EVIDENCE-BASED THERAPY

COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY

"For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Shakespeare Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2

  • Basic principle of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is that your feelings are based on your thoughts and perceptions, rather than events and situations themselves. By changing self-defeating self-talk and maladaptive behaviors/coping skills you can change how you feel and function. CBT teaches you more effective ways to cope and how to identify, recognize and challenge distortions in thinking and irrational thought patterns. The goal is not to change sadness to happiness for example, but rather to reduce the intensity of the negative feeling in order to be able to regulate emotions in the moment effectively. To improve mood and to increase positive feelings it is important to add/change behaviors that would help create this change. The end result is a more effective way of living, and improved quality of life.

DIALECTICAL BEHAVIORAL THERAPY

At it's core, DBT helps people build four major skills:

Mindfulness is about being aware of and accepting what’s happening in the present moment.

Distress Tolerance skills help you get through rough patches without turning to potentially destructive coping techniques.

Interpersonal Effectiveness - Intense emotions and rapid mood changes can make it hard to relate to others. Knowing how you feel and what you want is an important part of building fulfilling connections. Interpersonal effectiveness skills can help you be clear about these things. These skills combine listening skills, social skills, and assertiveness training to help you learn how to change situations while remaining true to your values.

Emotion Regulation skills help you learn to deal with primary emotional reactions before they lead to a chain of distressing secondary reactions. For example, a primary emotion of anger might lead to guilt, worthlessness, shame, and even depression. Some of the skills Dr. Krichmar teaches include:

  • identifying and recognizing negative and positive emptions.
  • correctly labeling emotions.
  • Reducing emotional vulnerability and hypersensitivity.
  • being able to recognize how we are feeling here and now.
  • Understanding adaptive coping strategies and implementing them in real life situations.

Mindfulness and distress tolerance skills help you work toward acceptance of your thoughts and behaviors. Emotion regulation and interpersonal effectiveness skills help you work toward changing your thoughts and behaviors.