Cognitive Therapy Basics

Many years ago, when I became a psychotherapist, all I knew was the traditional psychotherapy that I had learned in school, and that I had personally experienced with many different therapists and many different forms of therapy. For 18 years I practiced what I had learned, and I was never happy with the results.

I saw that people often felt better for the moment, or resolved a particular issue, but that when new issues came up, they didn’t have a process for dealing with them. In all the years of my own therapy, I had never learned a process either – a process for loving myself and taking 100% responsibility for my own feelings and needs. In fact, taking responsibility for my feelings was never a part of any of the therapies I had experienced. I had learned to express my feelings – which often turned out to be a form of control – but not how I was creating my own feelings of anxiety, depression, anger, hurt, guilt and shame.

I no longer practice traditional psychotherapy because, in my experience, it doesn’t work. For the past 23 years I have worked with clients with the Inner Bonding process. In fact, I have many psychotherapists in my practice learning this process, because they are discouraged with the results of traditional psychotherapy in their work and in their own lives.

WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOESN’T WORK

So, does psychotherapy work? It does if what you are learning about is how to connect with your own feelings and take responsibility for them; how to discover the false beliefs that are creating your painful feelings; and how to connect with a personal source of spiritual Guidance that teaches you the truth and the loving action toward yourself. It works when you are willing to learn to take loving action in your own behalf and share your love with others. It works when you are willing to stop blaming the past, your parents, your partner, society, events, or God for your suffering and learn that you are the cause of your own suffering. It works when you are willing to stop seeing yourself as a victim of others and circumstances and learn to be loving to yourself.

What does not work is spending years analyzing the past. While the past shaped our beliefs, and it is important to understand where we learned what we learned, dwelling on it is a waste of time. In my experience, if we stay current with discovering the false beliefs that cause our painful feelings, the past will become illuminated. When we realize, for example, that we spend much time and energy judging ourselves, it is easy to go into the past to see where we learned this. Did one or both of your parents judge you? Did they judge themselves? What was the role modeling you grew up with? Did either of your parents take responsibility for their feelings, or were they victims, blaming each other or you or others for their misery? It is not hard to learn about the past when we are willing to examine our current choices and behavior toward ourselves and others.

YOUR SPIRITUAL CONNECTION

Psychotherapy that does not include developing a spiritual connection does not work. Our spiritual connection is the Source we need to turn to for wisdom and comfort. In order to deal lovingly with the challenges of life, we need to know that we are not alone, and that we always have our higher Guidance to turn to for the truth and loving action toward ourselves and others.

True healing is about learning how to take full, 100% responsibility for our own feelings and needs. It is about moving out of self-abandonment and emotional dependency and into emotional freedom. When you find a therapist, facilitator or coach who helps you to do this, then you will find great benefit.



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For many people who need help with overcoming depression, anxiety, OCD or other emotional, psychological or behavioral problems, Cognitive Behavior Therapy could be the answer. Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) is suitable for anyone who is able to think and reflect on his or her thinking! Of course, this is trickier then it sounds but a good therapist can help you do this. Cognitive Behavior Therapy is particularly suitable for people who want to be active in helping themselves, as it actually teaches you tools and techniques to gain control over your problem. Many people find this a refreshing alternative to more traditional forms of counseling.

Unfortunately, (although this is changing), there are often a shortage of NHS Cognitive Therapists and you will often be put on a waiting list. If you are not working because of your depression or other problem or your ability to function in life activities is impaired, waiting is sometimes not an option.

The other choice you have to is to find a private therapist offering CBT services. Of course, there is the cost to consider and for some people weeks of expensive therapy is out of the question. CBT is a time-limited intervention (the average number of sessions required is usually between 5-15) and a good therapist will agree with you the number of sessions you are likely to require and work within this framework. This is regularly reviewed throughout the therapy process and more or less sessions may be needed, depending on your progress.

I am an occupational therapist, and I provide Cognitive Behavior Therapy in Edinburgh and via telephone consultations for people living in Hertfordshire. I believe that if you are motivated to help yourself (the will needs to be there, your therapist will support you in motivating yourself if you are depressed), if you feel you could help yourself if only you had the tools and if you are willing to practice techniques in between sessions, you can utilise Cognitive Behavior Therapy to begin the journey of recovery in as little as six one hour sessions.

In fact, I find that clients who agree to work within a six-session time-frame mostly learn the basic CBT techniques and how to apply them and are motivated by the knowledge that there is an ending to therapy. These clients will often make the most out of therapy sessions, taking an active part and practicing in between.

If you feel this approach would work for you, then you can suggest to a private therapist in your area that you would like to try to work within a six sessions time-frame. If you have a longstanding and more complex problem, then you may require longer-term input, your therapist will be able to advise you of this.

Here is an example of what clients learn on a six week 1:1 course at Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) Edinburgh:

Week 1: Introduction to CBT Model and how this relates to your problem. Recognizing the relationship between thoughts, feelings and behavior. Learning to monitor your thinking. How to identify of “Hot thoughts”

Week 2: Review of your thought diary and learning how to challenge your own unhelpful thinking, examining the evidence for and against your cognition’s and identifying information processing errors. Learning to substitute rational adaptive interpretations for biased interpretations.

Week 3. Identifying underlying core beliefs (schema). Beginning to devise ways to challenge old negative beliefs and restructure new adaptive beliefs. Designing your own behavior experiments.

Week 4-6 Cognitive and Behavioral experiments and activities as decided by therapist and client to target client’s specific difficulties. For example, learning relaxation and mindfulness techniques for anxiousness, graded exposure for avoidance, activity scheduling and activity logs to deal with inactivity and poor motivation. Self-esteem exercises and scheduling pleasurable activities for low mood.

Throughout the six week course at CBT Edinburgh, clients are required to supplement what is learnt during the sessions with homework activities and sometimes reading. Clients are usually required to keep a thought diary for the six weeks and this is reviewed along with other homework at each session.



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If you are considering having some form of therapy it can sometimes be difficult to decide which therapy is best suited to meet your needs. Most people are aware of what counseling is, but nowadays there are other options such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Neuro Linguistic programming (NLP). I am a cognitive therapist providing NLP and CBT therapy, in Hertfordshire. Often people contact me to discuss how CBT and NLP, Hertfordshire differs from counseling therapy. This article will introduce you to how these therapies differ from traditional counseling approaches.

Counseling involves meeting with a counselor and having the opportunity to explore via talking, difficulties you may be having or distress you may be experiencing. The counselors role is to listen attentively to what you are telling them in order to begin to form an understanding of your perspective of the difficulties you may be experiencing. Counseling does not involve giving advice or guiding a client to take a particular course of action. Through the process of being listened to by a counselor, who is trained to reflect and help you to clarify your problem, counseling can be a way of enabling change, more choices or of helping you release strong emotion and feeling, which you have kept bottled up or have felt unable to share with family or friends.

During counseling you are able to explore and talk freely about any aspect of your life, be it past, present or in the future, in a setting which is confidential. Counselors accept and respect their clients and provide a safe environment for the client to explore their life, relationships and themselves. Counseling can be very useful for helping people to deal with distressing emotions associated with bereavement and loss. Counseling can be very useful for you if you feel you would benefit from being listened to or feel burdened by troubles.

Cognitive approaches such as CBT and NLP are both approaches used to promote positive change in individuals. Like counseling, the therapist will treat you with respect and provide a confidential environment for you to work through your problems. Cognitive approaches are effective at alleviating emotional distress and behavioural problems. Unlike counseling, cognitive techniques can be practised by the individual and are based on the philosophy that the content of our thoughts have a major influence on our emotions and behaviour. Through cognitive therapy, it is possible to learn ways to eradicate or manage the types of thoughts you have, which means that the state of mind they sustain, such as anxiety, can be resolved. CBT and NLP are solution-focused techniques that focus on the ‘here and now’. Unlike other talking treatments, such as counseling, the focus is not on trying to find the cause of your distress (the therapist will take a full history and discuss your past but practical strategies to promote well-being in the present is the main focus) rather you will learn to improve your state of mind right now. This involves learning which factors maintain your distress or problem and learning strategies to overcome your problem which you will practice in your own time.

NLP is an intimidating name for what is a common sense, practical and effective therapy. ‘Neuro’ means brain, ‘linguistic’ relates to how we use language both to communicate with others, and within our own brain and ‘programming’ relates to how we create and use patterns of behaviour in everyday life in order to get results. We know that we experience the world through our senses and that this information is translated into thoughts. How you use this internal language in your own brain directly affects your physiology, emotions and behaviour. People tend to develop habits and patterns of using internal language that have positive or negative effects on their emotions and behaviour. NLP therapy, Hert encourages new perspectives and options in thinking, giving you more choices about your behavior and emotions, enhancing your communication and relationships and generating lasting life skills.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy focuses on how you think about a problem (cognitive) and what you do about it (behaviour). CBT can teach you how to recognise and change faulty thinking patterns. This doesn’t mean that you will always think positive thoughts. It is a way to gain control over racing repetitive thoughts, which feed anxiety and depression. CBT can help you make sense of overwhelming problems by breaking them down into achievable parts.

Both these therapy approaches are practical and focused on problem solving in order to meet your therapy goals. This means that unlike counseling, sessions are more structured and less free flowing as you move towards change with the support of your therapist. Often people will seek cognitive therapy such as CBT, Herts or NLP, Herts, when they want solutions to their problem or to move on from limiting thinking, feelings or behaviour.



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