understanding cbt

                 What you think             What you feel             What you do

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) helps you to learn about your thoughts, feelings and behaviour, and the relationships between them. Thoughts, feelings and behaviour are all linked and inter-dependent.

Once you know more about how you think, feel and behave, you can start to make changes. You often find that changing one will lead to a change in another. For instance, changing how you think can change how you feel.

For example, you may believe (thoughts) that you aren’t good enough to complete your school work, leaving you feeling stressed or anxious; or you may be experiencing low mood or depression (feelings) following a relationship breakdown; or you may be finding your behaviour problematic, such as disordered eating or obsessive compulsive behaviour.

CBT will help you to understand how your problem began and why you are finding it difficult to cope with, or overcome the problem. Then you can learn how to make changes to improve how you feel and you will see a way forward to solve the problem.

Our sessions together will be very collaborative – I won’t give you the answers but help you find the solutions using the tools of CBT. We’ll start by deciding what you want to work on first and what you want to achieve. Then we’ll work together to achieve your goal of therapy.

See faqs for more information on CBT, session structure and confidentiality.