Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in Irvine, CA
Cognitive behavioral treatment (CBT) is a type of psychological treatment that can help manage challenges, such as addictions and depression, by altering your thought process and behavior. CBT focuses on changing the automatic negative thoughts that often contribute to various mental concerns like anxiety, depression, etc.
CBT can help treat various mental health conditions. You should talk to a mental health provider to determine if this therapy is right for you. Turning Tides Recovery in Orange County offers CBT as a treatment option for mental and behavioral health concerns.
What is CBT?
CBT is a therapeutic treatment that can help you discover and change the disturbing or destructive thought patterns that negatively influence your emotions and behavior. Once you identify these patterns, you can work with the therapist to learn how to change these behaviors.
The CBT process is designed to help people identify triggering patterns and use new coping skills. This way, you have the tools to move past troubling thoughts and behavior patterns.
Types of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Cognitive behavioral therapy comprises various techniques and approaches to help address behaviors, emotions, and thoughts. Such methods and approaches can range from self-help practices to structured psychotherapies.
Common types of therapeutic approaches involving CBT include:
- Cognitive therapy. It focuses on identifying and altering distorted or inaccurate behaviors, emotional responses, and thought patterns.
- Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT). This approach involves identifying irrational beliefs, challenging these beliefs head-on, and learning to identify and alter such thought patterns.
- Multimodal therapy. This approach suggests that psychological concerns can be treated by addressing different (but interconnected) modalities, including interpersonal factors, cognition, imagery, sensation, affect, behavior, and drug/biological considerations.
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). This approach addresses disturbing or destructive thoughts while implementing treatment strategies like mindfulness and emotional regulation.
Despite taking different approaches, all the above CBT types can help address the underlying thought patterns contributing to psychological distress and mental health conditions.
How Does Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Work?
CBT is based on core principles such as:
- Mental health concerns are based partly on learned patterns of unproductive behavior
- Mental health concerns are based partly on faulty or ineffective thought processes
- People suffering from mental health concerns can learn enhanced coping mechanisms, thus alleviating their symptoms and becoming more effective in their daily lives.
CBT treatment typically involves efforts to alter one’s thought patterns. A cognitive behavioral therapist may engage strategies such as
- Utilizing problem-solving skills to cope with challenging situations
- Gaining a clear understanding of other people's behaviors and motivations
- Learning to identify your thought distortions that breed problems, then learning how to reevaluate them in light of reality.
- Learning to develop self-confidence in your abilities.
CBT treatment can also include efforts to alter one’s behavioral patterns using strategies like
- Learning to calm your mind and relax the body
- Utilizing role-playing to prepare for possibly challenging interactions with other people
- Facing one's fears instead of neglecting them.
However, it is worth noting that not all CBT specialists will use all these strategies. Your CBT specialist will work closely with you to deeply understand your situation and tailor a unique CBT treatment for you.
CBT often involves working with a mental health counselor (therapist) in a structured manner, attending the prescribed number of sessions. During these sessions, the therapist can help you identify faulty or destructive thinking patterns, behavior, and emotional response. Upon determining these, the therapist will also help you to substitute them with desirable thinking patterns, behavior, and emotional response.
What Can Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Help With?
CBT can be used as a short-term treatment to help people learn how to focus on reality. Generally, CBT can be used to treat conditions such as:
- Personality disorders
- Bipolar disorder
- Panic attacks
- Depression
- Eating disorders
- Sexual disorders
- Anxiety
- Insomnia
- Anger issues
- Schizophrenia
- PTSD
Besides these mental health concerns, CBT can also help individuals cope with the following:
- Stress management
- Low-self esteem
- Insomnia
- Relationship issues/ divorce/ break-ups
- loss/ grief
- Chronic pains/ serious illnesses
In most cases, CBT tends to be highly effective for multiple conditions when combined with other treatments such as medications or antidepressants.
CBT for Addiction Treatment
Cognitive behavioral therapy can also be used in treating addictions. People suffering from substance use disorders can use CBT to discover and develop connections between their emotions, thoughts, and actions. They can then enhance awareness of how such aspects impact recovery.
CBT can help patients overcome alcoholism and drug addiction by
- Teaching effective communication skills
- Providing self-help tools to improve their moods
- Helping to disintegrate false beliefs and insecurities leading to drug abuse and addictions.
Triggers keep addicted people from soberness, tying them down in a vicious cycle of alcoholism and drug addiction. CBT helps people struggling with addictions deal with triggers in various vital ways, including
- Recognize. Identify the circumstances that prompt and lead to drug or alcohol usage.
- Avoid. Eliminate yourself from trigger situations whenever possible.
- Cope. Employ CBT techniques and approaches to address and alleviate feelings and thoughts leading to substance use and addiction.
Examples of CBT techniques effective in dealing with addictions include
- Thought records. This includes analyzing automatic negative thoughts and seeking objective evidence supporting and disproving these thoughts. By comparing and contrasting the evidence and critically evaluating it, individuals can think more balanced and less harsh thoughts.
- Behavioral experiments. Such exercises compare negative thoughts against positive ones to discover the most effective ones to help change behavior. Behavioral experiments mainly involve figuring out what works best for a person.
- Imagery-based exposure. Individuals are often prompted to think of a memory that spikes powerful negative emotions. They will then record every thought, feeling, sound, sight, and impulse in that particular moment. Consequently, frequent visiting painful memories can help people with addictions alleviate anxiety caused by them gradually.
- Pleasant activity schedule. Patients are often asked to make a list of pleasant, fun, and healthy activities to switch up daily routines. Such tasks should be simple to do while encouraging positive feelings. This exercise aims to reduce automatic negative thoughts and the need to indulge in substance use.
The benefits of CBT
Generally, the benefits of cognitive behavioral therapy include the following:
- CBT sessions and treatment periods are relatively shorter than alternative talking therapies. You can notice improvements in about 5-20 CBT sessions. It is the best short-term treatment option for mental health issues.
- CBT helps individuals develop healthier thought patterns that will influence positive behavior and emotional responses.
- CBT is effective against multiple destructive behaviors.
- Cognitive behavioral therapy is the perfect treatment alternative for individuals who don’t require psychotropic medications.
- CBT helps individuals develop Self-esteem. Self-esteem helps to feed the cycle of negative thoughts that influence behavior and vice versa. Fortunately, CBT can help disrupt this pattern and help individuals develop confidence in their abilities.
CBT with Turning Tides
Are you looking for a reliable CBT California specialist for an addiction problem? At Turning Tides, we take pride in helping patients find effective solutions against their varying conditions.
We customize mental health treatments to address individual patients’ unique needs. Contact us to book you for our cognitive behavioral sessions in Orange County, California.