Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy or CBT is a general term encompassing psychotherapy treatments focusing on the effect that our thoughts have on our feelings and behaviours.  Although a relatively new model for treatment, it has shown tremendous promise.  A significant benefit of this type of therapy is that it often requires much fewer sessions than other methods.  Instead of spending years in traditional counselling, CBT often only requires sixteen treatments on average.  Also, its main principle is that our internal thoughts, not external people and situations, are the cause for our negative feelings and behaviours.  This means that we have direct control over our situation and can therefore heal ourselves by changing our patterns of thinking.

The difficulty with CBT is that our ways of thinking are often so deeply ingrained that it can sometimes be difficult to break out of this rut.  For this reason, it is sometimes combined with other types of therapy, such as clinical hypnotherapy or self-hypnosis, for increased effectiveness.  By employing hypnosis along with cognitive behavioural therapy, the negative thoughts can be addressed on a more fundamental level.  With the subconscious now delivering more constructive thinking patterns, the work in your counselling sessions should be easier to implement.

As CBT is essentially a combination of both behaviour and cognitive therapy, clinicians vary quite a bit in terms of their approach.  Although they are all working towards the same basic outcome, some therapists focus more on restructuring thoughts while others focus a bit more on the behaviours.  Additionally, some utilize this method in one-on-one therapy, while others use it in group settings.  Despite the different applications of this form of counselling, there have been numerous studies documenting its overall success.

Because of its combination approach, CBT can be used to treat a wide variety of conditions.  In the past, solely behavioural based therapies were effective in treating conditions such as phobias and obsessive compulsive disorders.  However, they still left much to be desired for other conditions, like depression.  On the other hand, cognitive therapy, although helpful for depression, came up short in treating other conditions.  When combined, these two forms of counselling led to what is now the most accepted method of treatment.  This synergistic approach will undoubtedly continue to evolve.  Because of its significant influence in the world of psychology, cognitive behavioural therapy will most likely merge with other approaches, just as it is starting to be done with hypnosis.  This will hopefully result in successfully treating even more conditions.

Tom Smith, common name, uncommon therapy.