CBT
Over the last 60 years Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) has become an established psychotherapy approach for people with a wide range of mental health problems. It integrates two types of therapy to help you deal with thoughts and behaviours; behavioural therapy and cognitive therapy. There is a solid evidence base supporting this approach and it is the NICE recommended treatment for depression and anxiety disorders. NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) informs NHS England in their best practice.
I am an accredited member of the British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP). My details can be found on the CBT Register UK:
http://www.cbtregisteruk.com/
CBT is based on the concept that your thoughts, feelings, physical sensations, and actions are interconnected. These connections can lead to a spiralling vicious cycle. For example, how we think about a situation, can affect the way we feel and behave.
CBT aims to help you deal with overwhelming problems in a more manageable way by breaking them down into smaller parts.
The first step is to understand and individually map out the current difficulties before then looking at ways to help an individual change these patterns.
CBT sessions are structured and address specific problems and work towards achievable goals. While we honour and at times talk about how your past influences your current situation, the focus of therapy will be on current problems.
It often is a hands on and pragmatic approach that looks at solving individual problems in a collaborative way.
An integral part of CBT is that as your therapist I will encourage you to implement these changes in your day to day life, to ensure lasting change.
The amount of sessions needed will depend on individual presentations, but I commonly see people for 5-20 sessions.
In addition to standard CBT I am also trained and experienced in working with:
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Trauma focused CBT (TF- CBT):A CBT approach that focuses on post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
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CBTe and CBTt: Two CBT approaches for treating eating disorders, including bulimia, binge eating and non-underweight anorexia
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Working with people with mental health problems and cancer. The focus of my masters thesis was the effectiveness of CBT for depression for women with breast cancer.