Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT)

CBT uses the relationship between what you think, feel, and do (i.e., what we experience) to identify helpful and unhelpful ways of being. Significant feelings and thoughts are typically present whenever you are doing anything meaningful. You can use CBT in therapy to take advantage of what you know about the way your mind works:

  • Much of the language and meaning of words, phrases, images, memories, and bodily sensations you experience every minute of every day are automatic.
  • These automatic thoughts and feelings function to increase the efficiency of your brain’s ability to use your past experiences to help you maneuver the world in which you live right now. Your experience with these automatic responses is what creates and maintains helpful and unhelpful habits of thinking, feeling, and doing.
  • Recognizing the source of unhelpful (e.g., confusion, doubt, irritability, panic, dread, fatigue, misery, suffering) and helpful (e.g., rewarding, meaningful, purposeful, space-creating, value-consistent, okayness) experiences can help when deciding how to intentionally respond to what you experience in your life.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

ACT is a type of CBT that facilitates a way of being based on your values, strengths and abilities. ACT encourages psychological flexibility with your perceptions of past, current, and future experiences and discourages current avoidance of unpleasant emotions and feelings. Practicing ACT results in more freedom to engage in healthier habits of thinking and value-based action. ACT encourages attitudes and practices that help you be with unhelpful thoughts, feelings, and actions.  Being with these unhelpful thoughts creates space for you to intentionally shift your attention toward and commit to engaging in helpful habits of thinking, feeling, doing, and ways of being. In therapy, you can develop language associated with your values to enrich your repertoire of value-based actions. When you are making decisions to practice value-based actions, you develop habits that are more consistent with how you want to be. Exposure and response prevention (ERP) is a type of CBT helpful in management of anxiety and OCD to specifically target unhelpful avoidance of situations related to thoughts and feelings based on inaccurate language.

Motivational Interviewing (MI)

MI was developed in part by clinical psychologists William R. Miller and Stephen Rollnick in response to observations that people can both want to change and not want to change health behaviors at the same time. Even though you may not be satisfied with your life, you will have reasons for not changing. MI can help you resolve this ambivalence to change and increase your motivation to be different in your life. You are the expert at living your own life, but your brain’s ability to maintain status quo can result in you feeling like change is long, hard, and too much. Our unhelpful habits of avoidance and this powerful feeling of being stuck are actually evidence of very healthy brain activity. You want a brain that helps you build confidence in repeating what works. Therapy doesn’t fix people, because people aren’t broken. Motivational Interviewing can help you recognize your own compassion and autonomy while practicing change. Using CBT, ACT, and MI combined can enhance your motivation and ability to practice living the life you want.

Mindfulness

A definition of mindfulness (Jon Kabat-Zinn) is paying attention to the present moment, on purpose, in a particular way, non-judgmentally. Mindfulness is a skill that can help you practice your ability to be  aware of the present moment. The ability to return your attention to the present moment sharpens your ability to engage in CBT, ACT, and MI in profound ways. In the present moment…

  • you are better able to recognize accurate and inaccurate language
  • you can practice being with pleasant and unpleasant thoughts and physical sensations
  • you are better able to make decisions and take actions based on your values, strengths, and abilities

Most of the unhelpful habits you experience are based on inaccurate language related to your mind’s ability to attend to thoughts and feelings related to events that happened in the past or might happen in the future. Intentionally shifting your attention back to the present moment (which is always happening now) helps you to practice using accurate, value-based language so that you can be more consistent with how you want to be in your life.