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.