Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) encompasses a broad range of psychological interventions. In fact, DBT (described above) falls under the umbrella of CBT therapies. In CBT treatments, the clinician assesses the interrelations of one’s thoughts, behaviors, emotions, and current environmental context with the aim of understanding and targeting for intervention the particular constellation of “controlling” mechanisms that are maintaining the individual’s current difficulties. CBT is active, directive, and collaborative. The therapy is focused on solutions in the present more than it is on past origins of one’s problems.

Cognitive interventions in CBT focus on the role of one’s thoughts and interpretations as they contribute to and maintain negative emotional states and depressed mood. Thus, cognitive interventions often function to help the individual “check the facts” regarding the accuracy or effectiveness of one’s assumptions, interpretations, and expectations.

Behavioral interventions include a number of useful tools ranging from exposure tasks, in which the client learns to face feared objects or situations, usually in a gradual fashion; to problem-solving and communication skills training; to behavioral activation strategies for depression, which target the tendency of the depressed person to isolate socially and to withdraw from previously enjoyed activities.

More recently, CBT clinicians have employed mindfulness- and acceptance-based interventions. These approaches emphasize the potentially problematic and avoidant ways that individuals respond to their unpleasant thoughts, feelings, and experiences, for instance, by selectively attending to threats, responding with judgment or self-criticism, or demanding that their experience be other than it is. Thus, mindfulness and acceptance interventions aim to promote an improved awareness of one’s internal experience, with a stance of openness to the experience and without judging or avoiding it—however unpleasant it may be.

To submit a request to participate in CBT-oriented treatment see the new client inquiry form here.