Therapists

Tracey Thomas

Sian Welch

CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) is a practical and solution-focused talking therapy. It works by helping people understand the connection between their thoughts, feelings and behaviour and then, with this insight, offers the chance to make changes.   By challenging unhelpful patterns, or sometimes learning to accept things as they really are, relief from a diverse range of distressing issues becomes possible.  CBT can help you to make sense of overwhelming problems by breaking them down into smaller parts. This makes it easier to see how they are connected and how they are affecting you.

CBT, unlike some of the other talking therapies, focuses mainly on the ‘here and now’, looking for ways to improve your current state of mind and resolve problems and difficulties.  That said, talking about the past can, at times, be useful in order to understand how it may be affecting you now.  Like a personal trainer, the therapist guides and encourages but cannot actually do the hard work of making changes for you, so practicing between sessions and undertaking weekly tasks is central to CBT’s success.

CBT has been shown to help with many different types of problems.  These include anxiety, depression, panic, phobias (including agoraphobia and social phobia), stress, obsessive compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and many other issues that people may experience such as anger, low self esteem or physical problems such as pain or fatigue.