Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

Cognitions are thoughts. When we talk about Cognitive Therapy we are looking at the client’s thought processes which include images, beliefs, ideas and attitudes. Behavioural Therapy looks at the client’s behaviour patterns which are influenced by the thought processes. For example, if a thought is ‘all spiders are dangerous’, then the feeling is fear and the behaviour of that person is usually avoidance.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy CBT is a combination of challenging the person’s thinking and behaviour patterns whilst taking into account how this thinking and behaviour makes a person feel. It works on the principle of looking for the evidence to substantiate the thought and when the thought can be proved evidentially to be irrational the person can

Using the spider example, according to factual evidence only some spiders are dangerous, therefore with this new thought ‘some spiders are dangerous’ the feeling is less scared and the behaviour is usually less extreme.

The client is taught how to do this challenging for themselves and worksheets and homework can be given to the client to empower this new way of thinking and behaving. CBT is usually a brief therapy as it is a problem solving therapy based on evidence of irrational thinking patterns.

Useful for: