What Is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?

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Therapy often stresses thinking differently about challenges you face. That can be helpful but not enough.

Looking at things differently does not tell you what to do with the reality of what you find.

Questioning what reality tells you about what you are facing can help you address deeper issues.

These issues include what you find meaningful and why you want to bother changing in the first place.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), arguably the most common approach to psychotherapy, rests on the powerful premise that “how we think about a problem affects how we feel about it.”

And that premise makes sense. Change how you interpret a problem, and you will change how you feel about it.

But what happens when the distressing thoughts are actually true? What happens when recognizing reality also means accepting something negative about reality?

Here’s an example. Someone thinks other people do not like them. CBT might emphasize that the person could be misinterpreting this situation. Maybe they are misinterpreting cues as evidence that people do not like them. Or maybe there is little likelihood that people are thinking about them at all.

Not bad alternatives. But what if the reality is that people do not actually like them? Or what if the reality of people not even thinking about them is by itself........

© Psychology Today