What is Cognitive Therapy?

The therapy I practice, TEAM-CBT, was created by Dr. David Burns, a psychiatrist who is well-known for his New York Times Bestselling book “Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy.” Dr. Burns beautifully describes the causes of depression and anxiety and how to recover from these problems in his excellent Ted Talk, which you can see at this link. To summarize, Dr. Burns wonders “Why do we get depressed? What can we do to get better?” Some people have theorized that these problems are caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. Dr. Burns was working with patients and prescribing medications because the chemical imbalance model was considered the best treatment. However, his research showed that depression is not caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain, and that medications that supposedly changed brain chemistry did not help patients feel better. He learned of a new kind of treatment, Cognitive Therapy, developed by Dr. Aaron Beck, and began attending Dr. Beck’s weekly seminar. He learned that Cognitive Therapy has three main components: 1) Thoughts cause all of our moods, not events; 2) The negative thoughts that lead to depression and anxiety are deeply flawed and distorted; 3) People can change they way they think and they will immediately change the way they feel. You can watch Dr. Burns’ Ted Talk to see how these ideas were proved to be true in his work with the first patient he treated using Cognitive Therapy. He also tells a powerful personal story that illustrated the power of Cognitive Therapy from an experience in his own life.