It is possible you have heard of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) before. CBT is one of the more heavily researched and vetted therapeutic approaches in psychology. In a multitude of clinical studies it has shown positive outcomes with those who have participated in its research.
CBT is a helpful treatment for many mental health problems. These include:
Depression
Anxiety
Phobias
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Sleep problems
Disordered eating issues
Obsessive-compulsive Disorder (OCD)
Substance use disorders
Bipolar Disorders
Schizophrenia
Sexual disorders
(Mayo Clinic 2019)
In addition, CBT helps with simple, everyday habit changes such as improving time management, interrupting and dysfunctional relationship patterns, better improving emotional regulation, improving a person’s social life, and a myriad of other issues because of its nearly endless creative applications for our lives.
To describe it as simply as possible, it is a framework that can help increase the awareness of our own (a) thoughts, (b) emotions, (c) bodily signals, and (d) behaviors or actions. With that information we can better understand how they influence each other and have a major impact on the course of our lives. Not having an understanding of these powerful interactions can doom us to repetitive dysfunctional patterns we are unaware of.
CBT can also be helpful in understanding the behavior of other people in your lives by applying the same principles. This in turn can increase empathy for another, changing how we think about them, feel about them, and thus behaving differently toward them. However, I am getting ahead of myself now.
In a later blog entry, I will further explain how the CBT process works and give specific examples of the framework in action.
If you are ready to get started on learning more about how it may improve your own life, contact me at 541-604-8822 or info@headwaterstherapy.com.
References
Mayo Clinic staff. “Cognitive behavioral therapy.” Mayo Clinic, www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/cognitive-behavioral-therapy/about/pac-20384610. Accessed 9 Dec. 2019.