Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Toronto

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is a first-line intervention for people who are experiencing challenges such as worry and anxiety, depression, trauma, stress, and burnout. This approach aims to assist people in understanding and challenging present unhelpful patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving, alongside learning adaptive strategies to improve well-being and resiliency.  

This short-term, structured treatment focuses on peoples’ present issues, and the interplay between their thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. Positive change can be facilitated using cognitive and behavioural techniques to assist people in learning to reappraise their feared outcomes and reduce their anxiety levels over time. Consideration for combining these techniques with exposure strategies, may also hold some advantage in improving the effectiveness of CBT. By enhancing the development of skills through using cognitive and behavioural techniques, people can learn to confront their underlying fears, and effectively cope with their challenges.

A typical CBT program consists of 10 to 15 individual, or group sessions, that focus on areas such as psychoeducation, self-monitoring, relaxation training, cognitive restructuring, and behavioural modification. Treatment duration and outcome depends on severity of symptoms, whether comorbidities exist, client-compliance to CBT concepts and skill building, and therapist mastery of CBT.