About Our Treatment Approach

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

CBT has roots in humanity's earliest written records. The Buddha is said to have noted how negative thoughts and the feelings produce "dukkha," a Sanskrit word for the most fundamental form of human suffering.  The Greek Stoic School made the same connection.  Epictetus, a first century Stoic philosopher, wrote it's not what happens to us but "our views and opinions" of what happens that creates our emotional anguish.

In the last 60 years modern cognitive science has developed tools that focus on the age-old  beliefs and thought patterns that produce dukkha.  After experiencing trauma we may adopt a new belief such as "The world is basically hostile and unsafe." And this change may well take place below the level of conscious awareness: consciously we may simply be aware that we feel angry, fearful or hopeless much of the time.  Our CBT tools drill down to identify the self-defeating beliefs that, when triggered, produce the negative thoughts that are driving these negative feelings.

CBT also reveals the motivational factors that underlie and maintain these beliefs. Believing the world is essentially dangerous might feel protective.  "Knowing" this about our world might seem to put us in a better position to see threats early on and take steps to avoid them.  Weighing the costs and benefits of such beliefs is an essential step in making a decision about resetting them in more life-affirming directions.

Finally,  CBT's behavioral tools help us to establish and maintain new patterns of acting in the world.  At the end of the day it is our new behaviors that consolidate new beliefs by creating the real-world data in support of them.