Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is one of the most studied therapeutic techniques in psychology and is one of the most effective in treating many different psychological problems such as depression, anxiety, and even insomnia. We know it is helpful, but what is it?
Basic Framework
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is based on the idea that people’s perceptions and feelings are influenced by their thoughts. According to Dr. Luskin from Stanford University, humans have around 60,000 thoughts a day. That is a lot of thoughts to focus your attention on, but with CBT, you start to focus on the thoughts that cause distress and try to identify patterns that cause distress. It is a very mindful-based process that you focus on every day while you are trying to change patterns.
Structured– you set one goal with that you want to focus on and work through the framework until you gain relief. While it is important to reach goals quickly, it can be difficult not to bring up new issues to speak with your therapist that come up during the week or things from childhood.
Repetitive– You are training your muscle memory to think in a new way so you can feel differently. This means there is a lot of repetition and practice, so it becomes second nature. This is wonderful to create a new way of thinking, but it can get tiring.
Collaborative– This is a process in which you work with your therapist on creating goals and identifying tools that are most effective for you. This is great for creating a personal plan, and you can feel empowered that you can change how you feel. While those are some great, at times, it is nice to have some who lead you completely.
Steps of cognitive behavioral therapy
1. The first thing you will do in CBT is identify the goal you want to work on, perhaps feeling more at peace when making life decisions or stronger communication skills because many times you end up in arguments with people. You work together with your therapist to decide what area of your life you want to work on.
2. You then want to start bringing those thoughts surrounding your goal to conscious awareness. So, anytime you are in those situations or triggered, you start to take note of the thoughts that are influencing your emotions and actions.
3. In TEAM CBT (which I use), we do some work on emotional tolerance and building different relationships with our emotions, which can make the process much easier, but this is very specific to TEAM.
4. Once you have identified your thoughts, you are able to identify the thought patterns you fall into that cause distress. This is very helpful in deciding the most effective tools to challenge your thoughts.
5. Then, you start applying the tools directly to your thoughts to create new thoughts that help challenge the distressing ones or provide a different perspective. With TEAM, we test them out to understand how it is impacting each thought.
6. We might also practice some relapse prevention by capturing any thoughts that come up as we are doing the work that might prohibit or make it difficult to use the tools in the future.
Long-term effects
With CBT, you are building a new way of challenging your thoughts and tools you can continue to use in the future. Due to building this new habit of interacting with your thoughts, it is no surprise that one study found that CBT can reduce anxiety symptoms by up to 12 months after treatment and 40 months for depression.
These are the general ideas of CBT. While it is helpful for many, I am curious if it sounds interesting to you.