Cognitive Behaviour Therapy or CBT, originated in America in the early 1950's, through the pioneering work of two psychologists; Aaron Beck and Albert Ellis. Although both psychologists emphasis slightly different aspects of their work, Aaron Beck preferring to stress the importance of challenging negative thinking, and Albert Ellis (who calls his approach Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy), preferring to stress the importance of disputing the inflexible and irrational rules of living that we call ' musts ' or 'shoulds', both are in agreement that errors in our thinking are a major cause of human unhappiness. They also agree that examining our feelings, or emotions, and our behaviour, as well as our thinking, often with the help of a skilled Cognitive Behaviour Therapist or counsellor, when we have a problem, can be very helpful. In fact, such examination is the key to solving the problem!

How Problems Happen

Why is this? Because in any situation, it is our thinking, our interpretation of events, that usually starts our problem, and our feelings and behaviour follow. A little like a horse and cart. Where the horse goes the cart has to follow! It looks like this:

It is clear, just from this diagram, that very quickly, anyone can become trapped in a vicious cycle of negative thinking, destructive or negative behaviour and the most negative emotions or feelings, in particular situations. Sometimes, it seems so bad that it becomes most or all situations! It feels like a prison. The negative behaviour and feelings that are the results the first time around then become part of the bad event, until eventually there seems to be no way out. And usually, the person thinks so badly of himself or herself that they may not even ask for help.