What is CBT?

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is a treatment that works with people with a range of emotional conditions who have experienced challenges in their life and find it difficult to manage. It provides coping mechanisms to get through stressful life situations, in the past or in the present. By looking at how our emotions effect our behaviour in those situations, CBT works by developing helpful behavioural techniques to help you manage better.

CBT is a therapeutic process that works in a structured way using a cognitive framework to assess the problems you are facing. In CBT the problems are broken down into five main areas which are: situations, thoughts, emotions, physical feelings and actions CBT is based on the concept of these five areas being interconnected and affecting each other.

How we think about a particular situation has a huge part to play in our lives and affects our thoughts, feelings and behaviours in many different ways. We can sometimes become trapped by the way we think about situations, and how we think about things can determine whether we react in helpful or unhelpful ways. This is where the process starts.

The therapy sessions aim to discuss why you are here and identify what your goals are. Through the assessment. The sessions are undertaken in sessions we can identify the emotions you currently hold and provide psychological education in order for you to gain an understanding about the emotions you experience. After that, the sessions works collaboratively on eliciting the following: thinking errors, balance thinking, challenging core beliefs, controlling your thoughts, positive self- talk, changing your behaviour, live exposure and problem solving.

In most circumstances depends upon the client age. I ask the client a series of questions, which enables me to understand how the client is thinking about a certain situation. We all have a tendency to fall into habits around how we think about things, and how true your perception of things is dependent upon whether there is any evidence to support this.

For example, (if your relationship has ended, you might think you have failed and not capable of having another meaningful relationship. ‘Leading you to feel hopeless, lonely and depressed. Therefore, you stop socialising’. You become fearful of getting into any other relationship leading you to become trapped in a negative cycle. Sleeping all day and feeling bad about yourself. Rather than accepting this way of thinking, you could come to terms with accepting that the relationships has failed, learn from your mistakes and work towards moving on).

This treatment teaches you techniques to cope with the emotions you are experiencing, and then be asked to carry them out. These techniques could be: problem-solving, relaxation, imagery, behaviour activation. The process begins with the imagination – we think about things we know you can do, question our emotional response to them, and then build on that by thinking about life situations that are more stress-inducing, and then the most stressful circumstances you imagine, slowly building confidence and techniques to manage by building hierarchy and life exposure.

These are some of the tools CBT uses throughout the process:

Anxiety Rating
Activity scheduling
Behaviour activation
Cognitive assignments
Homework assignment
Imagery assignment
Listening assignment
Mood rating
Positive self- coping words
Reading assignment
Relaxation technique
Role play
Thought diary
Exposure

We also measure the outcomes of the therapy in different ways, to see how things have improved:
Goals measure
Symptom tracker
Strength and difficulty measure (SDQ)
Revised child anxiety depression scale (RCADS)
Session feedback
Outcome measure scale
Chi – experience of the service questionnaire

Live exposure is at the core of CBT

It means exposing yourself to situations that create anxiety or fears, so that over time you can learn to manage your response and it no longer has that effect. Live exposure requires you to do the things that you find very difficult to do and things that challenge you. Our therapy sessions would work literally side by side to address whatever you feared and avoid doing. Through a repetition of the process, you will learn to cope with difficult emotions that are triggered, through thoughts that distort your view of reality.

Here are some areas where CBT works well:

Children who have experienced being bullied throughout the course of their life

Bothered by bad or silly thoughts or pictures in your mind

Having trouble going to school because feeling nervous

Having trouble sleeping

Worried about things

Worried about being away from your parent

Worried those bad things will happen to you

Feeling sad

Feeling anxious

Find it difficult being in crowded places

Suffering with panic attacks

Lack of confidence

Struggling to cope with life

Losing your temper easily

General phobia (i.e. needles, Blood phobias, creatures)

These are some of the tools CBT uses throughout the process:

Anxiety Rating

Activity scheduling

Behaviour activation

Cognitive assignments

Homework assignment

Imagery assignment

Listening assignment

Mood rating

Positive self- coping words

Reading assignment

Relaxation technique

Role play

Thought diary

Exposure

We also measure the outcomes of the therapy in different ways, to see how things have improved:

Goals measure
Symptom tracker
Strength and difficulty measure (SDQ)
Revised child anxiety depression scale (RCADS)
Session feedback
Outcome measure scale
Chi – experience of the service questionnaire

Here are some areas where CBT works well: