Several sessions of family therapy also appear indicated, and her psychiatrist concurs. The client’s presentation on interview, review of medical/psychiatric records, and results of MMPI-2 personality inventory corroborate her psychiatrist’s diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. Such understanding can be developed by reading relevant records, meeting with clients face to face, and using assessments such as a mental status examination. Over time, this practice can help rewire your brain to notice both the positive and the negative more evenly. While CBT isn’t suitable for everyone, it remains one of the most widely recommended treatments for cognitive distortions. When distorted thoughts dominate, they can lead to anxiety, depression, and other mental health difficulties.

Aaron Beck believes that a person’s reaction to specific upsetting thoughts may contribute to abnormality. The sadness and frustration are likely healthy negative emotions and may lead her to study harder from then on. For example, someone anxious in social situations may set a homework assignment to meet a friend at the pub for a drink.

Exposure therapy

When someone says they’re exhausted from battling their own mind, ACT’s permission to stop fighting often brings visible relief. Think of someone whose day collapses after one critical comment, or who experiences rage so overwhelming they can’t access rational thought. DBT teaches emotion regulation and distress tolerance skills that standard CBT doesn’t emphasize. DBT addresses emotional dysregulation – when feelings arrive suddenly, intensely, and last for hours. Your therapist begins by reviewing homework, reinforcing what worked, and problem-solving obstacles before introducing new material.

Exercise 39 – Wheel of Emotions

• It “offers a voice to the client’s experience and is a way of recognizing and re-owning alienated qualities” (Joyce & Sills, 2014, p. 100).
• It goes beyond simple reframing of thoughts and into transformation of thoughts.
• Imagine this worksheet as “zooming in” and focusing closely on one line of a log.
• It can also aid with weight loss as well as helping people to quit smoking.
• Rather than fighting anxious sensations, you’re acknowledging them while gently shifting your physiological state through the breath.
• You can’t mention a list of CBT techniques without mindfulness meditation.

These problems are often driven by unconscious beliefs that hold us back or cause us harm, and cognitive restructuring helps us identify and replace those dysfunctional beliefs. Writing thoughtful therapy notes is more than a task—it’s an opportunity to track progress, guide treatment, and ensure the best outcomes for your clients. Clear, effective documentation strengthens your practice and supports clients on their path to growth and healing. It works by teaching you skills such as cognitive restructuring and emotional processing. IPT has been shown to be effective in treating anxiety, depression, and eating disorders.

What Are Boundaries?

This exercise helps you break that cycle by scheduling positive activities into your day. For more information, don’t forget to download our five positive psychology tools for free. This is a vital resource for students and mental health practitioners wishing to understand CBT, adopt its key principles, and introduce related interventions to therapy sessions. Start thriving today with 5 free tools grounded in the science of positive psychology. Barbara Heffernan’s valuable video provides an excellent starting point for understanding key activities for overcoming anxiety and depression.

Powerful CBT Exercises & Techniques for Therapists

It is especially helpful in treating the most common disorders, namely depression and anxiety. Purveyors of CBT techniques are likely to tell you that it can help with almost any problem. And while there may be some truth to that, it has more empirical support in treating certain disorders.

These distortions often stem from years of frustration or negative feedback, and can intensify shame, anxiety, or perfectionism. This distortion minimizes or dismisses positive experiences as unimportant or undeserved. Overgeneralization involves drawing sweeping negative conclusions based on a single event. Encourage your client to use it often to keep track of any potentially damaging distortions and maintain awareness about their deeply held beliefs. Once the client has an image in mind, the therapist will move on to assessing the meaning that the image holds for the client.

Behavioral Activation: Break Free From Inactivity

What makes CBT particularly valuable is its focus on practical, skill-based techniques that create measurable results in relatively short timeframes. The techniques we’re sharing aren’t just theoretically sound, they’ve been rigorously tested and shown to produce significant improvements in psychological functioning. For example, a person may get stage fright and feel like running away from that situation when faced with it. Their therapist will try to expose them to stage-like situations with increasing difficulty and provide training to control their response.

These situations require immediate safety planning and stabilization before skill-building becomes possible. CBT helps most people who complete treatment – but “most” doesn’t mean “all.” You realize you handled your boss’s critical email without spiraling, or you attended a social event you’d have avoided two months earlier. These moments – noticing change you didn’t consciously create – signal that skills have become part of how you naturally respond. ✓ Life stress and transitionsCareer changes, relationship challenges, grief, and adjustment difficulties respond well to CBT’s practical, problem-solving approach.

This incorrect assumption may hold them back from making progress in life, which only frustrates Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and depresses them more. Someone needing emotion regulation skills before cognitive work isn’t more damaged – they’re showing us what sequence their nervous system requires. That clinical sophistication, recognizing when to adapt rather than persist, often makes the difference between treatment failure and success. If you’re experiencing acute suicidal thoughts, active substance dependence, or severe dissociation, jumping into standard CBT rarely works.