Some of the key components of CBT revolve around the theory that what you think (cognitive) and what you do (behavioural) affects the way you feel.

CBT focuses in on the links between our thoughts our feelings and out behaviours and how these impact each other. We aim to focus on the here and now, it is ‘present focused’ but also recognises how these can be influenced by our past.

The initial primary focus of CBT is looking at the links between our thoughts, feelings and behaviours to develop our understanding of how someone’s difficulties work, what is keeping them going, maintaining them and reinforcing them. We often think in terms of ‘vicious cycles’, where our thinking patterns and the things we’re doing (or not doing) to try and cope with difficulties are unintentionally keeping our difficulties going.

By understanding more about our vicious cycles and the way our difficulties work we can then look at ways in which we might be able to break these cycles.