What's Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is the "gold standard" of psychotherapy and is widely considered to be one of the most effective, evidence backed treatments for depression, anxiety, and panic. If you go into just about any therapist or psychiatrist, CBT will likely be one of the first treatments they try.

ChatCBT is a companion app for one of the most common exercises in CBT. You may have heard it called "the three column technique" or "catch it, check it, change it."

You don't need to be diagnosed with anything to try CBT. It can still help you overcome any stress, fear, and sadness you encounter in life.

Your thoughts cause your moods

Your brain is really good at making you feel exactly what you're thinking. We'll have "automatic negative thoughts" that lead us to fume on something that may not be "true".

Often the more our thoughts cause us distress, the more likely they are to be distorted.

For example, let's say we just got out of a job interview and thought this:

The thought is pretty harmless, but it could lead to a series of more upsetting and distorted thoughts:

Change the Thought

Finally, we get to the point of this exercise: changing your thoughts. If we let ourselves sit and cycle through this type of thought, we'll just make ourselves miserable.

So instead, we'll incorporate our challenges and write down what a logical automatic thought might be:

Try it yourself

If you want, you can do it with a piece of paper. Print a few of these out and carry them with you. When you have a thought that's causing you distress, take a step back and record it.

Or, just try the open-source ChatCBT app, free and ad-free. Download below!