Diagnoses
This anxiety disorder is characterized by excessive worry occurring more days than not for at least 6 months.
Generalized Anxiety Disorder
What are the three parts of the CBT triangle?
Thoughts, Feelings, & Behaviors.
Common approach to treat OCD:
Exposure and Response Prevention
A patient avoids elevators because they fear panic attacks. What's the maintaining factor?
Avoidance
This disorder requires recurrent unexpected panic attacks and persistent concern about having more.
Panic Disorder
This cognitive distortion assumes you know what others are thinking.
Mind Reading
Common approaches for PTSD:
CPT, TF-CBT, PE, EMDR.
A patient checks their pulse every 5 minutes. What is this?
Safety behavior
This anxiety disorder most commonly begins in childhood and involves fear of negative evaluation.
Social Anxiety Disorder
This CBT technique involves testing predictions in real life.
Behavioral Experiments
Best approach for panic disorder:
CBT (can include interoceptive exposure)
Your patient says, "What if therapy makes me more anxious?" Your CBT response?
Anxiety is expected and temporary; avoiding it maintains the problem.
A patient avoids grocery stores because they fear they won't be able to escape if they develop panic symptoms.
Agoraphobia
A patient says, "If I am late for work, my boss will fire me." What cognitive distortion is this?
Catastrophizing
Best approach for specific phobia:
Exposure Therapy
A patient asks, "Can you promise I won't have another panic attack?" The best CBT answer?
No—but we can help you become less afraid of them.
A patient presents with chest pain, palpitations, sweating, and shortness of breath that begin abruptly and peak within 10 minutes. Cardiac workup is normal. This is their first episode.
Panic Attack
Behavioral activation is often associated with depression, but why can it help anxiety?
It decreases avoidance.
A patient with GAD spends hours seeking certainty. CBT would encourage increasing tolerance of this.
Uncertainty
A patient asks:
"But what if my feared outcome actually happens?"
What CBT technique addresses this?
Decatastrophizing (or examining coping ability / probability estimation)