Cognitive Therapy Basics

If you feel that you could manage your depression, anxiety, OCD or stress if only you had the tools, then why not try a good self-help book. This is a cheaper option for those who cannot afford private therapy or give those waiting to see an NHS Cognitive Behavioural Therapists (CBT), the foundation to begin to manage their own mental-health.

There is wealth of self-help books out there and it can be overwhelming deciding which ones will be most useful. I regularly prescribe reading and practical exercises taken from self-help manuals as part of CBT and NLP treatment at my therapy practice in Edinburgh. In this article, I list and describe some of the books that I have found most useful in relation to specific problems, in a bid to make choosing the book for you a bit easier!

For Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

My book of choice is “Overcoming Obsessive Compulsive Disorder – A self-help guide using Cognitive Behavioral Techniques” by David Veale and Rob Willson. This book is a clear and practical step-by-step guide to regaining control of your OCD and your life! The book contains a CBT approach that is specifically aimed at OCD. This is very important since some CBT approaches used to treat other problems such as anxiety and depression can be unhelpful when applied to OCD. This book is applicable to OCD in it’s varying forms, e.g. for those who experience pure obsessions, for those who carry out internal mental rituals and for those who display compulsive behaviours. What I like about this book is that it is very frank and can help to show the person with OCD that they need not be ashamed of the content of their intrusive thoughts, images and urges. Some of the people I work with using CBT in Edinburgh, have found that they need help in applying the book from a therapist.

For Depression

I recommend ” The Cognitive Behavioral Workbook for Depression” by William Knaus. This book combines Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy and common sense in an easy to follow format that includes practical exercises that can help you find your way out of a depressive state. By practicing the techniques presented in the book, you can learn the skills to defeat depressive thinking. The book takes into account all factors related to being depressed that can make any action difficult and gives you tips on how to deal with procrastination, lack of energy and motivation.

I also recommend “The Mindful way Through Depression – Freeing Yourself From Chronic Unhappiness” by Williams, Teasdale, Segal and Zinn. Mindfulness is a technique that has its origins in Buddhism but that is used without any religious connotations within the field of cognitive therapy to help people learn to break the cycle of mental habits such as rumination and self-blame which perpetuate depression. Mindfulness involves disengaging from this type of mental activity. This book is written in the format of a program and includes a CD to follow of guided mindfulness meditation practices.

Mindfulness techniques are very useful for anxiety and OCD disorders also.

For Anxiety and Stress

A useful book that I use with people seeking CBT therapy, Edinburgh is “The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook” by Edmund Bourne. This is a really comprehensive book that gives step-by-step guidance in overcoming anxiety and covers various factors including relaxation and meditation skills, exercise, coping with panic, dealing with negative self-talk and irrational beliefs, visualisation, self-esteem, medication, nutrition and more.

Finally a book that it more general but useful for anxiety, depression or stress is “Mind Over Mood – Change the Way you Feel by Changing The Way You Think” by Greenberger and Padesky This is a simple to follow book that really targets illogical and irrational thinking styles that drive depression and anxiety. It includes worksheets to follow.

Finally, its important to remember when considering a book to begin self-help that like therapy, self-help books and the exercises they direct you to do, must be practiced diligently and consistently in order to work.



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Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is effective in helping people to overcome panic disorders. I use CBT at my practice in Edinburgh and have found it very useful in treating agoraphobia, particularly when used in conjunction with Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP). This article details some of the ways in which CBT and NLP are used during NLP Edinburgh to help clients achieve freedom from agoraphobia.

1. Cognitive Therapy – At NLP and CBT Edinburgh, people are supported to identify and challenge information processing errors that maintain anxiety. Panic attacks and anxiety are initiated by unhelpful thinking. Thoughts alone do not cause anxiety, but believing negative thoughts does lead to anxiety. During CBT and NLP sessions, clients are supported to question the evidence for and against their interpretations.

2. Behavioural Therapy – This is the doing part of cognitive behaviour therapy and in the case of agoraphobia, the therapist will support you in identifying a hierarchy of goals related to going out. The therapist will be aiming for you to become desensitized to going out activities that you currently fear. The therapist accompanies you into the community where appropriate.

3. Learning cognitive strategies to master panic – clients that come for NLP and CBT Edinburgh are taught techniques to practice during homework tasks. You are supported in becoming effective at using these techniques when you are feeling panicky.

4. Practising – You will get out of therapy what you put in and mastering your panic will involve you carrying out practice in between sessions. Typical practice assignments include keeping a ‘Beating Panic’ Journal’, carrying out practice related to your ‘going out and about’ goal and creating a routine that involves empowering ‘calm’ activities. You will also be required to practice any coping techniques taught to you by the therapist, such as using your anchors (see below).

5. NLP Communication Model – Clients are taught NLP clean language techniques. This means learning to think and communicate with your self in a way that supports being safe, confident, and relaxed.

6. NLP Change Techniques – NLP, which is an understanding of how we code experience in our brain, has a range of techniques, which can be used to reduce or eradicate the intensity of remembered experiences. Its possible to take an unpleasant memory, examine how it is coded and then make changes so that it is no longer unpleasant and the emotion can just drain away. If you suffer from unpleasant memories or fears, an NLP therapist can help you deal with this, via submodality work. These treatments are available from my therapy practice, where I use NLP Edinburgh. You can also learn to be aware of the impact of how you code experience yourself.

7. Anchoring For Emotional Balance – Anchors are naturally occurring associations between an external stimulus and a behavioural or emotional response. They occur because the human mind constantly seeks to make sense of the environment by looking for patterns and associations between things. People learn to make negative associations between things. In the case of agoraphobia this may be associating going for a walk to the corner shop with fear and panic. NLP deliberately makes use of anchors in order to empower people to have control over their emotional states. There are specific NLP techniques in which a stimulus is used to trigger and link an emotional state. The stimulus is usually external and may be a sound or touch. Through these techniques it is possible to for an individual to build up a resource of positive emotional states, which they can access in any situation in which they need them. It is also possible to completely collapse negative anchors so that external stimuli that cause you negative emotional states will no longer be a problem.

These are just some of the ways that NLP and CBT Edinburgh can be effective at empowering people to overcome agoraphobia and other panic disorders.



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OCD is a common problem that can be overcome with CBT, either by using a CBT based self-help book or via more intensive therapist support, depending on its severity.

OCD is characterised by obsessions and compulsions. An obsession is a persistent thought, image or urge that comes into your mind and sets off feelings of anxiety and distress. These obsessions occur frequently, are intrusive and not easy to get rid of. For example, common obsessions in OCD include, thoughts or images of violence, blasphemous thoughts, fear of contamination, sexual thoughts or images and excessive concern with health. In OCD a compulsion is an act or ritual that is repeated and repeated in reaction to an obsessive thought. A compulsion may be an behavioural act such as repeatedly checking the door is locked or a mental act such as saying something or picturing something to make the distressing feeling, associated with the obsessive thought feel better.

Usually when I treat people for OCD at my CBT therapy practice in Edinburgh, I find that the method that the person with OCD uses to cope with or solve their OCD, is the very factor keeping their OCD going. This is because people with OCD commonly give a special meaning or powerfulness to their obsessive thoughts, usually that having the thought will lead to something bad happening to themselves or others. As a consequence, the person will usually mistakenly believe that the way to solve the obsessive thought is to try to block it or carry out a compulsion to “undo” the thought. What we know is that our brains work in such a way that trying to block a thought will only make it more frequent and whilst carrying out a compulsion will make the person feel better initially, it will actually feed the OCD so that the problem keeps going.

This can be likened to having “just one puff” to get rid of a craving for nicotine when trying to give up smoking. Whilst for a short period the craving is dealt with (distressing feeling in OCD), it actually leads to stronger and increased cravings.

When working with clients at my CBT therapy practice, Edinburgh who have OCD a lot of time is spent identifying the persons OCD maintaining factors. Typical factors that keep OCD going include: giving thoughts more meaning then they deserve, misunderstanding about why you have the particular obsessions you have, avoidance and safety seeking behaviour (avoiding anxiety triggered by the thought by blocking or undoing the thought with a compulsion, avoiding situations that you associate with the obsessive thought, asking others for reassurance), giving too much time and attention to your obsessions, trying to control your thoughts and thinking biases.

CBT therapy, Edinburgh, works by helping the person unravel the factors that maintain their OCD in order to build a different solution to overcome it. Treatment will then involve exposure and without responding, with the support of your therapist. This basically involves accepting your obsessive thoughts in such a way that you learn to tolerate the anxiety which accompanies them without carrying out any compulsions. Eventually the anxiety naturally fades so that you will be able to experience the thought without finding it distressing. This is called habituation.



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One of the most common reasons that clients seek treatment at my NLP and CBT practice Hertfordshire is for anxiety and panic related problems, such as generalised anxiety disorder, panic attacks and agoraphobia. Often, panic attacks are associated with other conditions such as generalised anxiety, phobia or depression. In this case, the appropriate course of action is to address these underlying issues first – the panic attacks usually subside, as these other issues are resolved.

Having worked in the NHS as a senior mental Health Occupational Therapist, I tended to come into contact with people experiencing what is considered to be severe mental health problems. It is these people that the mental health system and services are geared towards supporting and rightly so. However, until entering private practice, I was unaware of the number of people living day to day with the often, debilitating effects of panic and anxiety disorders, with what appears to be, little or no support from overstretched NHS services.

NICE (National Institute for Clinical Excellence) recommends Cognitive Therapy for the treatment of anxiety, panic attacks and panic disorder. Their research has shown it to be more effective than any drug treatments. Therapies such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) involve the patient seeing a therapist on a one-to-one basis for hour-long sessions. The total treatment course is typically between 6 and 12 sessions, with one session a week.

During NLP and CBT Herts, I work with people experiencing anxiety, panic attacks and agoraphobia, usually over an 8 week period, seeing them once a week. This is flexible, and more or less sessions are carried out depending on the unique need of the individual. Obviously reducing the cost of treatment for the client is to be aimed for, particularly as I often work with people who have stopped working due to their problem.

In between sessions the client is given homework to complete. Support and encouragement via email is provided, if required.

What will you achieve through having NLP and CBT Herts?

1. No More stinky thinking!

At CBT and NLP, Herts, people are supported to identify and change the distorted thinking patterns that maintain anxiety. Behind panic attacks and anxiety are negative thoughts. These thoughts alone cannot cause anxiety, but your belief in the truth of these thoughts, can cause anxiety. The therapist works with the client to reduce belief in such thoughts, this in turn reduces anxiety.

2.Building your hierarchy

This involves desensitizing your anxiety through gradual exposure to your feared situations. The therapist offers practical support and activities may be carried out in the community, during these sessions.

3. Learning strategies to master your anxiety and panic

Clients that come for NLP and CBT Herts are taught specific techniques that can be used and that must be practiced in between sessions. The challenge is using these techniques during times when you are experiencing heightened panic and clients are supported to become competent at this. Learning strategies can involve NLP techniques, such as sub-modality work, anchoring and clean language techniques.

4. Changing your focus

Just one of the things that you will learn is to change your focus towards what you do want, rather then what you don’t want. One of the things I have found is that people with anxiety and panic problems invest a large amount of their time trying to avoid and move away from anxiety and panic. This is understandable. However, what you will learn is that you are actually focusing on anxiety and panic, merely by the language and internal dialogue that you are using. You will be taught to focus on what you are trying to achieve and will immediately experience benefits in how you feel emotionally.

I have found that clients that are really committed to mastering their anxiety and panic can experience the change they desire, by sticking to the 8 week CBT/NLP programme in Hertfordshire. It is rewarding for me to work with people with these problems because the results are usually very positive.



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Health anxiety refers to having a preoccupation with a fear of having a serious illness or disease, despite medical investigations that show the person is healthy. A person with health anxiety will often misinterpret normal physical sensations as a sign of serious illness. For example, flu-like symptoms may be misinterpreted as a sign of HIV and tests that indicate the person is HIV negative may be discounted as unreliable.

Health anxiety can be treated effectively with CBT therapy, Edinburgh. The approach used is very similar to that used for treating Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. This involves helping the person with the anxiety to realise that the current way they are dealing with the worrying health thought and feeling, actually keeps the problem going. Factors that keep the problem going include: trying to block the thought, giving health thoughts over -importance such as “It means I will never get better”, constantly seeking reassurance from others, reassuring self with certain phrases or thoughts, looking on the Internet, seeing numerous health practitioners, stopping life activities and giving the thought lots of attention.

CBT therapy, Edinburgh can help you to accept that in fact your problem is not that you have a health problem and must constantly check whether this problem is real, but that your problem is that you worry too much about your health and that this is what’s keeping your anxiety going.

A CBT therapist, Edinburgh, will help you become habituated to your anxious health thoughts, which basically means learning to accept your thoughts, let them come and welcome them in. They are just thoughts, not the truth or a prediction of your future. Accepting and letting our thoughts in, will trigger more anxiety at first but if you practice this regularly then your anxiety will naturally fade. This is called exposure therapy and must be done alongside a technique called response prevention, which means not seeking reassurance or trying to make the thoughts feel better!

Practising a form of meditation called mindfulness can help you develop the tools to accept unpleasant thoughts and feelings without trying to change them. This acceptance will mean that you will be able to overcome your problem. It’s the worry that is keeping it going.



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Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is considered to be extremely effective in helping people to overcome panic disorders, and this can usually be achieved within 8 sessions. I use CBT at my practice in Hertfordshire and have found it very useful in treating agoraphobia, particularly when used in conjunction with a newer cognitive therapy, Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP). This article details some of the ways in which CBT and NLP are used during NLP Herts to help clients achieve freedom from agoraphobia.

1. Cognitive Therapy – At NLP and CBT Herts, people are supported to identify and change the distorted thinking patterns that maintain anxiety. Behind panic attacks and anxiety are negative thoughts. These thoughts alone cannot cause anxiety, but the belief that they are true does cause anxiety. The therapist works with the client to reduce belief in such thoughts, this in turn reduces anxiety.

2. Behavioural Therapy – This involves desensitizing your anxiety through gradual exposure to your feared situations. The therapist offers practical support and activities may be carried out in the community, during these sessions.

3. Learning cognitive techniques to beat your panic – clients that come for NLP and CBT Herts are taught specific techniques that can be used and that must be practiced in between sessions. The challenge is using these techniques during times when you are experiencing panic and clients are supported to become competent at this. Of course, once clients are competent they become panic free!

4. Practising – You will get out of therapy what you put in and mastering your panic will involve you carrying out practice in between sessions. Typical practice assignments include keeping a ‘Beating Panic’ Journal’, carrying out practice related to your ‘going out and about’ goal and creating a routine that involves empowering ‘calm’ activities. You will also be required to practice any coping techniques taught to you by the therapist, such as using your anchors (see below).

5. NLP Communication Model – Clients are taught NLP clean language techniques. This means learning to think and communicate with your self in a way that supports being safe, confident, and relaxed.

6. NLP Change Techniques – NLP, which is an understanding of how we code experience in our brain, has a range of techniques, which can be used to reduce or eradicate the intensity of remembered experiences. Its possible to take an unpleasant memory, examine how it is coded and then make changes so that it is no longer unpleasant and the emotion can just drain away. If you suffer from unpleasant memories or fears, an NLP therapist can help you deal with this, via submodality work. These treatments are available from my therapy practice, where I use NLP Herts. You can also learn to be aware of the impact of how you code experience yourself.

7. Anchoring For Emotional Balance – Anchors are naturally occurring associations between an external stimulus and a behavioural or emotional response. They occur because the human mind constantly seeks to make sense of the environment by looking for patterns and associations between things. People learn to make negative associations between things. In the case of agoraphobia this may be associating going for a walk to the corner shop with fear and panic. NLP deliberately makes use of anchors in order to empower people to have control over their emotional states. There are specific NLP techniques in which a stimulus is used to trigger and link an emotional state. The stimulus is usually external and may be a sound or touch. Through these techniques it is possible to for an individual to build up a resource of positive emotional states, which they can access in any situation in which they need them. It is also possible to completely collapse negative anchors so that external stimuli that cause you negative emotional states will no longer be a problem.

These are just some of the ways that NLP and CBT Herts can be effective at empowering people to overcome agoraphobia and other panic disorders.



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