Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is an approach for treating different mental health conditions. Here’s what it is and how it can help you.
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a form of psychotherapy used to treat many mental health conditions, including anxiety and depression. CBT can help you to identify negative thought patterns that affect your feelings, behaviors, and view of the world. Once you identify these patterns, you can develop coping mechanisms to change the behaviors that stem from those thoughts. Ashley Johnson, DO, and the treatment team at Colorado Recovery Solutions want you to know what CBT is and how it can help you cope with your mental health condition.
Explaining CBT
When you have depression or anxiety, you can often have negative thinking patterns such as seeing the world in black in white, overgeneralizing, or focusing on the negative and ignoring the positive. By zeroing in on what exact thoughts are causing you distress, you can start to adapt these ways of thinking and change your behavior. Some of the strategies that CBT uses include the following:
- Identifying negative thoughts: This strategy involves taking time to learn your negative thought patterns, which may take some introspection
- Practicing new skills: You might learn what situations trigger certain thought patterns and how to deal with them
- Goal-setting: Your provider can help you to come up with short-term and long-term goals to help you overcome your negative thought patterns
- Problem-solving: Learning problem-solving skills can help you identify those that arise from the stress of life and come up with proper solutions for them
- Self-monitoring: Monitoring your thoughts and behaviors, and reporting them to your provider can help you both identify a treatment that works best for you
Your provider may also encourage you to journal, role-play, try out relaxation techniques, and use mental distractions.
How CBT can help
CBT is one of the most researched therapy approaches. Experts consider it one of the most helpful techniques for those struggling with mental health conditions- especially when used in combination with TMS, Ketamine infusion, Spravato (esketamine nasal spray), and medications when needed. CBT can help you to develop better interpersonal relationships, form new habits, develop good coping skills, reduce stress, shift away from negative thinking, and help you learn how to express your feelings. The ultimate goal of CBT is to teach you that even though you can’t control everything in your environment, you can control how you react to and think about the world around you.
If you’d like to learn more about CBT or think you’d benefit from this treatment approach, contact our offices located in Colorado Springs, Colorado and Monument, Colorado to schedule an appointment so we can give you more information. You can do this by calling or using our online appointment request form today.
