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.