What Is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy? - Types, Techniques & Benefits

Mental health and well-being have become major requirements in recent times. Among various psychotherapeutic techniques, cognitive behavioural therapy has gained significance for being an excellent way of helping handle negative influences on behaviour and emotions. In addition, it is a great way of dealing with various mental health issues, like depression, anxiety and eating disorders.

Do you wish to find out more about cognitive behavioural therapy? Then, this article will give you a comprehensive guide regarding the same.

Cognitive behavioural therapy is a type of talk therapy (psychotherapy) to improve your mental health. It can be effective for recognising negative and unhelpful thoughts and behaviours. These issues might arise with growing stress, anxiety, alcohol abuse and other mental health issues.

According to clinical and psychological researchers, CBT can significantly improve functioning and quality of life. It can also help you explore how your emotions and thoughts might influence your actions. Then, the therapist can use these patterns to recommend ways to induce more positive thoughts and behaviours.

As per clinical research, CBT effectively deals with mental health issues. Therefore, you can consider this therapy if you suffer from conditions like stress, depression, personality disorders, eating disorders, OCD, etc.

If you feel that your mental health issues are influencing your activities and behaviours, you can go for CBT. This therapy effectively identifies the negativities and irrationalities in the thought and behaviour patterns. Therefore, you can consider this therapy if you feel excessive negative feelings or behaviour patterns.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to psychotherapy. Therefore, it depends on the type of mental health issue and its severity. For example, if the therapist feels that behavioural patterns affect your activities, they are likely to suggest CBT.

CBT can improve mental health while controlling negative thoughts and activities. Here are the reasons you should consider it over other types of psychotherapy:

• CBT is a short-term therapy. Therefore, it usually takes much less time to treat your mental health issues than other approaches.
• This therapy uses some of the most practical and useful approaches that help you get a hold of your mental health.
• Communication and behaviour analysis are great ways to identify mental health issues. It does not require complicated tests and exams.
• Often, medication does not work in improving mental health. CBT, on the other hand, is a customised approach where the therapy understands and caters to the specific requirements of patients.
• It allows individuals to cope with their lives and learn better ways to behave and act.

CBT includes various methods and techniques for treating patients. As it takes a customised approach, there can be multiple types of this treatment. However, here are a few common types of cognitive behavioural therapy.

1. Cognitive Therapy

This therapy mainly focuses on communication with the patients to analyse their behaviour and mentality. It helps to identify any changes or distortions in their thought patterns, emotional responses, and behaviours. Then, the therapists use these to understand the reasons behind the changes and come up with treatments.

2. Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)

This follows a similar approach to the previous one. However, these are specifically used to identify patients' destructive or disturbing thoughts and behaviours. The therapists try to analyse these behaviours to identify their sources. They then use treatment strategies like emotional regulation and mindfulness to reduce them.

3. Multimodal Therapy

According to this approach, one can treat any psychological disorder with the help of seven different but interconnected modalities. These include cognition, effect, behaviour, sensation, interpersonal factors, imagery, and drug/biological considerations. The therapists try to categorise patient behaviours according to these modalities and try to treat them.

4. Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT)

This therapy approach aims at identifying irrational beliefs among patients. Therapists mainly try to challenge these thoughts and beliefs. They communicate with the patients to explain the problems with these thoughts and try to change them effectively.

source: mylifepsychologists

Now, you must be curious to know the various techniques in cognitive behavioural therapy. Therapists usually set these techniques after understanding the problems of the patients and the severity of these issues. Some common methods are as follows:

• Analysing Thought and Behaviour Patterns: With this technique, therapists ensure to interact freely with the patients to identify their thought and behaviour patterns. Their goal here is to identify any negativity in this regard which might be contributing to maladaptive behaviours. This is particularly challenging for therapists when dealing with people who struggle with introspection. These discussions give patients time for self-discovery and insights into their mental health status.
• SMART Goal Setting: Setting goals can be a great technique of CBT. Therapists allow patients to evaluate their mental health issues and help them set short-term and long-term goals for improving the same. Here, SMART goals can be more logical. It ensures that the goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. These help patients maintain strict routines and improve their mental health quickly.
• Self-Reflection and Monitoring: This method lets patients share their behaviours, symptoms, or experiences over time with the therapist. To keep track of these, they need to indulge in self-reflection and monitoring. Here, they have the role of maintaining diaries or journals to update any significant event or changes in behaviour constantly. It is particularly useful for people dealing with eating or personality disorders, as their mental states change based on situations. Therapists can review the notes and decide on treatments accordingly.
• Thought Recording: This approach is somewhat similar to the previous one. However, it requires the patients to record their raw opinions on certain events and incidents instead of writing. When writing, they will likely forget or skip certain details while reflecting upon them later. This approach tries to avoid this issue by encouraging the patients to record their thoughts regarding an incident immediately after it occurs. It helps therapists to understand their exact thought processes and patterns.
• Guided Questioning: As the name suggests, the therapists use this approach to ask detailed questions to the patients. They might also ask them to fill out questionnaires. These will help them better understand their current assumptions regarding themselves and other people. Then, the therapist can develop strategies to change or modify the same.
• Cognitive Restructuring: This approach allows the therapists to take time to analyse any cognitive deformities in your thoughts. For example, some common distortions might include jumping to conclusions, black-and-white thinking, or catastrophising. Once they identify possibilities of such distortions in your mind, your therapist will take effective treatment measures to modify such thought patterns.
• Situation Exposure: This approach refers to listing situations or things that cause distress or panic among the patients. Patients usually have a negative or aggressive reaction to such memories or situations. The therapists try to expose them to these and help them control their emotions by removing their previous thoughts and apprehensions about them. Systematic desensitisation is a useful approach for imbibing relaxing techniques in patients in aggravating situations.
• Positive Activities: This is a common approach used in CBT. Therapists try to help patients come up with positive thoughts and activities. The ultimate goal of this therapy is to ensure that the patients can develop positive thinking and actions. For example, they can advise fun activities like reading feel-good books, watching movies or going out for picnics.

source: psychologytoday

CBT can help in handling various kinds of mental health issues. For example, it can help with the following:

• Stress.
• Depression.
• Personality disorders.
• Alcohol addiction.
• Drug abuse.
• Relationship problems.
• Eating disorders.
• Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).
• Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

In addition to these mental health issues, CBT is also effective in helping people to cope with the following issues and problems:

• Chronic pain.
• Depression regarding a serious illness.
• Grief over a loss.
• Divorce or break ups.
• Low self-esteem.
• Insomnia.
• Relationship issues.

CBT will be the best remedy when facing any of these issues or any other mental health issues causing negative thinking or behaviour. It can help to remove the negativities and mental problems and restore positive thinking and behaviour.

CBT believes that feelings and thoughts can majorly influence your mental health. The goal is to identify the changes in emotions and behaviour disrupting mental health. Here are the common benefits of cognitive behavioural therapy:

• It is capable of developing healthier thought and behaviour patterns. It makes you aware of your negative and unrealistic ideas. 
• If you have maladaptive behaviours, CBT is the perfect remedy. It can treat a wide variety of such behaviours.
• CBT can be a cost-effective treatment method for mental health issues, making it affordable for most people.
• It is effective even through online and remote sessions. This makes it a feasible option in situations where a physical visit to the therapist is not possible.

CBT can be the perfect cure for avoiding the negative influence on thinking and behaviour. Psychologist Aaron Beck came up with this therapy in the 1960s, where he mainly identified the kind of thinking that might cause emotional problems. You can observe the effectiveness of cognitive behavioural therapy from the following:

• Treats mental health: A review of 41 studies in 2018 found that CBT can be the perfect cure for multiple mental health issues, like anxiety disorders, PTSD, and OCD. There is evidence to prove that this therapy can reduce symptoms in all of these situations. CBT can be the best remedy when there is a mix of such issues.
• Cures eating disorders: While eating disorders have physical outcomes, their causes are associated with the mind and thinking. CBT is considered one of the best ways of treating such disorders. It helps to identify the negative thinking that might be responsible for causing such a condition. It is capable of reducing such thought patterns to improve this situation.
• Long-term results: As per a study in 2018, CBT can generate long-term results against mental health issues. This is applicable mainly for handling anxiety issues in young people. The follow-up of this study shows the minimum anxiety among the participants after two years of this research.
• Cures depression: Clinical research shows that CBT can reduce depressive thoughts with long-term effects. It reveals that this therapy can not only control depression symptoms, it can also prevent its relapse at any time in future. In addition, this therapy can also help control the symptoms of personality disorders.
• Improves brain functioning: A study conducted in 2017 shows that CBT can improve brain functioning. It was done among 43 people who are suffering from OCD. Research shows that after CBT, the participants were able to resist compulsions. This therapy, therefore, controls brain functions and cravings.
• Reduces addiction: CBT can also effectively handle addiction to alcohol or drugs. According to research, CBT is capable of helping people suffering from substance addiction and avoiding its relapse. In addition, as it reduces stress and anxiety, it can reduce drinking and smoking tendencies in the patients.

Now that you know what cognitive behavioural therapy involves, you must be curious to know how long this therapy will take. As discussed, CBT is a therapy that can be effective for a shorter term. Generally, it lasts for about 12-20 weeks. One can complete it in about six weeks with the therapist.

However, one needs to keep in mind that the psychological conditions of individuals are different. Therefore, the terms of treatment can be different on an individual level. For instance, in the case of acute depression, patients might require about 8-12 sessions. Even though it is shorter than other therapies, the term might increase based on the condition's intensity.

If you plan to undergo CBT, you must keep the following points in mind for the best results:

• CBT aims to reduce negative thoughts and behaviours and develop skills to cope with the same. However, it might be the perfect cure for complicated psychological issues. It can control the symptoms but not eliminate them.
• This therapy is highly structured and follows a strict routine of treatment. Therefore, it might be challenging for people not accustomed to following a strict routine and structure.
• CBT is considered a short-term treatment for mental health. However, it might vary on an individual level. In addition, it might take a long time in some cases, based on the severity of the condition.
• If there is no willingness for change, the results might be delayed and ineffective. Therefore, your presence and efforts will be mandatory in this regard.
• This therapy might be challenging for your mental condition. The therapist might ask you to reflect on incidents that trigger your situation to cure the same. There might be pain and distress in this process.
• CBT might not be the perfect solution in some cases. For example, your psychological condition might not accept it. In such circumstances, you will have to move from this therapy to another treatment.

Hopefully, now you have a comprehensive understanding of cognitive behavioural therapy. It is an effective psychotherapeutic technique which aims at reducing negative thoughts and their influence on mental health and well-being. As this article pointed out, this therapy can handle various mental health issues, but its approach will differ based on the conditions.