Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

Two wooden lounge chairs on a sandy beach facing the ocean with waves and a cloudy sky.

Cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, is all about understanding the relationship between your thoughts, feelings, and actions and changing one or some of those to better navigate your life. The idea here is that each of these three pieces are at play in someone’s life and interact with one another. If you wake up and you think “Today will be terrible”, you may feel sad and defeated and may not find the energy to get yourself out of bed; here, your thoughts influence your feelings and actions. If on the other hand you introduce yourself to someone and immediately feel anxious, you may think “I’m doing something wrong” and may have a hard time getting your words out; here, your feelings influence your thoughts and actions.

CBT is focused on identifying the place where one of these three areas isn’t serving you well and learning new skills and strategies to change that. This skill development can include developing strategies to reconsider how you think (called cognitive restructuring), learning how to more effectively contend with situations or memories that cause anxiety or distress (called exposure therapy), or helping you figure out how to increase good feelings by changing how you spend your day (called behavioral activation). CBT is very much focused on the ‘here and now’ and changing how you move through the world, but I also want to understand the history that led to what’s giving you trouble so I can make sure these strategies fit your circumstances.

CBT is a bit of an umbrella term that describes a number of evidence-based, first-line treatments for various psychological challenges. The various treatments that I am an expert in using include:

  • Interoceptive exposure to address panic disorder

  • Exposure and response prevention (EX-RP) to address obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)

  • Prolonged exposure (PE) and cognitive processing therapy (CPT) to address post-traumatic stress disorder

  • In-vivo exposure to address several challenges, including social anxiety disorder

  • Behavioral activation to address mood issues including major depressive disorder (MDD)

  • Cognitive restructuring to address various challenges, including mood, anxiety, and trauma issues, among others

A wide view of a sandy beach with turquoise waves crashing onto the shore under a partly cloudy sky.
A wide view of a sandy beach with turquoise waves crashing onto the shore under a partly cloudy sky.