Cognitive
Behavioural
Therapy
Difficulties can be maintained by patterns that repeat in the present.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) explores the relationship between thoughts, emotions, physical sensations and behaviour. These different parts of experience can interact in ways that reinforce one another over time.
At Resilience, CBT is formulation-led. We work with you to understand the particular pattern operating in your life, then use that understanding to decide where change may be useful.
First, understand what keeps repeating. Then work out what may help it change.
Before trying to change a pattern, it helps to understand what is keeping it going.
CBT uses a shared formulation to make sense of how a difficulty operates in your life.
It brings together what tends to trigger the problem, how you interpret what is happening, what you experience emotionally and physically, and what you do next.
A working understanding of the pattern — not a label imposed on you.
Triggers and situations
We look at when the difficulty tends to appear, what is happening around it and the situations, interactions or internal cues that may activate the pattern.
Thoughts and assumptions
CBT pays attention to the thoughts, predictions, meanings or beliefs that appear in the moment and influence how a situation is understood.
Emotional and physical responses
We consider what you feel emotionally and what you notice physically when the pattern is activated. These responses form part of the same formulation rather than being treated in isolation.
Behaviour, coping and avoidance
The way you respond can sometimes reduce distress in the short term while unintentionally helping the same difficulty continue. CBT looks closely at those maintaining patterns.
The aim is not to force every problem into the same model.
The formulation should make sense of your particular pattern and help guide what happens next.
CBT is not only about insight. It is about changing what happens next.
Once a useful formulation is in place, CBT can work with different parts of the pattern rather than relying on one technique for every difficulty.
What is examined, practised or tested depends on the formulation, your goals and what is clinically appropriate.
The pattern of thoughts, feelings and responses that may be keeping the difficulty going.
The pattern of thoughts, feelings and responses that may be keeping the difficulty going.
Track the pattern in real life
Notice the links between situations, thoughts, emotions, physical sensations and behaviour as they actually occur.
Examine the interpretation
Look more closely at predictions, assumptions or patterns of thinking rather than automatically treating them as facts.
Change what you do next
Work with behaviour itself — including withdrawal, reduced activity or other responses that may be maintaining the difficulty.
Approach what has been avoided
Where clinically appropriate, CBT may use graded exposure or related behavioural work instead of continuing to organise life around avoidance.
Test the prediction
Behavioural experiments compare what you expect will happen with what actually happens, creating information that can be reviewed.
Build on what you learn
Take the work into everyday life, observe what happens and use that information to guide what comes next in therapy.
Conceptual visual metaphor — not a neurological model of CBT.
These are possible routes through the work, not a fixed six-step programme.
Different difficulties call for different strategies. The formulation helps determine what is relevant, while specialist interventions require the appropriate clinical training and competence.
Fit depends on more than a diagnosis. Assessment helps determine whether CBT makes sense for you.
CBT is used with many different difficulties, but that does not mean the same approach is appropriate for every person or every problem.
Assessment considers what is happening now, what may be maintaining it, what you want to change and whether CBT offers a useful way of working with that pattern.
A treatment plan built around the person, not only the label.
There is something specific to understand.
CBT can be useful when there are identifiable links between situations, thoughts, emotions, physical responses and behaviour that can be explored together.
The work can move beyond discussion.
Depending on the formulation, therapy may involve examining predictions, practising different responses or changing patterns of behaviour between sessions.
Your circumstances matter.
Your goals, relevant history, current circumstances, readiness and the nature of the difficulty all matter when deciding whether CBT is appropriate.
Some difficulties may call for a different therapeutic approach, additional support or specialist treatment. That is something to consider during assessment rather than assume in advance.
You do not need to know which therapy you need before you get in touch.
An initial consultation is an opportunity to talk through what has been happening, what you are hoping to change and whether CBT — or another way of working — makes sense.