What is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy ?

Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) combines two very effective kinds of psychotherapy cognitive

therapy and behavior therapy. Cognitive Therapy essentially involves the pursuit of accurate

thinking by learning a process to identify these inaccurate thoughts and then utilizing tools for

changing them to more accurate beliefs that produce emotional relief and more productive

behavioral strategies. These specific skills are learned in the context of a time-limited, supportive

and collaborative relationship with your therapist. Both forms of therapy are used to help you better

understand your psychological infrastructure that supports bothersome behaviors and reactions.

Cognitive therapy teaches you how certain thinking patterns, rules and core beliefs are causing your

symptoms. These patterns are often giving you a distorted picture of what's going on in your life, and

making you feel anxious, depressed or angry (when no good reason exists), or provoking behaviors

that only continue self-damaging ends. Then you are taught how to better evaluate your thinking

from an objective viewpoint to determine if your thinking patterns are more accurately tied to the

realities of a situation and/or person.

Behavior therapy helps you weaken the connections between troublesome situations and your

habitual reactions to them, such as fear, depression or rage, and self-defeating or self-damaging

behavior. This is accomplished through the use of graduated behavioral experiments in which new

behaviors are learned and practiced to likely have desirable results. When combined into CBT,

behavior therapy and cognitive therapy provide you with very powerful tools for stopping your

symptoms and getting your life on a more satisfying track.

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