What is CBT?

It is very likely that you have heard the phrase CBT thrown around. Perhaps one of your friends is “doing CBT”, maybe it’s a covered treatment by your insurance, or maybe your doctor recommended you find a “CBT therapist”. Or you just Googled “best therapy for anxiety”. Regardless of your reason — you want to know what CBT actually is.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, commonly referred to as CBT, is a popular therapeutic modality that involves dissecting one’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, and assessing how they interact and affect one another (APA, 2017). CBT is a structured and goal-oriented approach to therapy (APA, 2017). It helps identify unhelpful thought patterns, challenge these thoughts, and then work towards a more realistic and balanced perspective. 

You might be wondering why you’ve heard so much about CBT. Well, a lot of organizations, insurance companies, workplaces, and physicians like CBT because it is evidence-based, short-term, and measurable. While it is all these things, the truth is, CBT is just as effective as other modalities. 

Here at the Glebe, many of our therapists integrate CBT into their practice, but it isn’t the only modality they will use. Our therapists believe that the therapeutic approach ought to be multi-faceted and diverse to suit the individual, because people are multi-faceted and diverse! In your therapy sessions, you may explore a multitude of modalities including CBT. If you’re interested in learning more about what other modalities exist, check out our other blog post!