CBT is often regarded as the gold standard of psychological treatment. It is best understood as an umbrella term encompassing a broad family of evidence-based therapies that have evolved over the past six decades and are now used worldwide to treat a wide range of emotional, behavioural, and psychiatric difficulties. From depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder and trauma, to personality difficulties and chronic health conditions, CBT approaches dominate most contemporary treatment guidelines and continue to benefit from an expanding body of scientific research.
Although commonly associated with Aaron T. Beck’s pioneering work on depression during the 1960s, CBT emerged from the convergence of behavioural psychology, cognitive science, learning theory, and clinical research. One of the key figures was Aaron T. Beck, an analytically trained psychiatrist whose work led to the development of Cognitive Therapy, a structured and evidence-based approach that would later become one of the foundations of modern CBT. Around the same time, my friend and mentor Donald Meichenbaum was developing innovative cognitive-behavioural interventions. His early work, including the influential paper “How to Train Schizophrenics to Talk to Themselves”, laid the foundations for later models such as Cognitive Behaviour Modification, Stress Inoculation Training, and his extensive work on psychological resilience and post-traumatic growth. Albert Ellis was also making significant contributions through the development of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT), a model strongly influenced by Stoic philosophy and focused on identifying and challenging irrational beliefs.
Over the following decades, CBT continued to evolve and diversify. Today, the term refers not to a single therapy but to a large family of approaches that includes Schema Therapy, Stress Inoculation Training (SIT), Prolonged Exposure (PE), Metacognitive Therapy (MCT), Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT), NeuroAffective-CBT (NA-CBT), and many others. While these therapies differ in style, language, and emphasis, they share a number of fundamental assumptions about learning, emotional regulation, behaviour change, and human adaptation.
So, what exactly makes a therapy “CBT” and where or how does it fit within the mental health landscape? Daniel Mirea goes into some depth on this topic with accredited psychotherapist Carla Vercruysse on Spotify !
Daniel Mirea about Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
Disclaimer: this site and article are not intended as a self-help manual; the intention with all NA-CBT articles is to help and to develop knowledge. All case studies described are a combination of facts and very little fiction from different sources including personal clinical experiences. More similar work and great resources for inspiration, can be found on TedX -Treating Perfectionism, Brene Brown, Roz Shafran, Christine Padesky, Donald Meichenbaum’s notes on resilience, and others.
This particular article contains an audio podcast and describes real life situations for learning and authenticity purposes, it may follow anonymised cases who received NeuroAffective-CBT … this is part of a series of free handouts offered to students on doctoral or advanced training programs in Integrative-CBT; as already explained certain details have been changed in order to maintain anonymity.
neuroaffectivecbt.com 