Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Sydney

period of time. CBT usually starts with one or two sessions focused on assessment, during which the therapist will help you identify the symptoms or behaviour patterns that are causing you the most problems and set goals for treatment. In subsequent sessions, you will identify the negative or maladaptive thoughts you have about your current problems and determine whether or not these thoughts are realistic. If these thoughts are deemed unrealistic, you will learn skills that help challenge and ultimately change your thinking patterns so they are more accurate with respect to a given situation. Once your perspective is more realistic, the therapist can help you determine an appropriate course of action. CBT often focuses on cognitive distortions, or irrational patterns of thought that can negatively affect behaviour. Common cognitive distortions include all-or-nothing thinking (seeing everything in black-and-white terms and ignoring nuance), catastrophising, and personalisation (believing that the individual is responsible for everything that happens around them, whether good or bad). CBT usually concludes with a session or two of recapping, reassessing, and reinforcing what was learned. If necessary, you may return to therapy for periodic maintenance sessions. Along the way, you will most likely be given “homework” to do between sessions. That work will typically include exercises that will help you learn to apply the skills and solutions they came up with in therapy to real-world situations in your day-to-day life.