If you’re affected by addiction, you’ve undergone significant changes in your everyday thoughts, moods, and behaviors. These changes help reinforce the compulsive use of drugs or alcohol. To recover stable sobriety, you must reestablish healthier day-to-day functions. Many people in recovery do this with the help of a CBT or cognitive-behavioral therapy program. In fact, the benefits of CBT make it one of the most widely used recovery options.
To learn more about the benefits of CBT for addiction treatment, call Insight Recovery Center at 828.826.1376. Our professional, compassionate staff can answer any questions about our programs and services.
Understanding CBT
CBT is a modern branch of psychotherapy. It focuses on the practical, real-world change of damaging habits in the ways you:
- Think
- Respond on an emotional level
- Behave by yourself and in the presence of others
The goal of the therapy is to help you create new habits that steer you clear of compulsive substance use.
There are multiple approaches to CBT. Each approach supports your renewed well-being in its own way. For this reason, you may receive more than one form of therapy.
Benefits of CBT for Addiction – Better Coping Skills
When you complete rehab, you face the ongoing challenge of maintaining your sobriety. You can meet this crucial challenge by improving your everyday coping skills. These skills help you successfully handle any urges to use drugs or alcohol.
CBT places a heavy emphasis on developing your coping skills. With its help, you can do such things as:
- Find healthy ways to process stress
- Navigate situations that ramp up your substance cravings
- Stay relapse-free and keep your recovery on track
In this way, the therapy provides you with both short- and long-term benefits.
Clearer Thoughts and Emotional Responses as a Benefit of CBT
Addiction can seriously distort your normal thought processes. Over time, you tend to develop a view of yourself and others that doesn’t match daily reality. What’s more, you typically don’t realize what’s happening to you. As a result, you fail to challenge your distorted thoughts. In turn, your altered perspective becomes your new norm.
In CBT, you learn how to detect your distorted thought processes. You also learn how to probe them and question their validity. Over time, your thoughts should become clearer and more grounded in reality.
CBT can have a similarly positive impact on your habitual emotional responses. Together, your thoughts and emotions help drive your behavior. This helps explain why people who receive the therapy also tend to develop healthier behavioral patterns.
Benefits of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy – Relatively Rapid Effects
Many different kinds of psychotherapy can be used in substance treatment. Some of these therapies are designed to produce positive results in a fairly short amount of time. Others take much longer to have a positive effect on you.
One of the notable benefits of cognitive-behavioral therapy is its relatively rapid impact on you. Some people show signs of improvement after as few as five or six CBT sessions. Others see improvement somewhere between 12 and 20 weeks. But be aware that it may take longer for you to experience the benefits of CBT.
Learn More About the Many Benefits of CBT for Addiction at Insight Recovery Center
Want to find out more about the benefits of CBT as an addiction treatment? The specialists at Insight Recovery Center are standing by to assist you. We can provide you with more detail on how CBT works. We can also familiarize you with the specific types of this diverse therapy.
Insight Recovery Center makes extensive use of CBT. Along with other treatment options, this therapy can help you restore reliable sobriety. It can also help you recover from the mental illnesses that often accompany drug or alcohol addiction. Call us today at 828.826.1376 or complete our online form to get started.