What is CBT?
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a type of therapy that helps you build practical skills to feel better and reach your personal goals. It’s focused, structured, and designed to be short-term. You and your therapist will work together as a team to understand what you’re going through and create a plan that fits your needs.
In your first appointment, your therapist will get to know you and talk with you about what you’d like to work on. Then, together, you’ll create a plan to guide your therapy. CBT involves being actively engaged—not just during sessions, but also between them. You’ll learn tools that can help in everyday life, even long after therapy ends.
Some common CBT-based approaches include:
Exposure Therapy – gradually facing fears in a safe, supportive way
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) – learning to make room for difficult thoughts and feelings while living a meaningful life
Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) – a gold-standard treatment for OCD
Habit-Reversal Training (HRT) – reducing unwanted habits like hair pulling or skin picking
Mindfulness-Based Strategies – increasing awareness and self-compassion
Trauma Processing Therapies – gently working through past painful experiences
Motivational Interviewing (MI) – building motivation and confidence to make change
You can read more about these therapies below.
Exposure Based Therapies
Facing Fear, Step by Step
One of the most helpful ways to feel less afraid is to gently face the things that make you anxious. It’s natural to want to avoid situations, places, or activities that bring up fear—doing so can bring quick relief. But over time, avoiding those things often makes anxiety stronger and keeps us feeling stuck.
Exposure therapy is a treatment that helps break this cycle. With the support of your therapist, you’ll gradually and safely face the things you fear—at a pace that feels manageable. This process helps you build confidence and learn that you can handle uncomfortable feelings. Over time, many people find that their anxiety goes down and their life opens up.
Exposure therapy is backed by strong scientific research and is known to help with many types of fears and phobias.
Acceptance & Commitment Therapy
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy—often called ACT (like the word “act”)—is a type of therapy that helps you make space for difficult thoughts and feelings, instead of fighting them. It uses mindfulness and acceptance strategies to help you stop struggling with what you can’t control, and focus instead on what matters most to you.
With ACT, you’ll explore what’s truly important in your life—your values—and learn how to take small steps toward living in a way that reflects those values. The goal isn’t to get rid of uncomfortable thoughts or emotions, but to help you handle them in a healthier way so they don’t hold you back.
ACT helps people become more flexible in how they respond to life’s challenges, which can make it easier to cope with stress, anxiety, and other emotional struggles.
Exposure & Response Prevention
Exposure and Response Prevention—often called ERP—is the most effective, research-backed treatment for OCD. It helps you learn how to face the thoughts, images, or situations that cause fear or discomfort without doing the rituals or habits (compulsions) you usually rely on to feel better.
The “exposure” part means gently and safely confronting things that trigger anxiety. The “response prevention” part means choosing not to do the compulsive behaviors, even when it feels hard. Over time, this helps your brain learn that those triggers are not actually dangerous—and that you can handle the feelings without needing to do a ritual.
ERP gives you the tools to respond to OCD in a new way, so you can live with more freedom and less fear.
Mindfulness Training
Mindfulness means paying attention to the present moment—on purpose and without judgment. It’s about noticing your thoughts, feelings, and surroundings with curiosity, rather than trying to change or avoid them.
With practice, mindfulness can help you stay grounded, even during difficult moments. It teaches you how to make space for all kinds of emotions, instead of pushing them away. Over time, mindfulness can lead to greater calm, focus, and emotional balance.
Evidence-Based Trauma Treatments
Effective trauma therapy usually includes two parts: building coping skills and processing past experiences.
The first step, called stabilization (or skills training), focuses on helping you feel more in control. You’ll learn tools to manage strong emotions, reduce distress, and handle the impact of trauma in your daily life.
Once you feel ready, you and your therapist may decide to begin trauma processing. This involves gently and safely revisiting painful memories in a structured way to reduce their emotional impact. At our center, we offer two proven treatments for this:
Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) – helps you reframe unhelpful thoughts related to the trauma
Prolonged Exposure (PE) – helps you gradually face memories and situations you’ve been avoiding
Your therapist will work closely with you to decide which approach—skills-building, trauma processing, or a combination—best fits your needs and pace.