Are you ready to work towards a better you? Cognitive behavioral therapy in Los Angeles might be just what you’ve been looking for.
CBT is a popular psychological treatment shown to be effective in treating many common mental health disorders, including anxiety and depression. It involves identifying and challenging unhelpful and negative thought patterns, helping you learn alternative thinking patterns and behaviors that can improve how you feel.
At Clarity Family Therapy, our expert CBT clinicians are here to help you thrive.
What is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?
Cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, explores the relationship between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It can be traced back to two distinct schools of psychology: behaviorism and cognitive therapy.
Behavioral treatment for mental health disorders has been around since the early 1900s. Behaviorism is based on the principle that behaviors can be modeled, measured, and changed. In the 1930s and 40s, there was a need for an effective short-term therapy for depression and anxiety, leading to the development of CBT.
Research regarding how people learn to behave and react to life circumstances became a dominant theme, and behavioral therapy was offered as an alternative to the primarily dominant model of the time, psychoanalysis.
We proudly offer cognitive behavioral therapy in Los Angeles at Clarity Family Therapy to help you overcome challenges in life.
Benefits of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in Los Angeles
CBT can be helpful in treating a range of issues, including:
- Anxiety
- Panic disorders
- Depression
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
- Phobias
- Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)
- Chronic fatigue
- Eating disorders
CBT is also incorporated into many other therapies, including:
- Reality therapy
- Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy
- Acceptance and commitment therapy
- Dialectical behavior therapy
An activating event, such as losing one’s job, traumatic relationship changes, or escalating anxiety or depression, can lead to automatic thoughts that influence our feelings and behaviors. These thoughts and feelings often result in unwanted and maladaptive behaviors.
Cognitive behavioral therapy in Los Angeles from Clarity Family Therapy can help individuals get to the core belief of how they think about themselves, distinguish between helpful and unhelpful thought patterns, and challenge those thoughts using rational replacement thoughts.
How CBT Works at Clarity Family Therapy
A significant amount of insight can be gained through CBT with a trained clinician. By getting to the bottom of where certain feelings and behaviors come from, clients can learn to identify automatic thoughts that lead to unwanted behaviors. Clarity Family Therapy’s expert clinicians use techniques for cognitive behavioral therapy in Los Angeles such as:
Thought Logs
Clients are given “thought logs” to identify thoughts that precede unwanted feelings and behaviors. This practice helps pinpoint patterns and triggers.
Socratic Questioning
Socratic questioning is another method used to determine the rationality of a belief or thought and assess its helpfulness. Examples of Socratic questions include:
- What is the evidence for your thought? Against it?
- Am I basing the thought on facts or feelings?
- Is this thought black-and-white, when reality is more complex?
- Could I be misinterpreting the evidence? Am I making assumptions?
- Might other people have different interpretations of this same situation? What are they?
- Am I looking at all the evidence or just what supports my thought?
- Could my thought be an exaggeration of what’s true?
- Am I having this thought out of habit, or do the facts support it?
- Did someone pass the thought along to me? If so, are they a reliable source?
- Is my thought a likely scenario or worst-case scenario?
There are many other methods and strategies a CBT clinician will use to help clients uncover core beliefs that cause dysfunctional behaviors. By identifying triggering thoughts, clients can address self-sabotaging behaviors and achieve more positive outcomes.
Why Choose Clarity Therapy for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?
If you’re struggling with mental health issues, cognitive behavioral therapy in Los Angeles might be the solution you’ve been seeking. At Clarity Family Therapy, our trained clinicians are well-versed in CBT methodologies. We’re dedicated to helping you achieve your goals of becoming a better, more manageable you- one who is not limited by maladaptive thinking patterns that lead to unwanted feelings and behaviors.
Get Started With Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in Los Angeles Today
Reach out to Clarity Family Therapy today to start your CBT journey. Our team is ready to help you transform your life through cognitive behavioral therapy in Los Angeles.