CBT Techniques: 25 Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Worksheets

CBT has been adapted and studied for children, adolescents, adults, couples, and families. This activity reviews the efficacy of CBT in both psychiatric and non-psychiatric disorders and the role of the interprofessional team in using it to improve patient outcomes. Personally, I am a big advocate of both dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) and drama therapy. In fact, I love these modalities so much that I dedicated not only my master’s https://ecosoberhouse.com/ thesis but also my dissertation to better understanding how to reinforce DBT skills through dramatic techniques. An expert panel review demonstrated that this format can effectively support skill learning, especially for clients who struggle with the standard format of DBT skills training. Additionally, mental health clinicians found the program easily adaptable across populations in both individual and group settings.

Extended case formulation worksheet

• A certain amount of information about one’s history is needed, but the focus is primarily on moving forward in time to develop more effective ways of coping with life.
• It often helps you get better over time, but the process can be difficult.
• Your therapist may combine CBT with another therapeutic approach — for example, interpersonal therapy, which focuses on your relationships with other people.

If you don’t feel completely comfortable with your therapist, try to find a therapist you can connect with and open up to more easily. Activity scheduling can help establish good habits and provide ample opportunity to put what you’ve learned into practice. Your therapist will teach you how to make changes you can implement right now. Although the past is certainly relevant, CBT focuses on providing you with tools to solve your current problems. Group members are invited to think of a scenario in which they felt they had difficulty accessing their wise mind.

• People can have more control over their reactions and change their behavior by recognizing and modifying these triggers.
• Once you have rated the situations, you rank them according to their distress rating.
• They would also attempt to accurately label the emotions and thoughts they experienced during the interaction, and what their behavioral urges were (e.g., to run out of the room and cry, to get angry, etc.).
• These illogical thought patterns are self-defeating and can cause great anxiety or depression for the individual.
• Cognitive behavioral therapy is commonly used to treat depression, anxiety and addiction.

Is CBT effective?

Cognitive behavioral therapy is used to treat mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder and addictions. But it can also be used to treat physical conditions such as chronic pain, tinnitus and rheumatism. Values clarification is a cognitive behavioral therapy strategy used to aid people in identifying their true priorities in life through guided discovery. By clarifying cognitive behavioral therapy what is important or what gives you a sense of fulfillment or happiness, it becomes easier to make choices and establish objectives that are consistent with your beliefs. Using specific cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) techniques, you can replace problematic thought patterns with more positive or helpful ones. This type of therapy can help you reframe your perspective and view life’s challenges in a new way.

Example: Reframing automatic negative thoughts

When these interpretations and evaluations are negative, it can lead to unhealthy behaviors. A behavioral intervention known as stimulus control is frequently used in psychology and therapy to address a variety of behavioral disorders, especially those that are related to habits and addictions. This strategy aims to change the environmental cues or stimuli that cause particular behavior. People can have more control over their reactions and change their behavior by recognizing and modifying these triggers.

How CBT Works

This list of cognitive behavioral therapy techniques is far from exhaustive—but it will give you a good idea of the variety of techniques that are used in cognitive behavioral therapy. If you’re working with a therapist and you’ve been doing your own reading about CBT, you can let your therapist know what techniques you’re excited to try. Pleasant activity scheduling is a surprisingly effective cognitive behavioral therapy technique.

With this awareness, we can then take action to regulate our behaviors so we have more positive outcomes. Diaphragmatic breathing, also called breathing retraining or deep breathing, is a basic cognitive coping strategy for managing anxiety. This is followed by bridging from the previous session to establish continuity.

For cognitive behavioral therapy to be effective, you must be ready and willing to spend time and effort analyzing your thoughts and feelings. This self-analysis can be difficult, but it is a great way to learn more about how our internal states impact our outward behavior. Learning problem-solving skills during cognitive behavioral therapy can help you learn how to identify and solve problems that may arise from life stressors, both big and small.

Who’s most likely to benefit from CBT?

It has been around for decades, and cognitive therapy techniques remain an effective way to improve mental, physical, and emotional wellbeing. CBT coping skills help you deal with uncomfortable emotions (anxiety, depression, etc.) so you can feel better physically, make better decisions, and more. These cognitive strategies are especially beneficial for individuals with certain mental health conditions, such as by helping reduce symptoms in people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The creator of cognitive behavioral therapy is Aaron Beck, a psychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania. But he came to realize that the approach was failing to treat his depressed patients—entrenched negative thoughts prevented them from overcoming the disorder. So he developed cognitive behavior therapy, rooted in the philosophy of Albert Ellis’s rational emotive behavior therapy, to change these harmful patterns of “emotional reasoning” and spark genuine change.

In guided discovery, the therapist will acquaint themselves with your viewpoint. Then they’ll ask questions designed to challenge your beliefs and broaden your thinking. After speaking with you and learning more about the issue you want help with, your therapist will decide on the best CBT strategies to use.