That question comes up a lot. The short answer is “yes”. But sometimes I ask if the prospective client knows what CBT is? Do they know that it stands for Cognitive Behavior Therapy or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy? Most have just heard of it or have been told by a friend or healthcare provider to find a CBT counselor.
Many counselors perform CBT differently. Some focus on an activating event, what behaviors followed, what were the resulting consequences, and how to change those behaviors for the better (A-B-C method). Some are purists who follow guidelines specifically from the creators. Others use worksheets or techniques that adapt and extend classic CBT principles.
Does Cardinal Point Counseling practice CBT? Sometimes. In fact, most of the time. Our brand of CBT usually focuses on changing unhelpful and unrealistic automatic thoughts into more realistic thoughts. But it’s often integrated with other techniques or applied in part as mindfulness-based CBT, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), or Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). The answer is more complicated than a simple “yes”. While this post is more technical than most on this site, the point is that we pride ourselves in taking the parts of CBT that work best for the client. We also integrate other techniques and approaches. There is a lot of evidence to support the effectiveness of CBT. That said, we believe it is most effective when there is a healthy therapeutic client-counselor relationship. We believe CBT is not right for everybody. We believe CBT cannot always be used alone. We believe CBT does not work well for some conditions or populations. CBT is never applied blindly. It is part of a comprehensive and collaborative treatment plan that can change over time based on what is working. It can be part of depression therapy or anxiety therapy My apologies for the technical post, but the answer is a “yes” with a few caveats that hopefully make the client’s experience optimal.
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