Treating Trauma and Anxiety with CBT

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) approaches are typical in treating trauma and anxiety across the lifespan. Trauma, a response to experiencing or witnessing an event that overwhelms your stress response and ability to cope, can be marked by several key components, including avoidance of people, places, or things that remind you of the traumatic experience, intrusive thoughts or images, and hypervigilance. Anxiety can sometimes occur in individuals who experience trauma due, in part, to heightened apprehension towards re-experiencing the traumatic event(s). Traumatic events can also impact individuals beyond post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and anxiety. Trauma can coincide with other conditions, such as depression, substance or alcohol abuse, or another anxiety disorder.

CBT treatment approaches are widely used and effective for treating trauma, anxiety, and other conditions. Prolonged exposure therapy is one treatment approach that teaches individuals to slowly approach their traumatic memories and experiences, rather than avoiding them. Another approach, trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT), is a more structured treatment designed for children, teens, and their families to modify thought patterns and directly process their trauma in healthier ways.

If you’re struggling with post-traumatic symptoms, psychotherapy can be an effective treatment for recovery. If you are interested in pursuing CBT, you can use our Find-a-Therapist tool.

To read more on the relationship between trauma and anxiety, see What’s the Relationship Between Trauma and Anxiety? on Healthline.

Written by: Kyle Ross, M.A.
Edited by: Nicholas Crimarco, PhD

Suggested Resources

What Is Cognitive Behavior Therapy?

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a type of treatment that is based firmly on research findings. It places emphasis on changing your cognitions (thoughts) or behaviors (actions) in order to effect change in how you feel. These approaches help people in achieving specific changes or goals.

Changes or goals might involve:

A way of acting: like smoking less or being more outgoing;
A way of feeling: like helping a person to be less scared, less depressed, or less anxious;
A way of thinking: like learning to problem-solve or get rid of self-defeating thoughts;
A way of dealing with physical or medical problems: like reducing back pain or helping a person stick to a doctor’s suggestions.

Cognitive behavioral therapists usually focus more on the current situation and its solution, rather than the past. They concentrate on a person’s views and beliefs about their life. CBT is an effective treatment for individuals, parents, children, couples, and families. The goal of CBT is to help people improve and gain more control over their lives by changing behaviors that don’t work well to ones that do.

How to Get Help

If you are looking for help, either for yourself or someone else, you may be tempted to call someone who advertises in a local publication or who comes up from a search of the Internet. You may, or may not, find a competent therapist in this manner. It is wise to check on the credentials of a psychotherapist. It is expected that competent therapists hold advanced academic degrees. They should be listed as members of professional organizations, such as the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies or the American Psychological Association. Of course, they should be licensed to practice in your state. You can find competent specialists who are affiliated with local universities or mental health facilities or who are listed on the websites of professional organizations. You may, of course, visit our website (www.abct.org) and click on “Find a CBT Therapist”

The Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT) is an interdisciplinary organization committed to the advancement of a scientific approach to the understanding and amelioration of problems of the human condition. These aims are achieved through the investigation and application of behavioral, cognitive, and other evidence-based principles to assessment, prevention, and treatment.