What’s The Scoop With CBT?

If you've been looking for a Kelowna therapist, you can almost guarantee that somewhere along the way you've heard the acronym "CBT." Whether someone has recommended CBT therapy to you, or you've noticed therapists listing it on their websites as one of the modalities they use, you may be wondering: what's the scoop with CBT, and what does it all mean?

First, CBT stands for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, and it's one of the most widely recommended forms of therapy today. This is partly because it has a large empirical backing (meaning there is a significant amount of research demonstrating its effectiveness). Insurance companies also tend to favour CBT because it is manualized and typically short-term.

Unfortunately, CBT doesn't always translate into the therapeutic space as neatly or as effectively as the research literature might suggest. This is one of the reasons why, as a clinic, we tend to take a different approach. Let me explain.

Much of psychological research today relies on a research method called null hypothesis testing (NHT). It's a complex topic and probably one for another day, but to keep things simple, this method examines probabilities and determines the likelihood that a particular outcome occurred due to the intervention being studied.

In order to control for variables that might influence these outcomes (in other words, outside factors unrelated to the treatment itself), NHT requires treatments to be highly standardized. CBT works particularly well within this research model because it is manualized, meaning therapists are expected to deliver it in a relatively consistent way. This helps researchers determine whether the outcomes observed are due to CBT itself, rather than factors such as the therapist's personality, therapeutic relationship, or other techniques being used.

However, in the real world, there are many variables that can influence how therapy unfolds.

Individual client characteristics are one of them. Some clients respond very well to CBT because it is structured and logic-based, focusing on identifying and changing thoughts, beliefs, and behaviours. Other clients may experience this approach as somewhat inauthentic or, at times, invalidating.

Additionally, when trauma is involved—whether "big T" trauma or "little t" trauma—CBT can sometimes miss an important piece of the puzzle: trauma is not only stored cognitively, but also physiologically. We cannot always "think our way out" of our experiences. Sometimes, healing requires exploring the deeper patterns and experiences that contribute to present-day suffering and using approaches such as somatic therapies or EMDR to help process and release traumatic experiences.

Many of our clients report that CBT helped them get to "a certain place," but that they still feel there is something deeper to explore. Often, what they're describing is a recognition that their early life experiences have shaped them in meaningful ways, and they want to work through those experiences in a way that creates lasting change. If any of this resonates with you, you are in the right place! As a team we would love to connect with you and support you on your healing journey.

, CBT stands for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, and its largely one of the most recommended forms of therapy today. This is partly because it has a very large empirical backing (meaning, there is a tone of research that shows it is effective), and, insurance companies tend to rely heavily on this type of therapy because it is manualized and short term. Unfortunately, CBT doesn’t always transfer into the therapeutic space as nicely and as effective as it does in the literature, which is why as a clinic, we tend to stay away from it. Let me explain:

First, the research method we use today largely relies on the null hypothesis testing method (NHT). Its pretty complex and probably a topic for another day, so to make things concise, this method basically looks at probabilities and then tells you what the likelihood of the thing you are looking at occurring. This means, in order to control for variables that might impact this probability (i.e., outside factors that are not related to what you are actually looking at), NHT needs things to be very control – we want to ensure that the effects we are seeing are actually from the things we are studying and not some outside factor.