Health and Psychology

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a specific type of psychotherapy that shows in research to be effective for a wide variety of conditions.  While it can be used by beginning students in a "cookbook" like approach, more sophisticated therapists can integrate it with any form of relational therapy to lessen the regimented approach and still maintain the outcomes.  

The basic model is that thoughts and behaviors create feelings.  You can change the thoughts, or behaviors to feel better.  People in therapy can do this by identifying a specific event that produced a feeling.  The client the rates the feelings (like anxiety, depression, etc.) and looks for the underlying thoughts or behaviors that go along with the feeling.  They can then change the thoughts actively or change the behaviors and re-rate the thought.  The therapist is looking for underlying global themes, also known as schemas, to help the person connect with how the thoughts, (that are often automatic and not consciously challenged), can be brought under conscious control and can help the person feel better.  Some people use record forms to help people keep track of the events, the automatic thoughts, and how the person challenged the thoughts, or changed the behaviors and how much that helped to reduce the unwanted feeling.

This type of therapy helps people with medical conditions get clear about what symptoms are psychological in nature and what are physical.  Symptoms that are strictly psychological in nature will respond in a few weeks of treatment while symptoms that are strictly medical in nature will not.  Often times, medical conditions will produce both medical and psychological symptoms.  So someone may have pain and in addition to their pain they think it's devestating that they have the pain and hold the idea that the pain will last forever and be incapacitating.  Some of the reaction to pain is from anxiety and depression.  That will intensify the experience of pain.  When those reactions are brought under control, the pain will seem to lessen.

Feel free to contact our office for an evaluation.