How Does CBT Help With Anxiety and Depression?

Along with anxiety, depression is probably the issue that clients bring most frequently to their therapists. In CBT the maxim is, the way we think affects the way we feel, and this is one of the ways that CBT works in depression. CBT helps depression by changing the way we look at and experience things and changing the things we do, our behaviour.

Are you a glass half full or a glass half empty, person? Typically in depression people can only see a half empty glass half and often things seem dark, with no chink of light at the end of the tunnel. But there are many different ways of looking at the same thing. This can be our perspective on things, on events, situations, people and relationships. In CBT it can also involve some ‘reframing’. So, if we were to put the Mona Lisa in a cheap frame from Ikea it would not look the same as it does in its grand frame behind its glass screen in the grand setting of The Louvre in Paris. The Mona Lisa hasn’t changed but it sure would look different.

Another way CBT helps is by addressing and changing behaviour. So, if you’re sitting in a dull room all day long, playing computer games and eating junk food, a CBT therapist might suggest interspersing this with an hour in the gym. Nothing too drastic but a beginning to change of behaviour.

What is CBT for anxiety?

CBT is one of the most frequently used therapeutic tools for treating anxiety, which along with depression, is probably the number one issue in therapists’ consulting rooms. A CBT therapist will listen attentively and without judgement to what you are anxious and worried about. The CBT therapist might respectfully and gently challenge some of your worries and suggest a different way of looking at them.

Paradoxically anxiety is not all bad! If we didn’t have some anxiety to protect us, we might cross the road with our eyes closed hoping for the best. So the idea in CBT is to evaluate and differentiate what is helpful for us and what isn’t. Sometimes CBT therapy can involve desensitising for example, inviting a client to ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’ and see what happens to the anxiety level. A gentle process of changing behaviour can also help a lot with anxiety, for example going for a walk in the open air on a sunny day can help someone feel less anxious than, say, staying in a darkened room playing computer games or scrolling right for ages on a dating app.

How does CBT help anxiety?

CBT helps anxiety by helping you change the way you look and feel about things and by helping you change the things you do. In other words, CBT changes your thoughts and behaviours. A maxim in CBT is that ‘The way we think affects the way we feel’. Are you a glass half empty person?

Your CBT therapist will listen attentively and without judgement to your worries, concerns and difficulties and might gently question and challenge some of your thoughts. He or she might also suggest making some changes to the way you spend your time or do things.

Taken together these changes to your thinking and doing can be very powerful.

How many CBT sessions for anxiety?