What Does Treatment Involve?
The first several appointments will focus on understanding your concerns and then on creating specific treatment goals based on those concerns. In most cases, Dr. Masson will provide cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). Each individual session is 50 minutes, and people typically meet with Dr. Masson for 8–20 sessions. Initially, treatment is often weekly and then becomes less often over time.
Each session will involve setting an agenda to ensure that anything you want to discuss is covered and to ensure that time is spent helping you move toward your treatment goals. Typically, people will have homework to try out between sessions and will then report back to their therapist.
WHY CBT?
Research over the past 40 years has established cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) as an effective strategy for a wide range of concerns. Best-practice guidelines for anxiety, depression, and eating disorders all recommend CBT as a first-line treatment. CBT provides specific approaches, skills, and strategies that enable people to address their concerns and improve the quality of their lives. Dr. Masson is also trained in cognitive processing therapy (CPT), a type of CBT treatment that is a first-line treatment for PTSD.
Although CBT can be very effective, it is important to know that often times many individuals in the community have difficulty accessing evidence based CBT (Becker, Zayfert, and Anderson 2004; Cowdrey and Waller 2015). Dr. Masson seeks to provide evidence based treatment and wishes to increase the availability of these treatments. If you have any questions about CBT or about Dr. Masson’s treatment approach, always feel free to contact him.
What IS CBT?
Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is a treatment based on the idea that what we think, feel, and do all influence one another and that by changing one of these things, we can change the others. For example, if someone at a party (a) is thinking that everyone thinks they are weird, (b) is avoiding eye contact, and (c) is standing in the corner of a room, then that person is going to feel anxious. If that person were to change just one of these things—for example, if they were to force themselves to speak to someone—that person would likely have an OK conversation, think less about people thinking they are weird, and become less anxious.
A key part of CBT is to empower individuals in treatment to understand what maintains their concerns and what they need to do to address those concerns. For example, in anxiety disorders, treatment involves understanding why anxiety problems develop over time, the role of avoidance, and how exposure-based treatment can alleviate those concerns.