Cognitive Therapy posits the idea that what people think impacts, directly or indirectly, what they feel and how they act. The major goal of cognitive therapies (CBT, REBT) is to identify cognitive distortions that cause or contribute to excessive negative emotions and maladaptive behaviors. It is, in essence, a psycho-educational approach that seeks to teach people to dispute irrational thoughts with more rational thoughts. Cognitive distortions such as mind-reading, labeling, all-or-nothing-thinking, minimization, jumping to conclusions and catastrophizing, are identified, disputed and replaced with more realistic and rational thoughts. Given enough time and practice these new thoughts will replace the old ones and negative emotions will be lessened, if not eliminated.
Sadly, many people never achieve these more rational and realistic replacement thoughts. After years, sometimes decades, of thinking in an irrational, distorted and exaggerated way it is difficult to replace old thinking habits with new ones. Recently, schema therapy has been introduced to explain how we come to acquire many of the thoughts we have. Schema are preconceived ideas and beliefs about ourselves and the world that are developed from the time we are born and reinforced as we grow. Many of these beliefs are so habituated and deeply embedded that it becomes extremely difficult, if not impossible, to change them in any significant or long-lasting way.
Hypnotherapy, as applied to cognitive-behavior therapy, accesses the subconscious and bypasses the conscious filters that impede deeper cognitive restructuring. Hypnotherapy allows the unconscious to more easily absorb thoughts and beliefs that it might otherwise be resistant to and helps to reinforce more helpful and realistic cognitive beliefs.
