Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Techniques

It might be a place where they have fond memories (their “happy place”) or somewhere they always dreamed of going. CBT has evolved quite a bit since Aaron Beck and Albert Ellis first introduced the concept in the 1960s. Several other therapies with CBT roots have emerged, most notably Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). Your therapist encourages you to talk about your thoughts and feelings and what’s troubling you.

Identifying Negative Thoughts / Cognitive Distortions

• The researchers suggest that intensive one-on-one in-person therapy may garner better results.
• Your therapist may ask you to list negative thoughts that occurred to you between sessions, as well as positive thoughts you can choose instead.
• Exposure therapy has been shown to be effective in treating anxiety disorders, such as phobias, OCD, and PTSD.
• Therapists can set an example by asking these questions of their clients, but ultimately, the client should learn to question their own thoughts.
• Trusted by over 50,000 clinicians, Blueprint automates progress notes, drafts smart treatment plans, and surfaces actionable insights before, during, and after every client session.

When writing a case conceptualization, always keep in mind the timeline of significant events or factors in the examinee’s life. Prognosis is favorable, with anticipated benefit apparent within 12 sessions of CBT. Many clinicians provide diagnoses in formal psychiatric terms, per the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) or Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). Some clinicians will state a diagnosis in less formal terms that do not coincide exactly with ICD-10 or DSM-5 codes. What is arguably more important is that a diagnostic impression, formal or not, gives a clear sense of who the person is and the support they need to reach their goals.

How to Manage Cognitive Distortions

About 40-50% of your total improvement typically occurs in the first quarter of treatment. Then gains become more gradual – not because therapy stops working, but because you’re building lasting skills rather than just reducing crisis symptoms. ✓ Anxiety disordersPanic disorder, generalized anxiety, social anxiety, and specific phobias respond particularly well, with 60-70% experiencing meaningful symptom reduction. If you’ve spent years attempting to eliminate anxiety, stop intrusive thoughts, or force yourself to feel differently – ACT offers a fundamentally different approach.

Things to Include in Your Case Formulation

Keeping a thought record, for instance, is a form of therapeutic journaling. Thought records ask you to record your thoughts and subsequent feelings when you encounter a specific situation. With some forms of CBT, such as exposure therapy, you may need to face situations you’d rather avoid, such as airplanes if you have a fear of flying. However, in some situations, these same sort of assumptions can be harmful.

Answering and reflecting on these questions can help your clients challenge the beliefs that are causing them harm. For a thorough explanation of how cognitive restructuring can apply to CBT for anxiety, check out this video. Applied correctly, it can help clients learn to stop automatically trusting their thoughts as representative of reality and begin testing them for accuracy (Mills et al., 2008). This process offers a way to help people reduce their stress through cultivating more functional thought habits Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and building positive self-talk (Mills et al., 2008).