Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapy
What is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy?
Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is an intensive treatment method that can enable individuals to challenge and change disruptive thoughts, behaviours and feelings in order to successfully navigate the challenges that life presents.
CBT is Brief
CBT is designed to be a therapy delivered in a time-limited manner. Once your symptoms are reduced and you have gained the skills required to challenge and change unhelpful thinking and behaviours, we will collaboratively create a robust relapse prevention plan, highlighting your learning from sessions, where you can seek support and what you can do to prevent your symptoms escalating to a distressing level.
Check in sessions can be offered following a period of treatment to review how you are doing and if required consider what further support is required at that time, these could be offered at a frequency to suit i.e., monthly, every three months etc.
CBT is Goal Oriented
CBT can enable individuals to become more active in problem-solving so that they are able to reach their goal/goals for therapy. We will work together to identify your goals for therapy and will review how close you are to achieving your goal in each session, this allows for us to consider what further changes may be required to help you ascertain your goal.
CBT is Present-Focused
CBT helps you focus on the present challenges and situations in your life that are causing you distress, you will be supported to consider changes to be made or recommend strategies to try which will enable you to solve problems and manage distress more effectively.
CBT is Structured
CBT sessions are structured, this helps you and your therapist maximise efficient use of time and also helps to make the therapy process clearer for individuals. Sessions are structured to help you to identify the ways that you can think differently about aspects of your life so that you can unlearn harmful and disruptive reactions. Having structure in sessions also allows you to consistently focus on specific challenges in order to achieve success in your treatment often within a much shorter time period when compared to traditional talk therapy.
CBT is Collaborative
CBT is, in a sense a partnership between you and your therapist, working collaboratively to achieve your goals for therapy. However, CBT requires you to take an active role in your own treatment and the use of a range of self-help homework tools, strategies or experiments to challenge and change thoughts, feelings and behaviours will be an integral part in becoming well again. Homework tasks allow you to enact the skills that you learn during therapy.
CBT is suitable for children aged 5+ (with some adaptation), young people and adults.
The number of CBT sessions you require will depend on the type of difficulty you have. It is usually shorter-term (6 to 20 weekly sessions), depending on what feels right for you, with each therapy session lasting 50 minutes.
What can CBT help with?
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Depression - Including feelings of hopelessness, lack of motivation and low energy, poor concentration, and self-harm.
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Low Self-Esteem and Low of Self Confidence
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Perfectionism
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Overthinking - Including rumination, excessive worrying about the future, and reoccurring distressing thoughts.
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Anxiety
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Panic
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Social Anxiety
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Health Anxiety
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Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
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Phobias
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Trauma
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Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
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Anger
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Stress
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Bereavement
