Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Women’s Health Issues
Cognitive behavior therapy is an evidence-based highly effective therapeutic treatment for anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Essentially, at our office, our team will work together with you to identify unhelpful thought patterns that keep you feeling stuck in anxious feelings, hopelessness, or fear.
Once we name these unhelpful thoughts, we can find evidence to challenge them and create more helpful reframes. Most importantly, these cognitive reframes are authentic to you. Over time, the goal of CBT introduces the helpful cognitive reframe to replace the unhelpful thought pattern and change your neural network.
We value a trauma informed approach to CBT. Your thoughts are not irrational-they exist for a reason, and are often rooted in traumatic experiences. They are keeping you stuck, and by viewing them as unhelpful we can help you find more healthy and helpful reframes to move forward.
What are Cognitive Distortions?
Cognitive distortions are problematic thought patterns that keep you in a loop of feeling stuck. These may sound like:
Magnification and minimization/disqualifying the positive:
Minimizing positive events, personality traits, or accomplishments while magnifying negative events or personality traits
Ignoring important parts:
ignoring important facts/details of a situation
Catastrophizing:
Going to the worst possible outcome of a situation
Overgeneralization:
If something bad happened one time, we assume it will happen again and again.
Oversimplifying/Magical Thinking/“Just World” Belief:
Good things should happen to good people, bad things should happen to bad people. Why is something bad happening to me if I am a good person?
Personalization:
The belief that you are responsible or at fault for events outside of your control
Jumping to conclusions/Fortune telling:
Assuming the outcome or meaning of an event/situation without evidence; predicting the future
Mind reading:
Assuming others’ thoughts about you are bad/negative without evidence or knowledge
Emotional reasoning:
The belief that feelings are facts; Tip: feelings are always valid- they are not always factual.
“Should” statements:
The belief that things, events, or people should be a specific/certain way. Tip: Helpful reminder that should statements create shame and self-criticism/ judgment.
All or nothing thinking/Rigid thinking:
Thinking in rigid or absolute terms, using words such as “forever”, “always”, “never” or “every”
What is Cognitive Reframing?
Cognitive reframes are helpful replacement thoughts for cognitive distortions. Reframes use evidence to challenge the unhelpful thought patterns, which help rewire the neural pathways over time and replace the “stuck” thought.
To create evidence, we use a reframe chart to help gather evidence and organize our thoughts.
Items we can discuss to use in the charts may include:
The situation or event leading up to the unhelpful thought
Your emotions coming up associated with the thought
Rating the intensity of the emotions both before and after the cognitive reframing exercise
Finding factual evidence that supports the unhelpful thought
Finding factual evidence that challenges the unhelpful thought
Identifying all relevant cognitive distortions
Validating your feelings with self compassion and understanding
Introducing flexibility into your thought pattern
Identifying phrases that help increase your distress tolerance
“I can get through this.”
“This is temporary.”
Identifying phrases that help increase your feelings of acceptance
“I accept that this is my reality just for today.”
Recognizing dialectical thought processes where two opposite feelings or thought patterns are both true at the same time
CBT Therapy Helps Us Understand the Cycle Of Thoughts, Feelings and Behaviors
Brain imaging scans tell us that humans have about 6,000 thoughts per day. Incredible! However, we can’t expect all of those thoughts to necessarily be helpful. Our thought patterns influence our emotions which impact our behaviors. If we are stuck in a negative feedback loop with unhelpful thought patterns, our emotions will be more intense (ex. Anger, rage, hopelessness) and our behaviors may not align with our values system.
Now, imagine your emotions are like the volume on a stereo. By changing the feedback loop to include a new more helpful cognitive reframe, our emotions may dial down (ex. anger and rage are replaced with frustration and the intensity of hopelessness is much less) and our behaviors are more in alignment with how we view the world, treat others and treat ourselves.
CBT Therapy Helps Get You “Un-Stuck”
CBT can help break the cycles of unhelpful thought patterns, rewire the way our brain thinks by creating new neural pathways, and helps turn the volume down on intense or unpleasant emotions. CBT doesn’t completely get rid of unpleasant feelings and that is not our goal in working together. CBT is able to help you thrive in the midst of painful feelings and difficult situations while managing your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in a more helpful way.
Begin Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Women’s Health Issues in New York and Washington, DC
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is proven to be an effective treatment modality for anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder among other issues. At our DC-based Therapy office, as a trained therapist I am here to guide you through this process of healing in order to regain control of your life and move forward in a positive way. Follow the steps below to get started on your journey to healing.
Get to know me here.
Fill out our convenient online mental health services contact form.
Begin your journey to healing.
Other Mental Health Services Offered at Greater Washington DC and New York City CBT Counseling for Women
We understand that women face a unique set of mental health challenges in today’s society and need specialized support. No two mental health journey’s to recovery are the same and we offer care and support that is specific to each individual. We offer these services in therapy for anxiety, depression, and PTSD in both Individual and Group counseling settings. We also specialize in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Cognitive Processing Therapy in addition to CBT.