What is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)?
If you’ve ever been in therapy for anxiety, you may have heard of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (also known as CBT). Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a type of therapy for anxiety that emphasizes the connection between our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. While CBT is most often known as a treatment for anxiety, it is also highly effective when working with depression, grief, trauma, relationship stress, and more.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a type of talk therapy that is often practiced by therapists who specialize in anxiety treatment. CBT incorporates mindfulness as we start to bring conscious awareness to our thought patterns and understand how our thoughts impact our feelings and behaviors. Our thoughts play a significant role in how we feel and behave. Our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are all connected. The idea is that if we gain control over our automatic, unconscious thought patterns, then we can begin to change how we feel and how we experience life.
An example could be making a mistake at work. If you make a mistake and you have the thought “I’m such an idiot”, this thought will likely lead to you feeling ashamed, anxious, embarrassed, etc. If you begin to notice how this thought negatively impacts your feelings, you can change this thought to be more supportive and motivating, such as “I made a mistake, I’m human. I’ll learn from this”. The shift with this inner-dialogue can make a huge difference in how you feel. The second thought is self-compassionate, while the first thought is rooted in shame.
How Does CBT Help With Anxiety?
The root cause of anxiety often stems from unhealthy and unhelpful thought patterns. When we catastrophize (imagine the absolute worse case scenario), ruminate, make assumptions, or overanalyze, this can cause a significant (and unnecessary) amount of stress and anxiety. When we become conscious of our thought patterns and how our thoughts negatively impact our mood, we can then begin to challenge those thoughts and create more helpful thoughts to lessen anxiety and better tolerate our emotions.
While journaling has many benefits to reducing anxiety, it can also be helpful to start bringing awareness to your thoughts and implementing a CBT practice. A few journal prompts that are CBT-focused can be:
What thought am I having right now?
How is this thought making me feel?
How do I want to feel?
What thought is going to support the way I want to feel?
Is there another way to look at this situation, or a more helpful thought to have about this?
The idea is to first catch the thought (become aware of the negative or unhelpful thought), then check the thought (is this thought helpful, or is it unhelpful?), and if it is unhelpful, change the thought. You can remember this method by knowing it as the “Three C’s” - catch it, check it, change it.
This is also why stating affirmations and practicing gratitude can be so effective. By choosing to incorporate healthier thought patterns, we gain more control over how we feel.
This isn’t to say you can get rid of anxiety or other emotions. They will always be there because you are human, and some people are just more prone to anxiety than others. CBT is a tool that can help you feel more empowered and manage your anxious thoughts in a more productive way.
How is CBT Used in Therapy Sessions?
Many thoughts are so engrained that we don’t even realize how unhealthy they are (or how much they impact our anxiety). A therapist who is trained in CBT can help you identify unhelpful thought patterns (when you are ruminating, thinking in black and white/extremes, catastrophizing, etc) and guide you towards a new perspective that challenges those unhelpful thoughts.
Many thoughts that trigger anxiety are irrational, but it can be hard to distinguish irrational from rational thoughts when a certain “way of thinking” has been the norm for so long. A therapist can also help you identify where the unhealthy inner-dialogue stems from (it can often be internalized from parents, society, or elsewhere) to help you understand the origin of these thoughts and detach yourself from them.
How Long Does It Take For Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to Help Anxiety?
When it comes to CBT or any type of behavioral therapy, you are creating new neural pathways in your brain that are not yet automatic. The automatic thoughts you currently have have likely existed for a while (many thought patterns go all the way back to childhood), and it takes time and repetition to form new neural pathways in your brain.
As you make this a conscious and regular practice, the helpful thought patterns will become automatic. So while this is initially a conscious practice that times time and effort, it will eventually become your new way of thinking. With a regular CBT practice, your baseline level of anxiety should be reduced in the long term. Changing your inner-dialogue isn’t something that happens over night, but CBT can definitely provide long term benefits for managing anxiety.
What Other Treatment Methods Help With Anxiety?
Anxiety should be treated with an eclectic approach — meaning we ideally want have a wide range of techniques available to us for anxiety management. Because emotions are stored in the body, anxiety treatment should also incorporate a somatic practice, which can include yoga, mindful walking, exercise, or any type of movement. Meditation is also excellent for managing anxiety because of it’s physical impact on the brain. With regular practice, meditation has been shown to reduce the size of the amygdala, which is the part of the brain where our emotions are activated. With the reduction of the amygdala, we are better able to access the part of the brain (pre-frontal cortex) that is in charge of logical thoughts and decision making. This is incredibly important for anxiety management because when we can easily access the pre-frontal cortex, we are less likely to go into a fight-or-flight state from our anxious thoughts and emotions.
Practices that soothe the nervous system should be incorporated on a regular basis. Deep breathing, mindfulness, spending time with loved ones, reading, laughter, play, etc. are all things that can bring joy and pleasure to our lives. Rest is not a luxury — it is a necessity! When you actively do things that bring you joy, you are giving your nervous system a break from the stress of life and allowing your mind to be in the present moment. This is why gratitude and mindfulness practices are so good for us — they reduce our anxiety symptoms and remind us of what’s truly important to us!
Other types of therapy that can be helpful for anxiety are Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT), Mindfulness-Based Therapy, Humanistic Therapy, Existential Therapy, Psychodynamic Therapy, Experiential Therapy, and more.
How Do I Find a Cognitive Behavioral Therapist in Houston?
If CBT sounds like the type of approach you are looking for to manage your anxiety (or other distressing emotions), I recommend asking potential therapists if they specialize in anxiety and what treatment modalities they use when working with anxiety. While CBT is a very effective approach for anxiety, there are a wide range of options when it comes to treating anxiety, and it can be targeted from many different angles. A therapist can help you with identifying and implementing certain practices in a way that work best for you and provide specific recommendations for managing your anxiety based on your unique background and situation.
Online Therapy Services in Houston and throughout Texas
If you are looking for a Houston therapist for anxiety, feel free to explore my website to see if we might be a good fit to work together. My approach is trauma-informed, person-centered, and grounded in humanistic and existential philosophy. I work with women and young professionals navigating anxiety, relationship struggles, life transitions, and more.
