Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) was first founded in the 1960’s by Dr. Aaron Beck when he noticed that depressed clients often experienced a lot of negative thoughts about themselves, the world and/or the future. Today CBT is considered the ‘Gold-standard treatment’ for most mental health concerns including depression and anxiety, however the benefits of CBT are not limited to treating serious conditions. CBT is also helpful in improving relationships, work, sports or academic performance, and in addressing procrastination, perfectionism or self-esteem and self-confidence.
When people are experiencing mental health issues their main concern is often the prolonged feelings of suffering that they have often been experiencing and that is what they are hoping to change. The problem is, as I am sure you well aware, that you can’t just wish away your feelings or force yourself to feel better. Ok you might be able to bury them deep down in a box somewhere but that usually only works temporarily and can often lead to developing something like depression or anxiety. Whether it be feeling down and blue as in depression, or feeling anxious, on edge, stressed or even scared as in anxiety, panic, phobias etc. most people coming to therapy want to feel better.
CBT shows us that even though you may not be able to change your feelings directly, there are two factors that you can change to improve how you feel: changing your behaviours, or what you do, and changing your thoughts.
Wait a minute though! You might be wondering, what if it is the behaviours that are the main issue, such as engaging in compulsive behaviours as in obsessive compulsive behaviour or the misuse of substances when dealing with addictions. Well that is ok too, CBT is still very helpful in treating mental health issues related to problematic behaviours. I’ll go over this in more detail in a future blog focusing on the behavioural aspect of CBT. For now, I just wanted to introduce the basic CBT model and how it focuses on changing those two main factors, what we think and what we do to improve our mental health and well-being.
Maybe you might want to reflect on how the two factors of your thoughts and behaviours may be contributing to any issues you might be facing. Are there any negative or unhelpful thoughts or beliefs you might say to yourself? What problematic behaviours might you have? What could you swap them out to? Are there any barriers to changing these? These are the kinds of things you might start to unpack in an early session of CBT with a psychologist.
If you are looking to learn more about how CBT can benefit your mental health and well-being consider booking an appointment with a psychologist trained in CBT. If you are experiencing a mental health issue you may be eligible to access the medicare rebate which will cover some of the session cost for up to 10 calendar sessions per year plus an additional 10 group sessions.
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