Methods in my practice
Cognitive therapy
Cognitive behavioural therapy, today commonly just called cognitive therapy (as I call it here too), is one of the most widely used psychotherapeutic methods and one of those best supported by research. It is particularly known for its effect on anxiety, depression, OCD, stress and other psychological problems, and I have worked with it for many years.
Through my clinical work I have seen how effective a method it is. Cognitive therapy gives you practical tools to understand and work with the thoughts, feelings and patterns of behaviour that keep your difficulties going.
Thoughts, feelings and actions are connected
The main principle of cognitive therapy is that your thoughts (your cognitions), your feelings and your behaviour affect each other. Many psychological problems arise because we have developed negative, rigid and unhelpful thoughts about ourselves, others and the world around us. Those thoughts lead to negative feelings and unhelpful behaviour, which in turn keep the problem going or make it worse.
The aim is to help you recognise the rigid patterns of thinking and change them into more realistic and helpful ways of thinking. We call this cognitive restructuring. It is an active process in which you and I together find and understand the thoughts and beliefs that contribute to your problems, and often we also look at how earlier experiences have shaped them.
We also work with what you do
Whatever you come to me with, working with behaviour is at least as important as working with thoughts. Behaviour is influenced by thoughts, but it also influences thoughts. So together we find the unhelpful behaviour and change the patterns. It may be that you avoid certain situations, that you over-commit to work, education or particular activities, that you have stopped doing what used to bring you joy, or that you always put others before yourself.
For anxiety, one of the methods I use is exposure, where you gradually practise facing what you fear. For OCD it is combined with response prevention, where you practise leaving the rituals alone. We always agree on the exercises together and at your pace.
In the sessions
We start from specific situations in your life, examine the patterns and agree on what you want to work on.
Between sessions
You try out what we have worked on in your own everyday life. The exercises should suit the energy you have and what you want to change.
Homework is part of the treatment
A lot happens in the therapy room with me, but for the new, more helpful patterns of thinking and behaving, and the strategies we arrive at, to take root, you have to go out and use them. You have to go out into your daily life and test our new hypotheses about yourself, others and the world.
You can use those tools and strategies for the rest of your life. They help you handle future pressures and challenges better, and they reduce the risk of relapse. That is what makes you your own therapist.
A time-limited course of therapy with shared goals
Cognitive therapy is a time-limited and goal-oriented form of therapy. Treatment is often shorter than in other forms of psychotherapy, and it focuses on the goals we have set for you together. It is a structured method with clarity and collaboration at its core.
And then there is what matters most to me: the relationship between you and me. Even though the therapy is structured and goal-directed, the relationship between us makes a real difference to whether it works. That is why I want to know what helps you and what does not, so we can adjust along the way. Read more about our collaboration.