What is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy?

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) aims to help you understand your difficulties by first breaking them down into our thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, and our behaviours. We may use skills from mindfulness to help you to become more aware of these responses, as often they happen instantaneously and without us even noticing. I will work with you to consider how early experiences might have contributed to your worldview, and how this in turn shapes how you are likely to think, feel, and behave in response to certain triggers. Sometimes we find that these responses can form a vicious cycle which keeps us feeling stuck in unhelpful patterns, and this is where CBT can provide skills and techniques to adapt and create new more positive patterns. Where we can often fall into the trap of trying to change emotions directly (think of all the times we’ve told ourselves and others to ‘cheer up’ or ‘calm down’ - it doesn’t tend to help much!) CBT targets thoughts and behaviours to help break those vicious cycles which will have the knock-on effect of calming emotions.

What is Dialectical Behavioural Therapy?

Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT) is based on CBT, but is adapted to be more helpful for those who may feel emotions more intensely than others, or those who have had experiences of having their emotions invalidated in the past. The word ‘dialectical’ means trying to understand how two things which seem to contradict each other can be true at the same time, for example the idea of accepting ourselves exactly as we are while also working towards change. I can work with you to acknowledge how past experiences can impact on our ability to manage emotions in the here and now, and teach skills from DBT including the use of mindfulness, gaining a balance of our emotions, tolerating feelings of distress, and making relationships more satisfying and successful.

What is mindfulness?

According to The Oxford Mindfulness Centre, Mindfulness is “to be aware of your own experience, moment to moment, without judgement.” You may notice that both of the above explanations make mention of using mindfulness skills, and that is because it is very difficult to make any changes without a clear understanding of what the problem is. Mindfulness can help us to gain that understanding by practicing observing, labelling, and participating in our present experiences - both inside the mind and body, and outside. This doesn’t mean having no thoughts (that would be near impossible) but simply involves noticing experiences, including thoughts, without judging, getting carried away with them, or letting them control our decisions. There are plenty of ways to practice this including guided meditation or on-the-go exercises, and I can support you to find what works.

For free further info and resources on the above techniques please see my resources page.