Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is a short term talking therapy. It helps people by exploring the way they think, feel and behave in response to events, situations and things that happen. It promotes change by supporting people to work out if these ways of understanding things are unrealistic, unhelpful or causing them distress.
The main idea behind CBT is that is it not situations, events, or experiences that cause someone distress, but the way they interpret or understand them – the “sense they make of them”. This helps us understand how two people can experience exactly the same event but feel and act very differently as a result.
CBT suggests that thoughts, feelings, physical sensations and behaviours are all interlinked, and that by exploring and understanding how someone thinks about things, this can help understand how they are also feeling and acting. Therapy aims to then find more helpful and alternative ways of doing so.
CBT focuses on “the here and now”, rather than exploring the past, though your therapist will be interested in past experiences to help make sense of how you interpret experiences now. It is a collaborative therapy, meaning that you and your therapist work together to promote change. CBT will involve working on your difficulties out of sessions as well.
Treatment usually lasts for 6 – 20 sessions, each lasting one hour and usually once a week. CBT is supported by a large body of research and is the treatment of choice and recommended by NICE (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence) for many conditions, including anxiety, depression, OCD, PTSD and eating disorders.