Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

You can know a thought isn't true and still feel it as fact.

You can know that one mistake doesn't mean you're a failure and still spend the whole afternoon replaying it. You can know that your friend is probably just busy and still feel certain she's angry with you when she doesn't text back. You can understand that anxiety is lying to you about the danger and still feel your whole body brace for it. It’s easy as humans to experience thoughts as the truth.

CBT works with this gap. We pay attention to the messages you’re telling yourself: about yourself, other, and the world. We untwist your negative thinking patterns so you can experience peace of mind, joy and relief.

Our minds are constantly generating explanations, and many of us have stopped questioning most of them. We take the first interpretation and treat it as fact, assume the worst and act accordingly, and let old conclusions about ourselves make today's decisions. Over time, these patterns run so automatically that it can be hard to tell the difference between what actually happened and what your mind decided it meant.

In our work together, we'll slow things down enough to catch these thoughts before they finish making your decisions for you. We might look at what your mind tells you right before you avoid a hard conversation, right after you make a mistake, or in the middle of a spiral about something that hasn't happened yet. CBT has developed roughly fifty distinct methods for untwisting distorted thinking, and part of the work is finding the handful that actually fit how your mind works, rather than forcing one technique to do every job.

There's a particular kind of relief that comes with this work. When a belief you've carried for years finally comes apart under examination, the relief is immediate. Something that felt like a fixed part of who you are turns out to be a thought you can question, and once you've truly seen through it, it rarely has the same grip again. I find this part of the work exhilarating.

CBT is definitely not about thinking positively all the time. A flexible mind can hold many different thoughts. You can think a situation is genuinely difficult and also think you're capable of handling it. You can acknowledge a real problem and still choose not to catastrophize it.

The work is about accuracy, not optimism.

It's about your thoughts fitting the situation instead of running on an old script that has nothing to do with what's actually in front of you.

Over time, you begin to catch the thought before it becomes the mood. You notice the prediction before you've already acted on it. You get more practice telling the difference between a fact and an old, familiar story your mind has told you many times before.

Your thoughts have been running the show for a long time. CBT helps you take a closer look at what they're actually saying and replace them with balanced, accurate thoughts that bring real relief.