Cognitive Therapy

Cognitive therapy is based in the idea that mental disorders stem from irregularities in people’s thoughts and the way they think about things, not necessarily the content or meaning of their thoughts. Our thoughts are important because they shape the way that we think about and understand the ourselves and the world around us. Cognitive oriented therapy focuses on identifying automatic thoughts that are associated with events that lead to negative feelings. When encountering events, people with mental disorders may be reacting to stimuli with automatic thoughts that lead them to have negative reactions to the event. This is because negative automatic thoughts lead to negative beliefs about certain events, people, or conceptualizations of identity. When people automatically have negative beliefs about others and themselves, this encourages negative feelings and reactions to develop, even though the event itself does not have to be interpreted negatively. Cognitive therapy is effective in treating many disorders, including depression and anxiety.

Cognitive therapy encourages clients to analyze these events and the automatic thoughts associated with them. Negative automatic thoughts are often irrational and represent lapses in logic that are biased towards negative ideas. These patterns of thought are sometimes referred to as distorted thinking and here a few examples that portray how these kinds of ideas are flawed.

When such irrational ideas are met with counter thoughts in order to avoid negative feelings and responses to the original event. By recognizing the negative automatic thought, the fallacies in the thought, and providing a positive counter thought, the negative cycle can be broken and positive, adaptive feelings and behaviors can be produced.

Therapists using cognitive oriented therapies will often teach and develop these skills to their clients. Clients practice using these new skills to analyze their automatic thoughts and counter irrational or negative thoughts. Then clients are encouraged to practice these skills outside of sessions. Cognitive therapy has been shown by evidence based research to be effective in treating many mental disorders.