Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy is a form of psychotherapy that
focuses on helping people take control of their own experience.
We emphasize the active involvement of clients in their own treatment plans.
Together, client and therapist become allies in exploring how one’s
thoughts, beliefs, and expectations shape experiences.
Towards this end, CBT often makes use of a structured and goal-oriented approach
to discover the catalysts and consequences that motivate behavior.
Treatment can take several directions. Often, we will work to discover how
one’s automatic thoughts about people, situations, and events cause
distress. Learning how to feel calm when confronted with undesirable situations
can be a huge benefit of CBT. The fact is that we have our undesirable situations
whether we are upset about them or not. Often our distress about these situations
can distort the path to resolution. When we learn how to more calmly accept
a personal problem, not only do we feel better, but we are in a better position
to make use of our strengths to resolve the problem.
Our approach encourages clients to become curious about familiar daily life
situations. We will ask questions that may challenge assumptions and encourage
a fresh perspective.
We will also focus on unwanted behaviors with the knowledge that our emotional
reactions and our behaviors are learned, and therefore new ones can be learned
to replace them.
When treating children, parents become essential allies. Together, we explore
the catalysts and consequences that motivate children’s behavior. By
understanding children’s motivations, we can alter the consequences,
so that children’s agendas, the goals that motivate them, become contingent
on meeting parents’ agendas, the behaviors that they desire from their
children.
Providing concrete tools and strategies to change existing patterns of thoughts
and behaviors is a central part of CBT. We support clients to practice the
skills that they are learning in sessions, in ways that fit in with the practical
demands of their lives. Relaxation based therapies, self–observation,
and learning to question one’s assumptions form a large part of the
CBT tool kit.
CBT is
• Changing thoughts, emotions, and behavior
• Challenging existing beliefs about self and relationships
• Shaping behavior by altering consequences
• Learning how to feel calm
• Using strengths to resolve problems
• Encouraging curiosity about why you do the things you do
• Providing concrete tools and strategies
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