Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is a psychological approach based on scientific principles that is effective for a wide range of mental health issues. CBT involves understanding problems in terms of the relationship between feelings, thoughts and behaviours. CBT focuses on what factors might maintain problems in the ‘here and now’. It also looks to the past to identify what beliefs from the past might be keeping problems going for you now. CBT is a brief, active, structured and goal-focused therapy.
The general thinking behind CBT is that we all learn to act and think in certain ways as a result of our lifetime experiences and how we perceive those experiences.
Negative experiences and our responses to them can lead us to develop low self-esteem, unhappiness, anxiety, passivity, aggression, perfectionism and so on. These, in turn, colour the way we perceive new experiences.