My Approach to Therapy: How It Works

An overview of how cognitive behavioral therapy understands emotional problems and how change occurs.

Cognitive Behavioral Psychology (CBP) is based on a simple but powerful idea:
the way we think about events, and the opinions or beliefs we hold about them, influence how we feel and act in response.

When our thoughts and opinions are realistic and flexible, our emotions and behaviors tend to be healthy and balanced.
But when our thinking or our opinions become rigid, extreme, or distorted, we are more likely to experience emotional distress and fall into unhelpful behavioral patterns.

CBP is the foundation of several evidence-based approaches, including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT).
Although these approaches differ slightly in focus, they all share one essential goal: to help people identify, question, and modify the beliefs and opinions that drive their emotions and behaviors.

A Practical, Collaborative Approach

In cognitive behavioral work, therapist and client function as a team.
Together, they look at situations that trigger distress, identify the opinions and interpretations that underlie those reactions, and experiment with new, more balanced ways of responding.

CBP is active and educational.
Rather than focusing only on the past, it emphasizes what you can do now — how you can begin to change your thinking and your attitudes toward life events.
Even small shifts in outlook or behavior can begin to reshape how you feel and how you act.

Why It Works

For decades, research and clinical experience have shown that people can learn to think more flexibly, evaluate more realistically, and act more effectively — and as a result, feel better emotionally.
CBP helps you understand how your beliefs and opinions about yourself, others, and the world influence your emotions.

It teaches that feelings are not random or uncontrollable — they arise from the judgments we make about events.
When those judgments become extreme or absolute, emotional reactions tend to become equally intense.
By examining and adjusting those judgments, people often discover that their emotional life becomes more stable and their behaviors more purposeful.

A Few Core Principles

• Thoughts, emotions, and behaviors are interconnected.
  Changing one part of the system influences the others.
  
  

• Beliefs and evaluations drive emotions.
  What we tell ourselves about events and how we evaluate them has a greater impact on our emotional and behavioral responses than the events themselves. Cognitive distortions and extreme attitudes tend to generate distorted and extreme emotions and behaviors.
  
  

• Skills can be learned.
  Through practice, we can replace extreme and dysfunctional attitudes with more flexible, balanced ones.
  
  

• Progress builds confidence.
  Each time we modify an extreme opinion or try a new behavior, we strengthen our sense of self-control and mastery.
  
  

In Summary

Cognitive Behavioral Psychology is not just about managing symptoms — it’s about understanding and reshaping the opinions and beliefs that guide your emotional and behavioral life.
By learning to observe your thoughts, evaluate your opinions, and act in new ways, you begin to take a more active role in shaping your well-being.

The goal is not perfection, but flexibility — to develop realistic, compassionate, and balanced attitudes that promote psychological health and lasting personal growth.