What is CBT?

The therapy world loves an acronym. DBT, ACT, IFS, EMDR, EFT… alphabet soup! All of these are short for different modalities of therapy. One of the more common modalities, and one that gets recommended by physicians quite a bit, is CBT, or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

What is CBT?
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy theorizes that there is an interaction between our thoughts, feelings, and actions. Additionally, it explains that many of our thoughts are directly or indirectly determined by our core beliefs. In CBT, we are working on making space for more helpful and accurate thoughts, and activating different behaviors, to impact emotions. Further along in treatment, we are also working on helping to challenge maladaptive core beliefs and create more helpful beliefs about yourself and the world.

What are core beliefs?
Core beliefs are the lenses through which we see the world. Often, we wear glasses with distorted lenses: beliefs like “I’m worthless,” “I’m unloveable,” or “I’m helpless.” We all hold negative core beliefs, and they get formed through our interactions with the world around us. Along the way, our bumps and bruises lead us to try to adapt to the world by forming beliefs that likely were needed and necessary at one point, but may have a more lasting negative impact. And, it’s likely there’s also an interaction between our experiences as well as our genetic makeup, temperament, and biology.

So is it just positive thinking?
Actually, no. I don’t know if you’ve ever had someone come up to you while you’re deeply in pain and say, “it’ll be fine, just look in the bright side,” but it’s not usually helpful. If we could turn off the sad and turn of the happy, that would awesome… but we don’t work like that. If we just try to change your thinking to sunshine and rainbows, you aren’t going to believe it, and you’re probably going to feel minimized. Instead, let’s figure out what’s true and helpful. That might not be entirely positive. It might be even just neutral. And let’s also have some significant compassion for the thoughts that you automatically have— they probably come from a belief that you built through some painful experiences.

I teach cognitive behavioral concepts and tools to help you manage symptoms like anxiety, panic, and depression, while also providing.a safe space to process your experiences. With children, I incorporate play to help them learn and practice cognitive behavioral tools, and teach parents how to practice these tools at home as well. For teens, I often incorporate tools more experientially: we might dig in to why they hold a particular thought, and work on challenging it together, or lead them in an exercise to practice a new way of thinking. I blend CBT with other process-oriented approaches to help youth and young adults manage symptoms, process their experiences, and find a way of living a life with meaning.