Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a therapeutic orientation developed in the 1960's by Aaron Beck, an American Psychologist.
It is a structured approach to psychotherapy designed to alleviate an individual’s emotional and behavioral problems and to help the person to learn more effective ways of dealing with thoughts and beliefs that contribute to his/her suffering. CBT is based on the premise that how we think (what we expect, assume, believe) influences how we feel, behave, and react to our environment. How we perceive a situation will determine how we feel and what we chose to do, or avoid doing. CBT is usually relatively brief, and focused on one issue at a time. It emphasizes that you are an active participant in the therapeutic process, and often involves the teaching of therapeutic skills that you can subsequently apply to different issues in your own life.
Common issues CBT can treat
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is one of the broadest and most flexible of all therapeutic approaches, and has been proven to be effective when applied to dozens of specific psychological problems including the following:
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy empowers you to recognize that most psychological problems arise from faulty (but often deeply ingrained) beliefs, not any fundamental flaws in you as a person.
CBT is a positive and compassionate approach that emphasizes a strong therapeutic alliance between counsellor and client, and working together to investigate, challenge, and refute the negative thoughts that maintain personal problems. Once therapy is complete, you will have been equipped with a set of powerful and flexible strategies allowing you to face and overcome a broad array of challenging situations and experiences.
How quickly does CBT work?
While it is impossible to know precisely how long it will take before Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can begin to help a person to improve a negative mood or change a problematic behavior, real change usually begins to appear within 6-8 sessions.
Many treatment manuals recommend a total of 12 to 16 sessions to address such issues as depression and anxiety. CBT is often used in conjunction with related treatments such as exposure therapy and systematic desensitization, particularly when dealing with such issues as phobias and panic disorder.
