Understanding Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and its use in NHS Talking Therapies
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is one of the main psychological treatments offered through NHS Talking Therapies.
CBT helps you understand how your thoughts, feelings, physical sensations and behaviours are connected, and how these can interact with situations that happen in day-to-day life.
For example, starting a new college course, beginning an internship, falling behind with work, having relationship difficulties or feeling under pressure can sometimes trigger a cycle of unhelpful thoughts, difficult feelings, physical symptoms and behaviours. These patterns can then feed into each other and keep the problem going.
CBT helps you notice these patterns and gradually find ways to respond differently.
In CBT we talk about positive cycles and negative cycles.
What can you expect from CBT?
Cognitive behavioural therapy is a practical and structured treatment supported by research showing that CBT can be effective. CBT uses a range of techniques that have been developed and studied to help people manage different mental health difficulties.
The following mental health difficulties are examples of some of the issues that practitioners at NHS Talking Therapies can help you with:
Want to learn more about CBT?
You can find further information about Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), how it works and what to expect from treatment on the NHS website.
The type of intervention you will be offered will depend on your specific needs identified after an initial assessment.
This assessment helps them understand what has been happening for you, how it is affecting your life, what kind of difficulties you may be experiencing, and what support might be most helpful.
They will usually ask you questions about things such as how your mood has been, whether you are avoiding anything, how long have been feeling unwell, who you have around you to support you, and how your difficulties are affecting your daily life.
They will ask you to complete some questionnaires which help practitioners to establish your needs at the starting point.
If you require support after your initial assessment, you will repeat those questionnaires every week.
Even if you find these questionnaires a bit annoying, or think, "I can't see the purpose of completing these every week!", you might be surprised by how much the scores can tell you and the person supporting you about your progress.
There are lots of things in life we cannot control, even if we try! And while we can sometimes solve the problems we face, that's not always possible. So, how can we help ourselves?
We call a trigger something that happens that sets off a cycle of thoughts, feelings, physical sensations and behaviours, like the one in this picture.
All of these influence one another, and often we do not notice what we are telling ourselves until our feelings become difficult to ignore.
Or we might be avoiding things we used to enjoy that are good for our wellbeing and develop unhelpful coping behaviours.
CBT can help us to:
-
Recognise how our thoughts, feelings, physical sensations and behaviours influence one another.
-
Learn to balance our thoughts, distinguishing between facts and opinions.
-
Identify and gradually change unhelpful behaviours, such as avoidance, that may provide short-term relief but keep the difficulties going.
-
Practice techniques that can help us manage uncomfortable physical sensations associated with anxiety or panic, while learning to recognise and respond differently to difficult emotions.
-
Understand our feelings, name and explore what might be behind them, how they affect us and how we can respond to them in helpful ways.
