Dr. Phil will be the first to admit that you cannot expect to accomplish much in one session (or a show), but rather, he intends his intervention to serve as a catalyst for change. He generally employs the concepts, strategies and techniques of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) in a limited way; on the show, he helps to define the problem and find a better direction. While he makes it clear he is not one who advocates endless, non-directive therapy, he does often recommend that people who are suffering from a variety of difficulties seek treatment with a skilled CBT therapist.
Experienced therapists who have been trained in the fundamentals of CBT can actively engage with you during sessions to help you focus on and resolve the issues which prompted you to seek therapy. CBT is the only form of therapy that has actually been proven effective for the treatment of depression, anxiety disorders and other psychological problems. When you are considering a therapist, you may want to take that into consideration.
Cognitive Therapy is a solution-oriented or problem-solving approach to psychological treatment that was developed by Aaron T. Beck, MD, in the 1970s. Earlier in his career as a psychiatrist, Beck practiced from a psychoanalytic tradition and found himself frustrated by the painfully slow progress of his patients. He strove to develop a more direct and potent approach to therapy, which has become widely known as cognitive therapy (also known as cognitive-behavioral therapy).
Cognitive therapy is essentially a method that identifies thoughts that produce negative or painful feelings, as well as result in maladaptive behavior or reactions. Beck discovered that the primary point of intervention was at the level of a person's thoughts, and that if changes are made in thinking (automatic thoughts, assumptions and core beliefs), changes in emotions and behavior will follow. Furthermore, behavioral techniques and strategies are employed as needed to enhance the treatment outcome (i.e., anger management, relaxation training, graduated exposure to feared situations, assertiveness training). The course of treatment is typically brief, and people usually experience relatively rapid relief and enduring progress.
Cognitive therapy's elegantly simple model has proven to be the most powerful and effective type of psychological treatment in outcome studies conducted over the past several decades. Due to the availability of literature and training of professionals in CBT, cognitive therapy currently enjoys widespread popularity, and is practiced by many qualified professionals throughout the United States and internationally.
Due to the success of CBT, some clinicians have developed variations of CBT. One such variation is Schema-Focused Cognitive Therapy http://www.cognitive-therapy-associates.com/therapy/schema/. Also known as Schema Therapy, this model integrates cognitive therapy with other psychological treatment approaches, primarily to help those with personality disorders or deeply ingrained patterns.
Schema-Focused Cognitive Therapy is the approach developed by Jeffrey E. Young, Ph.D., who was a protégée of Dr. Beck. Prior to his founding the Cognitive Therapy Centers of NY and Connecticut, as well as the Schema Therapy Institute, Dr. Young served as the Director of Research and Training at the Center for Cognitive Therapy at U. Penn with Dr. Beck, where he trained many clinicians in the application of CBT. In working with clients, however, Dr. Young and his colleagues found a significant segment of people who came for treatment but had perplexing difficulty in benefiting from the standard approach. He discovered that these people typically had long-standing patterns or themes in thinking and feeling-and consequently in behaving or coping-that required a different means of intervention. Dr. Young's attention turned to ways of helping patients to address and modify these deeper patterns or themes, also known as "schemas" or "lifetraps."
The schemas that are targeted in treatment are enduring and self-defeating patterns that typically begin early in life, get repeated and elaborated upon, cause negative/dysfunctional thoughts and feelings, and pose obstacles for accomplishing one's goals and getting one's needs met. Although schemas are usually developed early in life (during childhood or adolescence), they can also form later, in adulthood. These schemas are perpetuated behaviorally through the coping styles of schema maintenance, schema avoidance, and schema compensation. Dr. Young's model centers on helping the person to break these patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving, which are often very tenacious.
In formulating the Schema-Focused approach, Young combined the best aspects of cognitive-behavioral, experiential, interpersonal and psychoanalytic therapies into one unified model of treatment. Through Young's work and the efforts of those trained by him, Schema-Focused Therapy has shown remarkable results in helping people to change patterns which they have lived with for a long time, even when other methods and efforts they have tried before have been largely unsuccessful.
Both CBT and Schema Therapy are used by trained therapists to treat people in individual or couples therapy. The length of treatment may vary depending on the needs or goals of the person or couple, but given the focused nature of the work, the course of treatment is generally briefer when compared to other types of therapy. Furthermore, studies have shown that changes are generally maintained after the end of therapy.