can treat various issues. It’s typically the preferred option for psychotherapy because it quickly helps you cope with and identify specific problems in life. Generally, it requires fewer sessions than others and is more structured.
CBT is a highly useful tool to address various emotional challenges and can help you:
- Prevent a relapse of your mental illness symptoms
- Manage the symptoms of a mental illness
- Treat depression and other illnesses when medication isn’t a great choice
- Resolve relationship conflicts and learn how to communicate more effectively
- Identify ways to manage your emotions
- Manage chronic pain
- Cope with medical illnesses
- Overcome emotional trauma from violence or abuse
- Cope with loss or grief
Here are the mental health disorders that might improve with CBT:
- Sexual disorders
- Schizophrenia
- Bipolar disorders
- Substance use disorders
- OCD (Obsessive-compulsive disorder)
- Eating disorders
- Sleeping disorders
- PTSD
- Phobias
- Anxiety disorders
- Depression
Sometimes, CBT is more effective when combined with other treatment options, including medications like antidepressants or drugs that assist with chronic pain.
Risks
Generally, there is little risk when getting or seeking cognitive behavioural therapy. However, you could feel emotionally uncomfortable at some point. This is because the treatment causes you to explore your painful experiences, emotions, and feelings. You might get upset, cry, or feel angry during a session or feel physically drained afterwards.
Some forms of CBT, including dialectical behaviour therapy and exposure therapy, might require you to confront those situations you wish to avoid. For example, you have a fear of flying and might have to board an aeroplane or take a flight. This might lead to temporary anxiety or stress.
However, the goal of cognitive therapy is to work with a skilled therapist to minimise the risks. Those coping skills you will learn help you conquer and manage negative feelings and fears overall.
How to Prepare
Sometimes, people decide on their own that they should use cognitive behavioural therapy. Otherwise, a doctor or someone you trust might suggest it to you. Here’s how to start:
- Find a Good Therapist – Your doctor, friends, health insurance plan, or another trusted source can refer you to someone. Most employers provide counselling services through employee programs. However, you can also find therapists by researching online.
- Understand the Price – If you’ve got health insurance, the coverage may include psychotherapy. Some health plans will only cover certain numbers of therapy sessions each year. You can also discuss fees and payment options with the CBT therapist.
- Review Your Issues – Before the first appointment, determine what issues you have to work on. You can do this with the therapist, as well, but getting a sense of the problem in advance will create a starting point.
Check Qualifications
The term “psychotherapy” is a generalised term, so it doesn’t always indicate licensure, training, or education. Psychotherapists can be psychologists, psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, family/marriage therapists, licensed social workers, and licensed professional counsellors.
Before you see a psychotherapist, check their:
- Education and Background – Trained psychotherapists could have various job titles, but most of them have a doctoral or master’s degree with a specific mental health training, such as psychological counselling. Medical doctors specialising in mental health may prescribe medication and provide psychotherapy.
- Area of Expertise – Ask the therapist if they have experience or expertise treating your specific area of concern or symptoms, such as PTSD or an eating disorder.
- Licensure and Certification – Ensure the therapist you choose has met all licensing and certification requirements for that particular discipline.
The key to success is finding a skilled therapist who matches the intensity and type of therapy with your specific goals.
What to Expect Based on Your Mental Health Conditions
Cognitive behavioural therapy can be done in one-on-one groups or with others who have similar issues, such as family members. Online resources can be helpful and make it easier to participate in CBT, especially if you’re in an area that doesn’t have many mental health resources.
Generally, CBT involves:
- Learning about your situation and how mental health conditions can affect them
- Learning and practising the techniques necessary, such as assertiveness, stress management, resilience, coping, and relaxation techniques
The First Session
During your first session of cognitive behavioural therapy, the therapist will likely get information about you and determine what your concerns are and what you wish to work on. They might also look into your past and current emotional and physical health to get a deeper understanding of your requirements and situation.
Once that’s done, the therapist should discuss the ways you might benefit from this treatment or recommend medication to assist.
The first session is also where you can interview the therapist to determine if they are a good fit for you. Make sure you know:
- Their approach
- The appropriate therapy for your needs
- The goal of the treatment
- The length of every session
- How many sessions you might require
It could take the first few sessions for the therapist to truly understand your concerns and situation before they can determine the right course of action. If you’re not comfortable with the therapist you choose, try another one. It’s crucial to have a good “fit” with the therapist to get the best benefit from CBT.
During CBT
The therapist will likely encourage you to speak about your feelings and thoughts and what’s bothering you. Don’t worry if it’s hard to open up about these things. Your therapist is there to help you gain comfort and confidence.
CBT aims to work with you on specific problems while using a goal-oriented approach. Therefore, as you go through the process, the therapist will ask you to do homework, such as reading, activities, and practices that will build on what you’ve learned during therapy sessions. They also encourage you to apply what you’ve been taught in your daily life.
Your therapist will tailor their approach to meet your preferences and situations. Therefore, they could combine cognitive behavioural therapy with other therapeutic approaches, such as interpersonal therapy, which will focus on relationships you have with others.
CBT Steps
Cognitive behavioural therapy often includes these steps:
Identify Situations/Conditions
These can include a medical condition, grief, divorce, anger, and symptoms of a mental health disorder. You and the therapist will spend time determining which goals and problems to focus on.
Become Aware of Emotions, Thoughts, and Beliefs
Once you identify the problems you wish to work on, the therapist encourages you to share thoughts about them. That can include observing what you’re telling yourself about the experience (self-talk), your beliefs about yourself, events, and other people, and the interpretation you have of the situation. The therapist then might suggest keeping a journal of those unhelpful thoughts and feelings.
Identify Inaccurate Thinking and Negative Thoughts
Your therapist might ask you to focus on your emotional, physical, and behavioural responses in various situations. This will help you recognise thinking that might contribute to the issue.
Reshape Negative/Inaccurate Thinking Patterns
The therapist will encourage you to determine if your view of the situation is based on inaccurate perceptions or facts. This step is hard because you often have long-standing thinking methods about yourself and your life. However, practice can help you have helpful thinking or behaviour patterns and make it a habit so that it doesn’t take as much work.
Many times, cognitive behavioural therapy also uses methods from mindfulness-based cognitive therapy.
Length of Time for Therapy Sessions
Generally, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is a short-term therapy, which ranges from five to 20 sessions. You and the therapist will discuss how many sessions are right for you. Factors can include:
- The amount of support you get from family members and others
- The amount of stress you experience
- How quickly you progress
- How long you’ve dealt with the symptoms or situation
- The severity of the symptoms
- Type of situation or disorder you’re dealing with
Confidentiality
Conversations with the therapist during cognitive behavioural therapy sessions are considered confidential except in specific circumstances. For example, your therapist might break confidentiality if there’s an immediate threat to someone’s safety or whenever it’s required by law to report those concerns to the authorities. Situations can include:
- Being unable to care for yourself safely
- Abusing young people or vulnerable adults (someone over 18 years old who has a disability or is hospitalised)
- Threatening to take the life of someone or harm them
- Threatening to immediately take your own life or harm yourself
Results
Cognitive behaviour therapy might not cure your condition or cause the unpleasant situation to go away. However, it might give you the power to successfully cope with things in a healthy way so that you feel better about your life and yourself.
Getting the Most from Your CBT Sessions
Overall, cognitive behavioural therapy is not effective for everyone. However, there are steps you can take to get the most out of therapy and make it more successful. These include:
- Approach Therapy Like a Partnership – Cognitive behavioural therapy is more effective when you’re the active participant and share. Ensure that you and the therapist agree about significant issues and ways to tackle them. Then, you can both set goals and measure progress with time.
- Be Honest and Open – Success in cognitive behavioural therapy depends on how willing you are to share your experiences, feelings, and thoughts. You must be open to new ways of doing things and new insights. Therefore, if you’re reluctant to discuss some things because of embarrassment, fear, or painful emotions, you should tell your therapist that first.
- Stick to the Treatment Plan – If you’re lacking motivation or feeling down, you might be tempted to skip the therapy session. However, that can disrupt progress, so make sure you attend all cognitive behavioural therapy sessions and think about what to discuss.
- Don’t Expect Instantaneous Results – Working on your emotional issues is painful and requires hard work. You might feel worse initially because those unhelpful thoughts prevent you from confronting conflicts. Therefore, several sessions might be needed to see improvement in your behavioural reactions.
- Do the Homework Assignments – If the therapist asks you to keep a journal, read, or do other activities, make sure you do so. They will help you apply what you learned in the session.
- Talk to the Therapist If Therapy Doesn’t Help – If you feel that you’re not benefitting from CBT after a few sessions, discuss this with the therapist. They might decide to make changes or try other behavioural therapies and approaches.
Who Will Benefit Most?
Everyone can benefit from CBT, regardless of age, gender, or ethnicity. However, it’s more likely to help those who:
- Are eager to improve and have time to commit
- Have tried medications without positive results
- Have challenges to identify and change
Conclusion
Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is considered a short-term therapy that will require you to be an active participant in the entire process. It’s often difficult to do alone, so it helps to meet with a therapist to identify your therapy goals and determine if CBT is the right choice for you.
Though it won’t help you beat chronic pain, it can ease your mental anguish and help you focus more on loving yourself and working through your issues.
After learning about cognitive behavioural therapy, it’s wise to find an appropriate therapist to help you learn about positive feelings and keeping out negative thoughts.
References:
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/296579#takeaway
https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/cognitive-behavioral-therapy/about/pac-20384610
https://www.healthline.com/health/cognitive-behavioral-therapy#Takeaway
https://psychcentral.com/lib/in-depth-cognitive-behavioral-therapy#is-it-right-for-me
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-cognitive-behavior-therapy-2795747
Author:admin
