Contact Details

CBT Plymouth, 4th Floor,
Salt Quay House, Sutton Road, 
Plymouth PL4 0HP

Tel:01752 358515
Email: bea@cbtplymouth.co.uk

what can I expect ?

Sessions will generally last for one hour and will follow the next 5 steps

1. A full assessment of your problem to make sure that it is suitable for CBT and to give you an idea of what therapy will involve. This can take up to one and a half hours. Providing you are happy with what you hear you can go ahead and book your next session.

2. Identification of your values and goals and how you would like your life to look. CBT seeks to help you to remove the obstacles that stand in the way of you being able to live in accordance with your values and achieve your goals

3. Identification of the thoughts and behaviours that are maintaining the problem The client and therapist work together to identify how these thoughts and behaviours are maintaining the problem and how these can be changed.

4. Testing out new ways of doing things and new ways of thinking about things so that you can stop maintaining the problem and test out new ways of being, to find out what happens. It takes time and effort to change old habits but once you having established some new ways of thinking and behaving the last step is

5. Practice Practice Practice.

As you might imagine, most of the therapy sessions are centred around steps 4 & 5 because changing old habits takes time. To help speed up the process and to encourage you to start acting as your own therapist you will be asked to carry out regular out of session work.

HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE?

CBT is a time limited therapy. The number of sessions you will need will depend on the type of problem you have, your understanding of how the problem is maintained and your willingness to work for change. It is interesting to note that one of the best predictors of success with CBT is the client’s willingness to carry on with the therapy work outside of the therapy sessions.

WHAT ABOUT THE PAST?

CBT Therapy focuses on how your problems effect you in the here and now but recognises that today's problems often have their roots in the past. The reason for concentrating on how your problem affects you today is because, unfortunately, the past can not be changed. The good news is that we can learn from past experiences and we can learn how to do things differently today to improve our present experience.

WHAT CBT ISN’T

CBT is not a miracle cure or a passive treatment, it requires both effort and patience. Neither is it a cold, rational or academic therapy that skirts around difficult issues and feelings. In fact CBT is reliant upon you being able to identify and talk about the things that you do, the way that you think and on how you feel in different situations.