Each week we will be sharing a tip from our school psychologist, Mrs. Rollins.

This week we are talking about – What is CBT Therapy?

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is one of the most commonly used evidence-based therapies in talk therapy because it can address a number of mental health concerns including depression, anxiety, addiction, relationship problems, eating disorders, and other serious mental health disorders. CBT can be used alone or with medications to help people.

CBT has some core principles including:

1.  Psychological problems are based on faulty or unhelpful thoughts.
2. Psychological problems are also based on learned patterns of unhelpful behavior.
3. People with psychological problems can earn better ways of coping with them, which can relieve their symptoms and help them accomplish life goals. The main work of CBT is to change thinking patterns for the individual which helps the choose to then change their behavior. This is done by recognizing distortions in thoughts (i.e. unhelpful thinking patterns) and then gathering examples or evidence from reality that would challenge those thoughts. It focuses on the capacity of the individual to change outcomes for themselves.

A session of CBT usually lasts between 30-60 minutes once a week or every other week individually or with a group. Sessions tend to focus on the current moment with the history of a psychological problem known for context of current thought processes. The course of treatment could be as little as 6 sessions or could go for 20 sessions depending on the severity of the need and the commitment to change for the individual.

Often CBT requires the person to have “homework” to practice exercises learned in sessions outside of sessions in order to make progress. These exercises require facing fears and practicing ways to cope with behaving in a different way. While the outcome may improve the individual’s life overall, there may be initial discomfort with having to change that creates a temporary increase in emotions or anxiety.

More information on CBT Therapy, A video on CBT Therapy, and information about CBT Talking Therapies can be found online.

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