How is CBT Used to Treat Depression?

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) helps you understand how your thoughts, feelings and behaviours affect your mood. It focuses on teaching you to challenge unhelpful and negative thoughts, and replace them with more realistic and helpful ones.

cognitive behavioural therapy is a type of psychotherapy that works well for many people with depressive disorders, including those who are also taking antidepressants. It may take as little as six to 20 weekly or biweekly sessions. You dictate the pace of the sessions, and the therapist will help you with practical tools that you can use to overcome your depression at home.

The therapist will encourage you to be open and honest about your past experiences, but the therapy itself is more focused on the present. You will learn techniques to address specific problems and symptoms, such as identifying distorted thinking patterns that contribute to your depression (for example, overgeneralisation – assuming that one bad experience means all future events will be the same, or catastrophising – exaggerating the severity of negative situations).

CBT Used to Treat Depression

During the behavioral component, you will learn techniques to manage your moods in everyday life, for instance by learning to use pleasurable activities in daily life to boost your positive emotions. The therapist will encourage you to practise these skills between sessions, and will review your progress during each session.

This form of treatment is different from some other types of psychotherapy, such as psychodynamic or psychoanalytic, which can take several years to discover and treat root causes of a problem. CBT is a much more pragmatic approach that deals with the effects of an illness on your daily functioning, and it can be a quicker and more effective way to overcome depression.

CBT is a form of cognitive therapy that teaches you to identify and change unhelpful thought patterns. The therapist will help you examine the evidence for your negative beliefs, and will ask you to think about alternative ways of viewing a situation. For example, if you suffer from social anxiety, you may believe that other people always find you boring or stupid, leading to certain behaviour in social situations, such as trembling, sweating and accelerated heart rate.

During a CBT session, the therapist will teach you to recognize these automatic, negative and self-depreciating thoughts as they occur, and to challenge them with rational thinking. They will also teach you relaxation and breathing techniques to help you calm down and cope with uncomfortable or distressing feelings. They will also suggest medications that can be used alongside therapy, if they are recommended by your doctor. You may need to try different therapists before you find the right fit for you.

In the meantime, don’t be afraid to ask questions if you are unsure about anything. The therapist will be happy to answer your questions and make you feel as comfortable as possible. The first few sessions can be a little challenging, as the therapy will require you to confront some unpleasant feelings and experiences that you may prefer to avoid. But the discomfort will be short-lived, and you will soon reap the benefits of a more balanced and healthy way of living.