Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy: The Basics of Helping People Get Better

• • Identify basic tenets of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy
• •Discover how clients get better, rather than just feel better
• • Develop a cognitive-behavioral approach to goal setting and achievement
• •Articulate how clients identify their own problem thoughts
• •Support clients in replacing problem thoughts with healthy, rational thoughts
• •Integrate CBT immediately into your practice
• •Discover the two main reasons many therapists fail with CBT, and how to easily prevent them

Why Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy?
Today, the mental health field is focused on evidenced-based and short-term counseling and psychotherapy for several reasons. First, clinicians and treatment centers need to practice an approach that is supported by psychotherapy outcome research. In other words, the approach must work. Secondly, in today's managed care environment, clinicians often are limited in terms of the number of sessions they have to help their clients.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) has always been the ideal evidence-based, short-term therapy, even before it was popular to practice such an approach! The very instructive nature of CBT produces long-term results because it teaches clients rational self-counseling that they can apply not only to their current concerns, but to anything that might come their way. CBT also emphasizes getting better, rather than feeling better. When CBT clients are "better," they understand exactly why.

Dr. Pucci teaches participants the components of a systematic approach to CBT. The orderly approach helps the therapist know where he or she is in the therapeutic process at any given point. Because many approaches to CBT are not particularly methodical, the systematic nature of the CBT approach presented in this seminar is comforting and reassuring to both novice and experienced CBT therapists.