- Intensive, time-limited, and symptom-focused psychotherapy that targets negative or inaccurate thoughts and unhelpful behaviours about oneself, others, and the future
- Operates on the idea that thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are interconnected. By challenging unhelpful thinking, we can positively influence our feelings and behaviors.
- CBT may borrow techniques from cognitive or behavior focused therapies
Cognitive → Identify, challenge, and restructure distorted thoughts, replacing them with more balanced and rational ones.
- Automatic thoughts: immediate interpretations of events, before conscious reflection
- Will influence our feelings and behaviors in any given situation
- Includes negative thoughts, dysfunctional thoughts, cognitive distortions
- Typically, the initial target of CBT because they are most modifiable
- Intermediate beliefs: Represent assumptions, rules and attitudes that shape the interpretation of events.
- Example: "If I am thin, then I will be loved by others"
- Core beliefs (schemas): Deep-seated cognitive structures that shape how individuals interpret experiences.
- Fundamental ideas/themes about oneself, others and the world
- Often develop early in life.
- Tend to be rigid, overgeneralized, and absolute.
- Most resistant to change.
- Examples: “I am unlovable”, “Everyone wants to hurt me”
- Techniques
- Thought records: help patients identify, examine, and challenge the evidence supporting their underlying thoughts and assumptions, facilitating cognitive restructuring
Behavioral → Identifying and changing behaviours that perpetuate negative thought patterns.
- Maladaptive behaviors acquired through principles of learning
- Causes or motives for maladaptive behaviors are not necessary
- Maladaptive behaviors can be modified by applying principles of learning
- Emphasis on behavioral assessment (self-monitoring), setting specific, measurable treatment goals, and measuring outcomes
- Techniques
- Behavioral activation
- Graded exposure: Used in phobias. Systematic exposure to scenarios outlined by an exposure hierarchy, relying on extinction. Decrease in conditioned fear response, following non-reinforced exposure to feared conditional stimulus.