Cognitive Behavioural Therapy ('CBT')

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy ('CBT')

At Private General Practice Services we have 2 CBT Therapists who can help you deal with anxiety and depression and also with losing weight. CBT is especially helpful in dealing with negative thoughts. If you feel you could benefit from a consultation with one of our CBT therapists please contact the practice to arrange an appointment. Alternatively you might prefer to have an initial consultation with one of our doctors, or clinical psychologists.

Our CBT Therapists include:

• Lorraine Toll
• Penny Stevens

Lorraine Toll

Lorraine Toll is fully trained in cognitive behavioural therapy (‘CBT’). CBT is evidence based for the treatment of anxiety and depression. It is very useful in dealing with any thought disorder. Lorraine will work directly with you to help you achieve the target that you are aiming for in life.

CBT deals with the change of our thoughts and our behaviour from negative to positive. It assumes that our bad or difficult feelings are always associated with negative thoughts. The challenge is to be able to manage our minds in identifying low feelings and then find the negative thought associated. One then assesses the problem as if one is in a court of law and argues down the negative thoughts and replaces them with positive thoughts, thereby changing various actions in life to achieve a desired behaviour.

Any changes in our thoughts will change our behaviour and conversely, any changes in our behaviour will then affect our thoughts positively.

CBT is an adjunct to medical treatment. Sometimes, therefore, drug therapy is recommended initially by one of the practice doctors.

Treatment with Lorraine is by referral from Doctor Piper.

Lorraine trained as a Registered Mental Nurse, holds an Advanced Diploma in the Management of Psychological Trauma and has a MSc in Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapy.

Penny Stevens

Penny Stevens holds an MSc.in Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapy and specialises in the treatment of weight loss using CBT and other techniques as part of an inter disciplinary team which includes Dr Piper, who specialises in Nutrition, Jane Clarke, our resident clinical dietician, and Lindsay Kubicki, who also provides Nutritional support.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy For Weight Loss

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy has recently been increasingly widely recognised as a highly effective approach to successful weight loss and weight maintenance – and we are delighted to announce that it is now available at our practice!

With the Cognitive Behavioural approach to losing weight, and maintaining your new weight, our aim is to free you from the frustration of diets that fail to work and instead provide you with an opportunity to learn how to become successful in achieving and maintaining the weight loss you wish for. We work with you to support and empower you to make changes that will be the key to successfully achieving the results that you want.

Research shows that over 90% of people who try to lose weight by going on a diet will "fail". They may lose weight in the short term while sticking to the restrictions imposed by the diet, only to regain the weight when they stop the restrictions and often put on even more weight. Others soon find the restrictions too difficult to maintain and "give up". The result of this is that individuals blame themselves for "failing" and being "weak willed" or think that for some reason they are unable to lose weight. Referring to the many diets promoted by the multi-million pound “diet industry” Paul McKenna in his book "I Can Make You Thin" concludes: "Too many diets, too few results". He suggests that these kinds of diets “are no more than training courses in how to get fat and feel like a failure“. Crash diets or any severely restrictive diets do not work for long term weight management - in fact they interfere with the body's natural mechanisms and can cause weight gain due to muscle loss and the body's reaction to muscle loss and the body's reaction to deprivation of sufficient nutrition.

Eating is a behaviour which is essential for life! But how, when and what we eat are factors that are influenced by many things. We learn our eating habits at a very early age - and sometimes we need to update or change some of these habits in order to lose weight and maintain a healthier and happier weight. Our Cognitive Behavioural therapist is specially trained to help you to identify and to make those changes.

In the consultation our therapist will firstly discuss with you what your goal is in terms of the weight you wish to be. She will then conduct a full analysis with you of your diet and eating patterns. From this she will design a programme to achieve your goal and will support you in making the changes that have been identified. She will guide you through these changes, step – by – step, and provide you with the knowledge to become your own “therapist” so that you can be in charge of your life and continue to successfully manage your weight.

Treatment with Penny is by referral from Doctor Piper.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for dealing with negative thoughts

Depressed people typically think in a biased, negative way. They have a negative view of themselves (“I’m no good”), the world (“Life has no meaning”) and the future (“It will always be this way”).

Negative thoughts have several characteristics:

1) They are automatic – they just ‘pop up’ without any effort on your part;

2) They are distorted – they do not fit the facts;

3) They are unhelpful – they keep you depressed and make it difficult to change;

4) They are plausible – it does not occur to you to question them;

5) They are involuntary – they can be very difficult to switch off.

The more depressed you are, the more negative thoughts you will have, the more you believe them – and the more depressed they make you.

Cognitive behavioural therapy helps to isolate negative thoughts and the low feelings attached to these and move them into positive thoughts with changes in actions. One of the biggest challenges initially is being able to recognise the negative thought and associate a low feeling with it. The therapist will help you with this. The next challenge is being able to assess the validity of a negative thought and work out how to move it into a positive thought and change in action. There are various tools that can be used to aid this process and these include the exclusion of limiting statements such as the haves, shoulds and musts of life, trying to understand the concept of projection and also using a tool called transactional analysis. All this sounds very complex but is indeed quite simple to use. However like anything, it takes practice and application and anything worth learning in life always takes a strong challenge. Here are a few more aims and questions that we might be asking ourselves during the process of CBT.

LOOKING FOR RATIONAL ANSWERS

1) What is the evidence?

What evidence do I have to support my thoughts?

What evidence do I have against them?

2) What alternative views are there?

How would someone else view this situation?

How would I have viewed it before I got depressed?

What evidence do I have to back these alternatives?

3) What is the effect of thinking the way I do?

Does it help me, or hinder me from getting what I want? How?

What would be the effect of looking at things less negatively?

4) What thinking error am I making?

Am I thinking in all-or nothing terms?

Am I condemning myself as a total person on the basis of a single event?

Am I concentrating on my weaknesses and forgetting my strengths?

Am I blaming myself for something which is not my fault?

Am I taking something personally which has little or nothing to do with me?

Am I expecting myself to be perfect?

Am I using a double standard – how would I view someone else in my situation?

Am I paying attention only to the black side of things?

Am I overestimating the chances of disaster?

Am I exaggerating the importance of events?

Am I fretting about the way things ought to be instead of accepting and dealing with them as they come?

Am I assuming I can do nothing to change my situation?

Am I predicting the future, instead of experimenting with it?

5) What action can I take?

What can I do to change my situation?

Am I overlooking solutions to problems on the assumption they won’t work?

What can I do to test out the validity of my rational answers?

If you think you could benefit from CBT please contact us and arrange a consultation. We will then arrange an initial appointment with one of of our private doctors, clinical psychologists or CBT therapists.

If you have a query or would like to email us please go to our contact us page.

If you would like to book an appointment please call us on 0116 2700373 or email info@privategp.com.

• Integrated Therapies
  • Acupuncture
  • Cognitive Behavioural Therapy ('CBT')
  • Hypnotherapy
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