Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a type of therapy that explores the interplay between our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It is an evidence-based and well researched form of therapy that has been shown to be effective at treating a wide variety of mental health diagnoses, including depression and anxiety disorders. Many studies show CBT to be as effective or sometimes even more effective than other forms of psychological therapy or psychiatric medications. CBT has been around and well researched for many years, and thus there is ample scientific evidence that CBT methods actually produce change in client's lives. This differs from many other therapy modalities that are not as well researched or developed.

In an nutshell, CBT is a great first-line treatment for many mental health issues because of its strong research backing. I always say that especially for anxiety disorders, if you haven't had a solid course of CBT then that is a great place to start before considering other types of therapies/treatments. In my experience, I have had many clients come to me who are starting to believe therapy doesn't work because they have tried so much, and it turns out they have never had a therapist do basic CBT with them before. Sometimes this foundational CBT knowledge can be key to symptom reduction, which allows clients to have the baseline and skills necessary to engage in different forms of treatment or dig deeper into things.

ACT, DBT, and ERP are all rooted in CBT priciples.

In my approach, and especially for clients coming in to work on anxiety disorders, OCD, and/or depression, I like to start clients with some basic CBT work and build from there as needed. Typically we start with some education around the relationship between thoughts, feelings and behaviors, and how this applies to the current struggles you're facing. I will likely give you some homework to do in addition to talking about this in sessions. 

This can look like

•  tracking anxious or depressed thoughts in a thought record

•  identifying core beliefs

• identifying core fears

• challenging unhelpful thinking patterns

• building more helpful behaviors into daily life

• and more

I'll utilize other forms of therapy, such as ACT, to assist clients in building on these foundational mental health skills. 

The best way for you to get an idea about what that will look like specifically for you is to book a free phone consultation with me - click here!

You might feel eager to know how long therapy is going to take because you want to feel better as soon as possible. I get that! 

I'm committed to helping my clients get back into their life as quickly as possible, whatever that looks like for them, and CBT is often a great approach to assist clients in not only gaining insight in therapy sessions, but gaining skills they can use daily outside of therapy to help them engage more with their life in a meaningful way. Clients typically start out meeting with me weekly, and then we step down to every other week or once a month as it makes sense based on their progress in treatment. I often suggest clients commit to at least 12 weeks of therapy as a starting point (this is also supported by research), but this can look a little different for everyone. I always like to say your symptoms didn't develop overnight so we can't expect them to go away overnight, but my hope is that each time we meet you feel you're making progress in the right direction.