CBT

What is Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapy (CBT)?

CBT helps people to learn about the relationship between our negative thoughts, how those thoughts make us feel and how those negative thoughts and feelings cause us to change our behaviours. Over time we can get stuck in negative vicious cycles which cause lots of distress in our day to day lives. By learning what keeps us stuck, we can make small practical changes to get ‘unstuck’. It is the current evidence-based treatment for treating a range of mental health problems in the NHS and is recommended by National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE).

Here are some of the difficulties that CBT can help with:

  • Depression or feelings of low mood, sadness and lack of motivation

  • Generalised Anxiety Disorder or excessive worry about lots of things that could all go wrong and end in catastrophe

  • Stress

  • Panic attacks or Panic Disorder

  • Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), intrusive thoughts and repetitive rituals that are getting in the way of living your life

  • Health Anxiety or excessive and persistent worries about your health

  • Social Anxiety - anxiety and stress about performance in social situations or interactions with other people

  • Phobias (e.g. flying, injections, heights, spiders etc)

  • Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and trauma

  • Low mood and anxiety associated with a long-term physical health condition such as Chronic Pain, Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

  • Rebuilding your life after experiencing any challenging life events

CBT teaches you how to be your own therapist. You will learn different techniques that will help you with the problems you are experiencing. It’s important to practice these skills in between sessions to really get the most out of therapy. Between session work is a key part of CBT; applying what you have learnt in sessions to your everyday life is the only way to know what things work best for you and your problems.

What are CBT sessions like:

CBT sessions are typically weekly and on a one-to-one basis. In the early sessions, we will spend time understanding and ‘formulating’ your difficulties. This means that we make links between your past and present to understand how things got to be the way that they are. Once we have an understanding about where the difficulties came from and what keeps them going, we will break the problems down into small chunks to help you overcome them session by session.

People get the best out of therapy when they have a clear goal that they would like to achieve and are prepared to work on themselves in between sessions.