Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a form of psychotherapy that addresses how your thoughts influence your behaviors and feelings.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for depression symptoms addresses 3 main areas of thoughts:
1. How you think of yourself
2. How you think of others
3 How you think of the world
In therapy your clinical psychologist or therapist will teach you techniques to identify and restructure these negative thoughts, known as automatic thoughts. You will then to learn to challenge the accuracy and reality of these cognitive structures by exploring your core beliefs.
In Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for depression treatment you will do behavioral exercises known an reality testing and pleasure scheduling. The goal of these exercises is to create new mental and behavior habits that reinforce positive ways of thinking, encourage motivation and create new communication and social skills.
CBT NYC for depression sometimes includes Medication and/or biofeedback and yoga therapy. Clinical research has shown that CBT and medication is far superior to just medication alone.
For example, Amy was a 31 year old girl who had a history of major depression including a suicide attempt within the last 2 years. Her career was unsuccessful, her dating life was out of control, she was abusing alcohol and having tremendous low self esteem. While she had been on and off medication before she never felt in control and had never worked separately with a therapist on how she thought about the world. After 3 months of weekly cognitive behavioral therapy and yoga therapy and then 3 months of bi-monthly therapy she was able to come off of medication, stop abusing alcohol, enter into a healthy relationship, repair family relationships, accept herself and improve her self esteem enough to address her career concerns.
Now while of course not every story is a success story and CBT is not a guarantee that you won’t have strong negative emotions and moods, what Cognitive Behavior Therapy does do is provide a method to begin to reorganize and become more positive and secure in your thinking and feeling. For most people Cognitive Behavioral Therapy provides tools that make sense and create some control.
Clinical Psychologist and Cognitive Behavioral Therapist NYC, Jayme Albin, Ph.D offers psychotherapy New York NY. She also offers biofeedback and yoga therapy as an alternative or adjunct to medication. For more information email or call us today 212-631-1133
