How long does cbt take for social anxiety

October 23, 2018

Dr. Luana Marques is the director and founder of Community Psychiatry PRIDE at Massachusetts General Hospital and an Associate Professor in Psychology at Harvard Medical School. She completed her PhD in Clinical Psychology at The State … See Full Bio

Dr. Soo Jeong Youn is the Director of Evaluation at Community Psychiatry Program for Research in Implementation and Dissemination of Evidence-Based Treatments (PRIDE) at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), and an Assistant Professor in Psychology in the … See Full Bio

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CBT FOR ANXIETY – HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE?

Posted October 16th, 2021 Written By: Maggie Morrow

Does CBT work for anxiety?

When you suffer from anxiety, it is natural for you to want to feel better as soon as possible. Many people seek cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) as their treatment of choice for anxiety issues. This is because evidence-based research demonstrates that CBT for anxiety can be a highly effective treatment; in fact GPs often recommend it. But how long will the treatment take? It’s a question that many people ask when considering treatment.

How long does CBT take – factors affecting length of treatment

According to the government’s mental health recommendations (NICE), 6 to 24 sessions are recommended for effective treatment. There are some common factors that influence the number of sessions you are likely to need to achieve a successful outcome, using CBT for anxiety. However, since every individual is unique, there are bound to be variances. Someone with severe anxiety may find they feel better quicker than expected, while someone with mild anxiety may find they need more support, due to other influencing factors.

Anxiety severity

Anxiety severity, then, is the most common factor determining the number of cognitive behavioural therapy sessions you are likely to need. Anxiety severity is generally categorised into 3 types:

Mild Anxiety: This occurs when bouts of anxiety arise in response to specific situations, for short periods of time. The feelings of anxiety are uncomfortable but manageable, and they may or may not be accompanied by panic attacks. The anxiety does not prevent the sufferer from carrying out day-to-day activities but it might cause them to avoid certain situations, in an attempt to stop anxiety from occurring.

Moderate Anxiety: This is when bouts of anxiety occur more frequently in day-to-day life and panic attacks may be present. Anxiety can be brought on by specific trigger situations. Sufferers can also experience a underlying feeling of general anxiety that doesn’t seem to be attached to anything specific but hangs around for several hours or longer. Sufferers can still manage day-to-day life, however their anxiety can interfere in a more problematic way, causing the individual to avoid certain situations or issues that they should really deal with.

Severe Anxiety: This is when anxiety presents on a daily basis, often with panic attacks. Sufferers can find it extremely difficult to manage their day-to-day life. Severe anxiety can prevent them from engaging in important tasks and, in worst case scenarios, it can prevent them from working, enjoying healthy relationships, engaging socially and leading a normal life.

Additional factors

Other factors that may affect the length of treatment needed include

The length of time that you have been experiencing anxiety
The degree of change that you are hoping to achieve
The extent to which CBT therapy matches your personal learning style
The question whether CBT therapy alone can help you achieve lasting change
Your life situation
Your level of self confidence

How long does CBT take to treat mild anxiety?

3 to 12 sessions may be sufficient to treat a presentation of mild anxiety. CBT therapy alone can help you gain an understanding of your anxiety and identify some effective strategies to deal with it. At KlearMinds, our sessions for individuals last 50 minutes. Meetings usually take place weekly, at the same time on the same day since this format has proved most effective.

How long does CBT take to treat moderate anxiety?

6 or 12 to 24 sessions of CBT therapy may be enough to successfully treat a presentation of moderate anxiety. Some people may need a bit longer, for instance where symptoms have been contained in the background for some years prior to treatment. When treating moderate anxiety, CBT therapy can sometimes be limited in its ability to help sufferers understand and address underlying root causes of anxiety. If root causes are addressed, this can help people better understand background issues that trigger their anxiety. It can also enable them to feel better equipped to deal with any “unexpected anxiety” that may occur in the future.

How long does CBT take to treat severe anxiety?

A minimum of 24 sessions of CBT therapy may be needed to treat a presentation of severe anxiety. Some individuals may recover more quickly, while others may require 48 or more CBT sessions combined with additional therapies to ensure that underlying root causes of anxiety are tackled. Because root causes are always an influencing factor in maintaining severe anxiety, the best outcomes can be achieved if the therapy addresses them. By integrating other psychotherapy approaches alongside CBT, it can be possible to achieve more effective and lasting change.

To learn more about the range of therapies we provide at KlearMinds to help when CBT therapy alone may not be enough, click here.

FURTHER INFORMATION ON ANXIETY AND CBT THERAPY

How Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Can Help Treat Anxiety Disorders
CBT for Social Anxiety
Panic Attacks: How Can Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Help?
CBT for Panic Attacks
Ten Tips For Managing Panic Attacks
Is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy More Effective Than Medication in Treating Anxiety?
CBT for Stress
Anxiety In The UK – Infographic
Anxiety Management
How Can Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Help to Treat Depression?
CBT for Low Self Esteem
CBT for Anger Management
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) in London

Not sure which therapist or type of therapy you need?

Get in touch with Maggie Morrow, Award Winning Therapist & KlearMinds Director.
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Cognitive Behavioral Therapy helps people understand the ways in which behaviors are influenced by thoughts and emotions. It can also help people recognize and refute irrational thoughts that contribute to a decrease in healthy behaviors. CBT utilizes coping skills and exposure therapy to reduce anxiety symptoms, including those associated with social anxiety disorder.

CBT aims to help the individual understand what their irrational thoughts are and provide skills and techniques for debunking the irrational thoughts. Relaxation and mindfulness training are also key components to CBT that can help reduce social anxiety.

The overall goal of a CBT therapist is to help the individual learn to utilize the skills learned in therapy outside of sessions. Therapy is designed to be short term because the individual is learning to use practical skills that can be generalized and applied throughout their life. A large part of predicting success in therapy comes from the willingness of the individual to put forth the effort required for change to occur.

CBT uses many different techniques, exercises, and practices to elicit change. When working with someone who has social anxiety, there are certain aspects of CBT that tend to provide the most relief for the individual, like https://www.choosingtherapy.com/cognitive-restructuring/cognitive restructuring and setting S.M.A.R.T. goals.

Some of the more common CBT techniques used for social anxiety include:

ABC Model

The ABC model is designed to aid in evaluating situations and outcomes, often used to help predict likely outcomes based on beliefs and past behaviors.3

Antecedent: The situation or activating event.
Beliefs: Your beliefs about the event, both conscious and subconscious.
Consequence: Your behavior or emotional response to the event.

When we break down past situations into these categories, we can begin to understand how our beliefs, whether rational or irrational, determine the outcome of the situation. We can then begin to make changes to both our beliefs and behaviors to create more desirable outcomes.

Example: Someone is invited to a friend’s birthday party but doesn’t know a lot of the other guests attending, making them feel hesitant to go. The ABC model can help them identify past experiences of parties with mostly strangers and work through likely scenarios of this current party by dissecting conscious thoughts and subconscious thoughts about the party and what the response could be.

S.M.A.R.T. Goals

S.M.A.R.T. goals are set by the individual with the aid of their CBT therapist.4 S.M.A.R.T. stands for:

Specific: The client should know exactly what it is that they are to accomplish.
Measurable: The client must be able to monitor their progress to know when they have reached their goal.
Attainable: The client must possess the skill and resources required to reach their goal.
Realistic: The client must be willing to devote their time and energy into accomplishing the goal.
Time-specific: The client needs to set a clear and specific end date to complete their goal.

While S.M.A.R.T. goals are set by the individual, it is done so under the supervision of the CBT therapist. The therapist’s role is to ensure that the parameters for a S.M.A.R.T. goal are met to ensure the likelihood of success.

Example: The same person mentioned above has a big group meeting coming up at work and is reluctant to speak up about a topic they are an expert in. They could benefit from setting a SMART goal to combat the social anxiety and speak up and take ownership of a subject matter they are an expert in. They can do this by remembering they are going to speak on one topic at the meeting (specific), which is 30 minutes (measurable). This person is the expert on the subject and will have the resources available in the office to present on this topic (attainable and realistic), and will only have to present once (time-specific).

Cognitive Restructuring

Often, the cause of many anxiety problems is our faulty thinking about ourselves and our environments. For this reason, cognitive restructuring is a key component of a CBT therapist’s technical approaches. Cognitive restructuring involves discovering, challenging, and replacing negative or irrational thoughts with positive, rational ones.5

Example: Someone was invited to go to a concert with a friend but is hesitant because the crowds for this particular band are very large and loud. Cognitive restructuring can help to identify the dysfunctional thought (fear of having to talk with or be in close proximity with strangers) with a functional thought (these are strangers and I will never see them again, this moment is fleeting and this situation will end soon). To add, cognitive restructuring can also help to reframe the consequence of the dysfunctional thought to a potential reward with the functional thought.

Exposure Therapy

Since people with social anxiety disorder tend to avoid situations that cause their anxiety, the use of exposure therapy as part of their treatment is highly effective. Exposure therapy involves exposing the individual to the stressful stimulus until their level of anxiety decreases. With continued practice they begin to become desensitized to the stimulus.6

There are several variations of exposure therapy:

In vivo exposure: Involves directly facing the anxiety-provoking stimulus in real life. With social anxiety, this would involve exposing the individual to a social situation known to elicit fear.
Imaginal exposure: Involves intensely visualizing or imagining the stimulus. When using this type of exposure with social anxiety, the individual would be asked to describe a social situation that would trigger their anxious response.
Virtual reality exposure: Virtual reality exposure uses technology to aid in exposure. This could be used to create a virtual social situation, such as giving a speech in front of a large crowd, where the individual would be virtually exposed to the stimulus.

There are also different paces of exposure therapy:

Graded exposure: This involves ranking an individual’s fears in a fear hierarchy, and exposure begins with the lowest ranking, or least provoking fear and working up toward higher-ranking fears.
Flooding: Also involves fear hierarchy ranking, but starts by exposing the individual to the fear that is the most anxiety-provoking first and working down the list.

Example: The same person invited to the concert could use exposure therapy to work through social anxiety. They could work with the guidance of a therapist who would slowly introduce them to small groups then to crowds, either directly or through guided visualizations. For this to work, the person must continue this exercise until they are desentized to crowds.

Relaxation Exercises

Relaxation exercises are another important component of CBT used for treating anxiety disorders like social anxiety disorder. Relaxation exercises include grounding exercises, breathing techniques, and muscle relaxation. Relaxation training can be combined with other therapeutic approaches like exposure therapy. The combination of these two techniques is used in systematic desensitization, which works by learning to associate feared social situations with relaxation.

Example: Someone is meeting the family of their significant other over the holidays and has a lot of anxiety about both meeting the family and anxiety over the large number of people. Relaxation exercises can really help to soothe social anxiety. When the person is in close contact with others, they can use breathing exercises and muscle relaxation to help ground themselves. They can do this until they can begin to feel calmer and with repetition of this practice and time, the individual can begin to associate being with their significant other’s family with a positive feeling.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is one of the most empirically researched treatment methodologies, and the research supports CBT as a highly effective treatment for anxiety disorders, including social anxiety disorder.

In a random control trial, over a series of 12 sessions, it was found that CBT was more effective than ACT in improving social anxiety symptoms.
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In another study aimed at looking at maladaptive self-beliefs of those with social anxiety, it was found that over 12 weeks of CBT, these maladaptive self-beliefs decreased and reduced the severity of social anxiety symptoms.
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In a study examining individuals with SAD with co-occurring psychosis, it was found that group CBT helped to reduce symptoms of social anxiety and depression.
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How Long Does CBT Take to Treat Social Anxiety?

Seeing results from CBT treatment depends on the person and the variability of their symptoms, which can impact how long they participate in CBT treatment. The standard treatment model of CBT is 10 to 12 weekly sessions, each session lasting about an hour. CBT effectiveness can take time, depending on other mental health issues the individual is dealing with or other traumatic histories which may be at play. It’s important to go in with an open mind and with hope that, with the guidance of a therapist, you can work through these issues.8