What Is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?

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Unhelpful behaviors make sense once we understand the thoughts and beliefs behind them.

We can usually change unhelpful habits by identifying and responding to unhelpful thoughts.

Deep-rooted beliefs can lead to patterns of avoidance, anxiety, or self-sabotage.

CBT helps people understand their behavior and and test new ways of thinking and behaving.

It’s often perplexing to people (and their friends and family) why they continue to engage in behavior that is clearly unhelpful and often in conflict with their important values and goals. Eating or drinking too much, arguing with a partner, continually keeping others waiting, procrastinating on important matters, spending too much time scrolling on their phones — the list could go on and on. In Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) we help people understand how their behavior is related to their underlying thoughts and beliefs. We know that people’s behavior always makes more sense when you know what they’re thinking.

I’ll describe two clients I recently treated.* One client’s problematic behavior was straightforward and didn’t require a focus on his underlying beliefs, which were, for the most part, realistic, balanced, and helpful. The other client required an exploration of beliefs and assumptions that were associated with a long-standing and entrenched pattern of unhelpful behavior.

When Changing a Habit Is Enough

Mark, a 25-year-old sales associate, was continually late to work. He had a great deal of difficulty getting out of bed in the morning because he often didn’t get into bed until well after midnight.

He liked his job and didn’t want to lose it, but he was having trouble unplugging from the video games he played every evening. “It won’t matter. I’ll just play for 10 more minutes,” he constantly told himself. Ten minutes could then turn into three hours. Feeling sleep deprived when his alarm went off at 6 am, he hit the snooze button. When it went off again, he often told himself,........

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