Cognitive Behaviour Therapy Sydney
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What Is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)?
Cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) is a talk therapy method. It is the most commonly used type of psychotherapy to treat a wide range of psychological issues. In simple terms, it was created with the notion that the way you think affects the way you feel.
To unpack that a bit further, essentially, the concept is this – your core beliefs, thoughts and feelings affect the way you behave.
CBT helps a person challenges their beliefs and attitudes so they can be more flexible and create new strategies to solve problems and better cope in life.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy can be very effective in treating issues such as anxiety and depression for example. Studies have even shown that it can be just as effective as treating someone using medications.
What Issues Can CBT Help With?
Cognitive behaviour therapy can help with a wide range of issues and is generally used to treat most problems. Some include:
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Stress
- Anger
- Addictions
- PTSD & Trauma
- Eating Disorders & Body image concerns
- OCD
- Personality Disorders like borderline personality disorder
- Marriage & relationship issues
- Phobias
- Erectile Dysfunction
- Self Esteem & Self Worth
- ADHD
- Sleep Problems
Cognitive behaviour therapy can even be effective in helping with physical pain like chronic pain, and people fighting illness. With intense physical pain, issues such as anxiety and depression can arise due to thoughts and emotions such as judgement. CBT can offer tools such as getting involved in activities and seeing friends and family to distract them from the pain. As a result, they feel happier and better which can therefore blunt the pain.
How Does CBT Work?
The basic premise of cognitive-behavioural therapy is that it will help you to recognise the patterns of thinking (cognition) and behaviours that cause you problems. The therapy will then teach you practical ways to acquire more helpful and healthy habits, thus changing negative and unhelpful thinking.
CBT can be done in a way that is mindful as well as practical. A mindful approach for example could be something similar to that of a therapy called acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) which is based on CBT. It involves witnessing feelings and thoughts that come up, accepting them and not reacting to them or trying to remove or change them.
Exposure Therapy (Form of CBT)
An example of a practical form of cognitive behavioural therapy is called exposure therapy. It can be used to treat issues like anxiety for example.
The best way out of anxiety is through it. This is the core message of exposure therapy. It is designed to help people overcome their fears.
During exposure therapy, a person identifies a fear they want to conquer such as a fear of public speaking. Then, they come up with tasks they can do to overcome that fear. They start with easy tasks first, for example, watching public speaking videos on youtube or doing a speech by themselves at home. They then move on to tasks that are of a medium difficulty. This could be something like performing a speech in front of family members, before moving on to harder tasks like performing a speech in front of strangers.
Exposure can be done in different ways. Some people start with the easy tasks first, before working up to the medium and difficult ones. Others jump straight into the difficult ones first. Neither approach is better. Although the second and more difficult approach tends to get results faster.
Exposure therapy has been proven to be effective in treating phobias, social anxiety panic attacks, and worry.
It works because it desensitises us to our fears. It’s like getting into a cold pool: it’s quite shocking and uncomfortable at first, but we gradually adjust to it (if we stay in it and don’t get out). Exposure can also teach us important lessons about ourselves. It teaches us that we can be brave when we chose to be. It also teaches us that we can take risks and endure discomfort when needed.
What To Expect With CBT
With time the use of CBT can help a person use logic to overcome distorted beliefs and thoughts and replace them with helpful alternatives. CBT has been proven to successfully treat a large range of psychological issues over prolonged periods of therapy.
CBT therapy Sydney - This is one of the main methods we use to help our clients. Get in touch below if you are looking for Psychologists that use CBT in Sydney or online.
Get Help With Cognitive Behaviour Therapy In Sydney or Online
If you need cognitive behavioural therapy in Sydney or online, we are clinical psychologists in North Sydney who treat a range of issues using CBT. Get in touch to find out more.
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