Brief Overview
What Happens in CBT
Brief Overview
Cognitive Behaviour Therapy is based on the fact that our thoughts, beliefs and ideas affect the way we feel and act towards ourselves and others in daily life and that many of our psychological problems are caused and maintained by our own unhelpful beliefs and assumptions about ourselves and others around us. These beliefs and assumptions are learned through our past experience. At the time when we learned them they may have helped us cope with our experiences but now they may no longer be helpful and often hinder our effective functioning.
What happens in CBT is the therapist and the client work together to achieve an understanding of:
- The client's beliefs and assumptions about themselves, others and the world
- How these beliefs affect the client's current behaviors, feelings and daily functioning.
The client and the therapist will then work together to identify goals for treatment.
The focus of CBT is mainly on the here and now and the aim is to enable the client to generate solutions to their problems that are more helpful than their current ways of coping.