CBT can help with the following psychological difficulties which can cause people significant distress and impact on their daily lives. Click on the menu tabs below to find out more about these difficulties:
Low mood and depression
There are times when we can all experience periods of low mood and generally we can come through those times naturally and return to our normal level of functioning. However, when a period of low mood continues, we may need a helping hand to get ourselves back on track.
Low mood and depression is characterized by sadness, loss of pleasure and interest in things, lack of motivation, loss or increase in appetite, difficulty with concentration, attention, memory and gloomy, negative thoughts. This can lead us to withdraw from our normal daily functioning which can reinforce our low mood. People can often experience anxiety when they are depressed.
Low self-esteem and confidence
Self-esteem refers to the way we think about ourselves and our abilities. Low self-esteem is characterized by negative, self-critical ways of thinking about ourselves and our abilities, generally believing we’re not good enough. This way of thinking about ourselves can affect what we do and our sense of possibilities for the future. Consequently, low self-esteem can be accompanied by depression and anxiety.
Developing a health self-esteem can give us a more positive, healthy way of thinking about ourselves and make us more able to deal with difficulties in life.
Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)
OCD is characterized by recurrent and persistent, obsessive thoughts or images that people often recognize as irrational but feel unable to let go and cause them high levels of anxiety and distress. They will then try to neutralize these symptoms with other thoughts or behaviours. These actions are compulsive and repetitive in nature such as repeated, ritualistic hand washing, ordering, checking or mental acts like praying or counting. These behaviours are carried out to extinguish the anxiety created by the thoughts or to prevent a feared event or situation and are time consuming, interfering with daily functioning.
Post traumatic disorder (PTSD)
PTSD can occur when a person is exposed to a traumatic event during which they experienced or witnessed actual or threatened death, serious injury or threat to the safety of themselves or others during which they felt intense fear, helplessness or horror.
Some of the symptoms include recurrent, distressing intrusive recollections, dreams, flashbacks, intense distress and strong physiological responses to triggers that resemble the traumatic event. This leads people to avoid triggers and anywhere where they may come into contact with them and being in a state of constant alert for danger. This can impact on relationships and daily functioning and is often accompanied by anxiety and depression.
CBT and EMDR are treatments recommended by NICE (National Institute for Health & Care Excellence: www.nice.org.uk) for the treatment of PTSD.
Adjustment Disorder
An adjustment difficulty can occur in response to a stressful event which causes significant distress, over and above what might normally be expected. These difficulties are accompanied by symptoms of anxiety and depression and are described as acute if they are experienced for less than 6 months or chronic if they last for 6 months or longer. They can occur in response to events such as the onset or diagnosis of health problems, change in life circumstances, retirement, loss etc.
Panic disorder
Panic disorder refers to the occurrence of recurrent, unexpected panic attacks which usually peak within 10-15 minutes and are experienced as very intense. They are accompanied by anxiety about having additional panic attacks and what the implications of the attacks are. For example believing that you are losing control, going crazy or having a heart attack. This is due to the intense physical symptoms of anxiety experienced during the original panic attack.
Symptoms include:
palpitations, increased heart rate, pounding heart, sweating, trembling or shaking shortness of breath, feeling of choking, chest pain, nausea, dizziness, light headedness, faintness, feelings of unreality or being detached from oneself, numbness, chills or hot flushes. Panic can be experienced with or without Agoraphobia.
Agoraphobia
Agoraphobia refers to anxiety about being in public places without being able to escape or in which escape would be very difficult or embarrassing. This can lead people to avoid these places, often fearful of having panic attacks, or if unable to avoid them, endure them with high levels of anxiety and feeling they need to be accompanied by someone.
Abuse and trauma
Sometimes people experience upsetting, abusive and traumatic events but do not develop PTSD. They can, however, experience psychological difficulty resulting from these events that they find difficult to live with and talk to people about.
CBT will offer people experiencing this difficulty to be able to process these past events and begin to think about themselves in a more helpful, compassionate way, within a supportive therapeutic environment.
Specific phobias
People experiencing specific phobias very often do a good job avoiding their feared object to the point that therapy to help them overcome it may not be something they feel they need help with until a particular event on the horizon occurs. For example, fear of flying and a family holiday looming, fear of wasps and bees as summer approaches.
Other phobias include fear of heights, animals, injections and blood. CBT and EMDR can be very effective in helping people overcome their phobias.
Complex or complicated bereavement
Grief can become complicated or complex when people who have experienced the loss of a loved one become “stuck” in the normal grief process. Sometimes, circumstances surrounding the loss or the relationship may leave people finding it hard to believe the deceased person has gone, with the feeling that life is moving on but they are not.
This grief dominates their daily lives with strong feeling of yearning, thoughts, images and memories that occupy their mind, often accompanied by feelings of anger, depression and anxiety.
Generalised anxiety disorder (GAD)
Everyone experiences worry but for people with GAD, excessive worry is hard to control and is experienced for most days for at least 6 months. Typical symptoms of excessive worry include, restlessness, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, feeling irritable, on edge with muscle tension and disturbed sleep. Worries tend to focus on a number of events or activities and can result in physical symptoms of anxiety, distress and impact on daily functioning.
Health anxiety
People experiencing health anxiety (or hypochondriasis) are persistently preoccupied with the fear that they have a serious illness or disease causing a significant impact on their daily lives. This fear is based on meanings given to physical/bodily symptoms and is perpetuated by reassurance seeking behaviours and is not relieved by medical evaluation or reassurance.
Trichotillomania
Trichotillomania is an anxiety based difficulty in which people recurrently pull out their hair resulting
in noticeable hair loss. Feelings of tension are experienced before pulling the hair out and when attempting to resist doing so which are relieved by the act of pulling the hair out.
CBT can also help with anger, stress, eating problems, body image issues and sleep difficulties.
For further information or to discuss the difficulty you may be experiencing, please contact Anita at North Cornwall CBT.
Social anxiety and shyness
People who experience social anxiety have a marked, persistent fear of one or more social situations or performance situations such as groups, parties, presentations. The fear is about possible negative scrutiny or judgement by others and about being humiliated or embarrassed in those situations. This fear invokes high levels of anxiety at the anticipatory stage as well as in the social situation and can lead people to avoid or want to escape from them or they will endure them with significant levels of anxiety.
People may fear these situations, believing they are unable to start or maintain conversations and may feel afraid of authority figures.