Cognitive Restructuring: Treatments For Anxiety & Depression
Our cognitive restructuring sessions are designed to help you break negative thought patterns and improve your mood and behavior.
Explore Our 7 Week-cognitive Restructuring (Sensory Immersive Therapy)
Cognitive Restructuring
Our thought patterns, emotions, and behavior are inextricably linked. When any one of these components are altered, it affects all the others in the system. When people are depressed or anxious, usually thoughts, behaviors, and emotions are in a negative feedback loop, feeding off one another, and maintaining a negative mood state.
Cognitive restructuring is a treatment designed to help people recognize and significantly alter maladaptive thought patterns via modulation of negative cognitive loops and replacing them with positive thought patterns. Cognitive Restructuring is a useful tool for understanding and reacting differently to the thinking patterns that negatively influence our mood and behavior.
There are numerous methods to identifying and altering dysfunctional thought patterns. Generally, they all begin with identifying automatic thoughts, those thoughts which provide a running commentary to our experience. Instead of accepting all of these thoughts as accurate reflections of reality, the cognitive therapist helps the patient to learn to think of these thoughts as guesses about the root correlation, and consider alternate points of view. In this way, the client is able to develop a more centered way of awareness about whatever is causing him or her distress.
There is a good deal of research supporting the effectiveness of cognitive restructuring with a number of psychological problems. These include phobias, panic attacks, anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, personality disorders, and alcohol and drug problems, to name a few.
Here is a list of everything we can help with:
- Drug Addiction
- Anxiety
- Panic Attacks
- Over Compulsive Disorder
- Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
- Irritable Bowel Syndrome
- Depression
- Disturbed Sleep
- Insomnia
- Anger
- Mood Swings
How Does Cognitive Restructuring Work?
Effective therapy can actually alter the neurotransmitters in your brain and rewire your neural pathways. This can lead to a positive transformation in the way you process information about yourself and the world. The patient first lays down comfortably in a darkened room. Through a series of breathing exercises, the patient is able to enter a meditative state where judgement and filters are reduced, uncovering focus, clearity, and honesty. During this time we will examine how irrational thoughts create depression, anxiety, and relationship problems through a series of breathing, questioning, and imagery. We use cognitive restructuring to challenge and transform these beliefs to help you heal. No treatment is like another’s, as everyone receives a unique approach based on their unique life. Behaviors can also influence the way we feel. We will provide practical action strategies to help in the process of healing and restoration. Click on this link to learn about the evidence supporting CBT: Evidence Is In: Psychotherapy Changes the Brain.
How Does Trauma Affect The Brain?
Experiencing a traumatic life event can have a major effect on the brain’s biological circuitry and these functional changes can have debilitating effects on cognition, memory and emotions. Because of neuroplasticity, sometimes our brain’s attempt to heal may result in the development of negative cognitive loops or thought patterns that can have lasting debilitating effects on mood and behavior that can last for months or years. Cognitive Restructuring can be used to identify certain negative cognitive loops and then systematically modulate these automatic thought patterns to reframe the associated thought patterns and behaviors into positive cognitive loops. The goal of Cognitive Restructuring is to take control of negative thought patterns, modulate and reframe them to utilize them for a positive outcome. This therapy is a trauma focused cognitive behavioral treatment that focuses more on the thoughts people have in response to their trauma. Essentially, cognitive processing therapy helps people examine their maladaptive patterns in thinking and find more effective ways of making sense of the trauma. This is achieved through homework assignments involving patients writing out their trauma narrative, and engaging in cognitive restructuring of maladaptive or problematic thinking patterns.
Speak To Us About Your Treatment
If you have any questions, we are happy to answer them via phone or email. Also, we welcome you in our office during working hours.
441 S Beverly Drive, Suite 1, Beverly Hills, CA 90212
Call us: 888-404-4837
Mon–Sat: 8:00am–7:00pm