Cognitive Behavioral Psychotherapy Warsaw

Cognitive-behavioral therapy – also known as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) – is one of the most proven short-term therapies. Its origins date back to the 1960s, and although it was created to treat depression, it quickly proved to be effective in working on other disorders, such as anxiety, eating, personality, psychotic, and addiction treatment. It also works well when using pharmacological agents.

So let’s take a look at what CBT is all about and how it actually differs from other psychotherapies.

The whole method is actually based on a very simple assumption: by changing a maladaptive way of thinking (i.e. wrong because it causes us suffering), you can change not only your mood, but also the entire pattern of behavior.

For CBT, the types of our responses are acquired, learned through development, and therefore fixable or even unlearned. During therapy, therefore, we replace the existing ways of acting in life, those that have failed us, for more “favorable”. The goal is to regain a view of ourselves and the world that helps us in our daily functioning, and not paralyzes and discourages us.

In “Harmonia”, a cognitive behavioral psychotherapy clinic (Warsaw Center), therapists use various proven CBT techniques, including:

• writing thoughts: we write down our reflections according to the guidance of a psychologist; the technique develops the ability to carefully and consciously analyze your own thoughts in order to independently pick up distortions and errors over time;
• Socratic dialogue: the therapist asks precise questions that are to help us identify the distortions present in our thinking;
• homework: allow us and the therapist to experimentally verify our deep beliefs. By the way, they are used to develop and consolidate the skills newly acquired in therapy. If you are convinced that you cannot initiate conversations with others, an example task might be asking 5 strangers for an hour or a way;
• exposure: used for anxiety disorders; it is a very conscious and controlled encounter with a fear-inducing object; aims to familiarize us with the anxiety reaction and to indicate ways to adapt in anxiety-generating situations.

During sessions with a therapist, we focus mainly on current experiences, not the past. On the basis of joint conversations, the psychologist scrupulously analyzes:

• stimuli, that is, in our opinion, problematic situations in our everyday life;
• our ways of thinking about the experience;
• emotional and physical reactions that accompany us in a given situation.

Thanks to such an in-depth analysis of behaviors and emotional states, the therapist is able to explain many non-obvious dependencies and explain the irrationality of the current way of thinking about himself and the world.

Meetings are usually held once or twice a week. The length of therapy depends of course on individual needs, but it takes an average of 6 weeks to 6 months. For comparison – psychodynamic treatment is expected to be around 4 years.

However, it is difficult to independently determine what rhythm of meetings and which method will be best for us. To more accurately estimate the time and course of therapy, it is best to consult a psychologist directly (in Warsaw in cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy, in which the “Harmonia” clinic specializes).

The area in which cognitive behavioral psychotherapy works is extremely broad. Its techniques are used in the case of:

• depression
• various types of phobias (but most of all social phobias,
• panic attacks,
• anxiety neurosis,
• excessive stress, chronic fatigue,
• compulsive obsessive disorder,
• eating disorders,
• sleep disorders,
• schizophrenia,
• post-traumatic stress.

As already mentioned, cognitive behavioral therapy is one of the most clinically researched methods of psychotherapy. Its effectiveness is evidenced by a very rare recurrence of disorders. After going through the full cycle of meetings, we usually change our mental habits permanently. We gain greater self-awareness, we find ourselves better in stressful or anxiety-generating situations. We have tools that help us successfully find ourselves in a variety of contexts.

It must be remembered that psychotherapy is never a closed method that will free us from all problems once and for all. In Harmonia, a cognitive behavioral psychotherapy clinic (Warsaw), with the therapist’s support, we free ourselves from destructive patterns, we get the key to a good relationship with ourselves and the world. There will always be new difficulties, but the skills acquired during therapy will help us build a better life.

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