Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

 Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a short-term form of behavioral treatment. It helps people problem-solve. CBT also reveals the relationship between beliefs, thoughts, and feelings, and the behaviors that follow. Through CBT, people learn that their perceptions directly influence how they respond to specific situations. In other words, a person’s thought process informs their behaviors and actions. 

Cognitive behavioral therapy is not a distinct treatment technique. Instead, it is a general term which refers to a group of therapies. These therapies have certain similarities in therapeutic methodology. The group includes rational emotive behavior therapy, cognitive therapy, and dialectical behavior therapy.

Cognitive behavioral therapy is grounded in the belief that how a person perceives events determines how they will act. It is not the events themselves that determine the person's actions or feelings.  These negative thoughts may influence their focus. They may then only perceive negative things that happen. Meanwhile, they may block out or avoid thoughts or actions that could disprove the negative belief system. Afterward, when nothing appears to go right in the day, the person may feel even more anxious than before. The negative belief system may get stronger. The person is at risk of being trapped in a vicious, continuous cycle of anxiety. 

Cognitive behavioral therapists believe we can adjust our thoughts. This is thought to directly influence our emotions and behavior. The adjustment process is called cognitive restructuring. Aaron T. Beck is the psychiatrist widely considered to be the father of cognitive therapy. He believed a person’s thinking pattern may become established in childhood. He found that certain cognitive errors could lead to dysfunctional assumptions.

The cognitive behavioral process is based on an educational model. People in therapy are helped to unlearn negative reactions and learn new ones. These are positive reactions to challenging situations. CBT helps break down overwhelming problems into small, manageable parts. Therapists help people set and reach short-term goals. Then the therapist gradually adjusts how the person in treatment thinks, feels, and reacts in tough situations. Changing attitudes and behaviors can help people learn to address specific issues in productive ways.

Some factors make people more likely to benefit from CBT. People with clearly defined behavioral and emotional concerns may find CBT helpful. Those with specific problems that affect their quality of life can also benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy. People in treatment learn new coping skills to handle their issues. They develop more positive beliefs and behaviors. Some even resolve long-standing life problems. 

Source:   Learn about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Therapists (goodtherapy.org)  

Solution-Focused Therapy (SFT), also called Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) was developed by Steve de Shazer (1940-2005), and Insoo Kim Berg (1934-2007) in collaboration with their colleagues at the Milwaukee Brief Family Therapy Center beginning in the late 1970s. As the name suggests, SFBT is future-focused, goal-directed, and focuses on solutions, rather than on the problems that brought clients to seek therapy. Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) is a short-term goal-focused evidence-based therapeutic approach, which incorporates positive psychology principles and practices, and which helps clients change by constructing solutions rather than focusing on problems. In the most basic sense, SFBT is a hope friendly, positive emotion eliciting, future-oriented vehicle for formulating, motivating, achieving, and sustaining desired behavioral change.

Solution-Focused practitioners develop solutions by first generating a detailed description of how the client’s life will be different when the problem is gone, or their situation improved to a degree satisfactory to the client. Therapist and client then carefully search through the client’s life experience and behavioral repertoire to discover the necessary resources needed to co-construct a practical and sustainable solution that the client can readily implement. Typically, this process involves identifying and exploring previous “exceptions,” (e.g., times when the client has successfully coped with or addressed previous difficulties and challenges.) In an inherently respectful and practical interview process, SF therapists and their clients consistently collaborate in identifying goals reflective of clients’ best hopes and developing satisfying solutions.

The practicality of the SFBT approach may stem in part from the fact that it was developed inductively in an inner-city outpatient mental health service setting in which clients were accepted without previous screening. The developers of SFBT spent countless hours observing therapy sessions over the course of several years, carefully noting any sorts of questions, statements or behaviors on the part of the therapist that led to positive therapeutic outcome. Questions, statements, and activities associated with clients reporting progress were subsequently preserved and incorporated into the SFBT approach.

Since that early development, SFBT has not only become one of the leading schools of brief therapy, but it has also become a major influence in such diverse fields as business, social policy, education, and criminal justice services, child welfare, domestic violence offender treatment. Described as a practical, goal-driven model, a hallmark of SFBT is its emphasis on clear, concise, realistic goal negotiations.

SFBT has continued to grow in popularity, both for its usefulness and its brevity, and is currently one of the leading schools of psychotherapy in the world.

Source:  What is Solution-Focused Therapy · Solution-Focused Therapy Institute (solutionfocused.net)