Blog Post One

Dr. Aaron Beck is widely known as the founder of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). He was a psychiatrist who worked in the department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania and the founder of the Beck Institute for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. He founded CBT in the 1960s with the goal of creating a structured therapy modality that can target untrue and/or unhelpful thoughts (Beck, 2011).

Beck’s cognitive model is based on the premise that unhelpful thinking patterns are seen in all types of mental health diagnoses. People experience improvement in their symptoms when they are able to view their thoughts pragmatically and become more flexible in their beliefs. Below is an example of how our thoughts may affect our emotions and behavior (Beck, 2011).

If someone were at a party and realized that the people next to them were whispering, the person may have an automatic thought of “They must be talking about me because I’m weird.” This could lead the person to feel sad (emotion) and to leave the party (behavior). However, if the person were to evaluate their automatic thought, they may come to a different conclusion-that is that people are whispering about something completely different than they had expected (Beck, 2011).

As people begin to work on their automatic thoughts, it can also be helpful to identify what Beck refers to as core beliefs. These are beliefs that people develop about themselves throughout their lifetime. Core beliefs act as a lens through which we see the world. For example, if someone has experienced inconsistencies in their relationships and often felt let down by others, they may develop a core belief that they are unlovable. This outlook could lead the individual to start putting their needs behind others in relationships with the hope of proving that they are worth loving (Beck, 2011).

You may be reading this and wondering what exactly a typical CBT session looks like. At the beginning of session, the therapist checks in with the client about their last week. Then the therapist and client will set an agenda for session collaboratively. During session, clients share different situations that came up throughout the week that triggered unhelpful or untrue automatic thoughts. The client will identify the emotions and behaviors that connected to their automatic thoughts. This can assist in gaining insight to their experiences, as well as giving them a pathway to practice reframing their automatic thoughts. The therapist will teach clients about how to identify unhelpful thinking patterns and worries. In addition, clients will learn how to create more adaptive core beliefs (Beck, 2011).

CBT may be a good fit for you if you are looking for a structured, time-limited therapy to help with unhelpful thinking patterns or beliefs about yourself (Beck, 2011). There is strong research support for the treatment of Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) , Social Anxiety Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder, and Panic Disorder using CBT (Acarturk et al, 2000; Butler et al., 2006; Deacon et al., 2004; Franklin et al., 2004; Otto et al., 2005) . If you are interested in starting CBT with me, please go to the contact page and fill out a form.

References

Acarturk C, Cuijpers P, van Straten A, de Graaf R. (2009). Psychological treatment of social anxiety disorder: a meta-analysis. Psychological Medicine, 39 (2):241-254. doi:10.1017/S0033291708003590

Beck, J.S. (2011). Cognitive Behavior Therapy: Basics and Beyond. Second Edition. The Guildford Press.

Butler, A. C., Chapman, J. E., Forman, E. M., & Beck, A. T. (2006). The empirical status of cognitive-behavioral therapy: A review of meta-analyses. Clinical Psychology Review, 26, 17-31.

Deacon, B.J. and Abramowitz, J.S. (2004), Cognitive and behavioral treatments for anxiety disorders: A review of meta-analytic findings. J. Clin. Psychol., 60: 429-441. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.10255

Franklin, M. E., Abramowitz, J. S., Kozak, M. J., Levitt, J. T., & Foa, E. B. (2000). Effectiveness of exposure and ritual prevention for obsessive-compulsive disorder: Randomized compared with nonrandomized samples. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 68(4), 594–602. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006X.68.4.594

Otto, M.W., Deveney, C. (2005) Cognitive-behavioral therapy and the treatment of panic disorder: efficacy and strategies. J Clin Psychiatry, 66, 28-32. PMID: 15842185.