Definition
Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is a structured, present-focused, time-limited form of psychotherapy developed in the 1960s by Aaron Beck for depression and rapidly extended to anxiety, post-traumatic stress, eating disorders, and many other conditions. It rests on the core proposition that emotions and behaviours are largely shaped by how a person interprets events — not the events themselves — and that maladaptive patterns of thinking can be identified and revised through guided practice.
A course of CBT typically runs eight to twenty weekly sessions in which client and therapist collaboratively identify distressing thoughts, examine the evidence for and against them, design behavioural experiments to test their accuracy, and develop alternative responses. Between sessions the client practises new skills, often using worksheets and homework.
Why it matters
How it works
A CBT session typically targets the cognitive triangle: thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, each influencing the others. The therapist helps the client catch automatic thoughts — fast, often unnoticed appraisals — and identify recurring cognitive distortions such as catastrophising, mind-reading, or all-or-nothing thinking. Once a distorted thought is on the table, it can be examined like a hypothesis: what is the evidence for it, what is the evidence against it, what is a more balanced alternative?
Behavioural components are equally important. Exposure exercises rebuild tolerance for feared situations. Activity scheduling counters depressive withdrawal. Behavioural experiments test the predictions implied by problematic beliefs — if I speak up in the meeting, the team will think I am incompetent — and update the belief based on what actually happens. Over weeks, the combination of cognitive restructuring and behavioural change shifts the client out of the maintaining cycle and into a new pattern of responding.