WHAT IS COGNITIVE/BEHAVIORAL THERAPY? _______________________________________________________ Cognitive/behavioral therapy has been shown by scientific research to be effective in treating many difficulties like anxiety, depression, and chronic anger.  Learning emotion and mood management skills is a major part of the cognitive therapy process.    Difficuties managing moods and emotions affect our relationships.  It has been found that people who are distressed or in pain often have habitual thinking patterns that lead to inaccurate conclusions which then lead to painful emotions, moods, and sometimes physical problems.  It is important to change the thinking patterns that are inaccurate which then helps relieve the painful emotion.   The CBT therapy process is actually pretty simple.  However, it takes sometimes a significant amount of work on your part to change.  The first step is becoming aware of the thoughts (cognitions) that you have about events in your life.  We all give meaning to whatever happens during the day.  You may or may not be aware of these interpretations (we call them "automatic thoughts").  Thoughts always lead to emotions.  The next step is discovering what the emotions are, and then taking a good, hard look at the reality of the situation and seeing if the thoughts reflect the reality or if they are inaccurate.  The last step is changing any thoughts that don’t square with reality to more accurate interpretations.  Those more accurate thoughts lead to  feelings which are typically much less painful than the original knee-jerk reactions.  If you find that your thoughts do square with reality, then the last step is developing an action plan.  Learning new skills or behaviors is also part of the process.  Therapy sessions usually focus on solving current problems, however understanding how you came to have the relationship patterns and other ways of coping with life that you have is an important part of the therapy process. Valerie Hearn, Ph.D. © 2006 - 2007      vchearn@sfrelationshipdoc.com