There’s an undeniable, indelible relationship between what we think, how we feel and what we do in life. When your mindset is positive, it reinforces a belief in yourself and making healthy choices that serve you well.
However, negative, self-defeating thought patterns can also influence and lead to harmful moods and behaviors.
Left unchecked, they can develop into mental health or substance abuse problems, or sometimes both — problems too common in indigenous communities. According to a recent National Survey on Drug Use and Health, nearly 20% of Native American and Alaska Native adults experienced a mental illness in the last year; 8.3% reported heavy alcohol abuse; and 9.7% struggled with a co-occurring mental illness and substance use problem.
If you see these signs in yourself or a loved one, take heart in the fact that they can be treated compassionately and effectively. One treatment, behavioral therapy, might seem like it’s geared strictly toward behavior, when in fact, it seeks to reconcile those same thoughts, feelings and actions and redirect them more constructively.
Keep reading to learn more about the behavioral therapies that Aliya offers and how they can help.
What Is Behavioral Therapy?
Behavior therapy is a term that includes various types of cognitive therapies and treatments that can help people recognize and change unhealthy, learned behaviors. The backbone behind behavioral therapy is that because most of our behaviors — good and bad — are learned, we have the power to unlearn them and relearn new behaviors that serve us better.
Behavioral therapy is a type of talk therapy, where you’ll either sit one-on-one with a behavioral therapist (like a counselor, psychologist or psychiatrist) or with others in a group setting to explore your story and better understand how your thinking, emotions and actions are ultimately connected and linked.
What Does Behavioral Therapy Treat?
Because there are a few different types of behavioral therapies, they can treat a number of different conditions, including:
- Substance abuse disorders and addiction, including alcohol use disorder
- Eating disorders
- Depression
- Anxiety disorders
- Panic disorders
- Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
- Personality disorders, including bipolar and borderline personality disorders
- Phobias
- Other disorders like attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
What Is the Focus of Behavioral Therapy?
According to the American Psychological Association (APA), behavioral therapy is founded on the principle that unhelpful, learned ways of thinking and behaving can cause psychological problems and distress, but by learning new and proactive ways of coping and problem solving, you can work to change both.
“By focusing on behavior as the central issue, (behavioral) therapy aims to teach new behaviors that minimize or eliminate problems,” notes a 2024 study.
It’s just one way that behavior therapy is different than psychoanalysis. Both are valuable therapies to understand the nature and root causes of our mindsets, both negative and positive. Psychoanalysis is more focused on exploring the past and insights from the subconscious mind — such as memories or repressed trauma — and how past events have affected you. Sigmund Freud is best known for developing psychoanalysis as we know it today.
While psychoanalysis can have a place in your therapeutic journey, behavioral therapy is more focused on examining the here and now. It enables you to take charge of your own mindset and emotions and helps you take away actionable coping skills you can make right now, today — whether that’s conquering your depression or anxiety or working toward staying sober.
Types of Behavioral Therapy
Behavioral therapy is an umbrella term encompassing several different types of treatments. Each one has its own unique approach and goals:
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
What is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy? The answer is in its acronym: ACT.
Like other behavioral therapies, Acceptance and Commitment therapy (ACT) works to help you resolve the relationship between your thoughts, feelings and behaviors. The idea behind ACT is developing what’s called psychological flexibility — accepting negative thoughts and feelings, without judging yourself, and committing and acting to change them according to what you believe in and value.
ACT therapy is based on six core processes:
- Acceptance of your emotions
- Detachment from negative thinking
- Being present in the current moment
- Observing yourself as a whole person, fully and completely
- Listing values important to you
- Acting to reach personalized goals based on those values
What makes ACT Acceptance and Commitment Therapy so valuable is that the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy exercises and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy worksheets you’ll use to make changes in your life are from your own value system. “Exercises,” says the Cleveland Clinic, “may include thinking about things in a new way, reevaluating past situations or exploring your values, among others.”
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
CBT is one of the most well-regarded forms of talk therapy, and like ACT, the goal of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is in its name. What is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy? CBT therapy operates on the idea that your cognition — your thinking, perception and feelings — is inextricably interconnected to your behavior, a relationship where each of those factors is often visualized with the three points of the CBT triangle. By actively changing problematic thought patterns with the help of CBT, you can change how you feel and act.
For instance, someone struggling with depression may be marred by constant, chronic negative thinking: “I’m no good. I’m unhappy with my life and nothing will change.” Consequently, these thoughts can create the symptoms and behaviors attached to depressive disorders, like low self-esteem, feelings of hopelessness or extreme sadness and a loss of interest in activities and people that once brought joy. In some cases, it might lead some to self-medicate with alcohol or drugs, leading to a substance use disorder.
CBT is designed to help you examine the why behind your thoughts and feelings. With your therapist, you’ll use Cognitive Behavioral Therapy techniques/CBT techniques — like cognitive restructuring, behavioral activation and guided discovery — to directly challenge and reframe a negative mindset, learn to dispute the thought “I’m no good” and replace it with a more balanced one, such as, “I’m having a difficult time right now, but it’s temporary and doesn’t define who I am. I have value, and I can work on one small thing today.”
It’s just one of many Cognitive Behavioral Therapy examples where a tightly wound negative mindset is loosened and rebuilt more positively, all through the power of your own mind and self-awareness.
CBT is widely employed for a host of conditions. In addition to depression, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for anxiety disorders, substance abuse, personality disorders, trauma-focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and mindfulness based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy are just a few. Even sleep issues can be treated with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for insomnia.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
Its name can sound complex. What is dialectical therapy, and what does it involve? The term dialectical refers to the union of opposite or opposing ideas or concepts and, like ACT, it centers on helping people with acceptance and change.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy DBT is an enhanced version of CBT, originally developed by psychologist Marsha Lineman to treat depression and anxiety, especially in people who have emotional dysregulation and experience their emotions very intensely. But it’s also utilized for treating trauma, anger management and eating disorders, to name a few.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, there are four Dialectical Behavior Therapy components:
- Mindfulness: Cultivating and maintaining awareness in each and every present moment
- Distress tolerance: Learning to manage and cope with troubling emotions, without responding negatively, during times when you might become triggered
- Interpersonal effectiveness: Learning how to communicate assertively, set boundaries and maintaining healthy relationships
- Emotional regulation: Better understanding your emotions and knowing how to stay in control of them
DBT therapy can happen in a one-on-one setting with your therapist, but DBT skills are also often taught in a group setting. (Many treatment facilities and therapist will use The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook/DBT Workbook as an indispensable resource.)
Exposure Therapy
When you’re confronted with something that makes you uncomfortable, anxious, stressed or even afraid, our natural tendence is to avoid it, whether it’s a person, a place or a memory of a past traumatic or hurtful experience.
We’ve all felt this way at one time or another, and the idea of facing those fears directly might seem counterintuitive. But that ultimately just worsens the fear and never leads to resolving it.
So, what is exposure therapy all about? It’s a type of therapy where, in a safe environment, you’re gradually exposed to a feared object, situation or memory. Over time, using the same thought-emotion-behavior principle as other behavioral therapies, the power of those fearful memories is lessened until it has little to no effect on you any longer.
Exposure therapy can take shape in a few ways, notes the American Psychological Association (APA). In vivo exposure involves facing a fearful situation, place or object in real life. Imaginal exposure or exposure therapy for anxiety incorporates visualizing what is feared, such as recalling a traumatic experience or memory.
Therapy can also vary in speed; some people may find it effective to be flooded with their most challenging fears first, while others may do better with prolonged exposure therapy, where you’ll work up to facing your fears from weakest to strongest.
The APA notes that over time, repeated, habitual exposure helps you learn that the feared outcome is unlikely and that you’re self-sufficient and capable of handling anxious feelings, which decreases your overall fear.
Motivational Interviewing
Closely related to the tenets of ACT therapy, motivational interviewing (MI) is ideal for people who feel conflicted or uncertain about making changes in their lives. Motivational interviewing therapy works to help you understand your ambivalence, resolve those feelings and summon the motivation and commitment needed to change.
According to Psychology Today, it’s structured around four principled motivational interviewing stages of change:
- Your therapist will express empathy toward you, your challenges, beliefs and past experiences through their behavioral analysis.
- They’ll emphasize your good qualities, such as inner strength, your talents or moments when you’ve succeeded at something, to support your own self-sufficiency — that you’re capable of change if you set your mind to it.
- Mi therapy is valuable because it can help you reduce resistance; namely, rather than being told what to do by your therapist, they’ll ask you to think of a realistic, actionable solution on your own that you can own and roll with the resistance rather than fight it.
- One of the most important motivational interviewing principles is the chance to identify and develop discrepancies between present challenges and future goals. What steps can you make to take action?
Another approach your therapist might take is through motivational interviewing OARS, an acronym for open-ended questions, affirmations, reflective listening and summaries. These motivational interviewing techniques share something crucial in common: they enable you to take the lead in changing your circumstances and your life. It’s just one more way how behavioral therapy is so effective in helping you harness your own ability to reframe your mental and physical narratives.
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT)
Developed by psychologist Albert Ellis in 1955, Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy is a more action-oriented form of CBT.
Both REBT and CBT take the understanding that self-defeating thoughts can lead to unfulfilling emotions and behaviors, and vice versa. But Albert Ellis Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy takes a more proactive approach — that cognitive distress is primarily rooted not in past traumatic or negative events, but rather the irrational thinking and beliefs we hold about those events.
And like CBT, the work you put into Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy REBT helps you to identify, challenge and replace those rigid and illogical beliefs with healthier, more rational ones.
In developing REBT, Ellis proposed that negative states of mind we hold onto happen in part from catastrophic thinking and what he called “musterbating,” or the use of negative language, like must, should, ought and never, notes Psychology Today.
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy techniques can help you see how these demanding and absolute beliefs lead to problems like anxiety and depression. (A Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy example could be “I will never find love” or “I should be treated fairly.”) Ellis proposed his ABCDE model for challenging irrational beliefs:
- The activating event is what influences what we think or feel, however negatively.
- A negative mindset is rooted in automatic beliefs we hold about a traumatic or distressing event, person or even ourselves.
- The way we respond emotionally or behaviorally can have negative consequences.
- The turning point we can make in REBT therapy is called disputing, where negative beliefs can objectively be questioned or challenged.
- Effective behavior develops when you’ve worked to reframe your mental narrative, resulting in more positive actions in the future.
Behavioral Therapy at Aliya Native Americans
How can behavioral therapy help you or a loved one? There’s no mental health or substance abuse issue that can’t be treated — and at our treatment centers (20 across eight states), you can find the help you need, from CBT to DBT, exposure therapy and more. Aliya Health Group prides itself on a clinical philosophy that honors you and your unique journey.
And our Native American program also gives special attention to the factors that can lead to issues served well by behavioral therapies, from generational trauma to systemic discrimination, poverty, homelessness and more. By investing in us to help, our investment is in you and your well-being.
Finding a behavioral specialist near me and learning more about our cognitive therapies is easy by getting in touch with us today. Call our 24/7/365 admissions team or fill out our secure, confidential contact form. We’re here to meet you where you are.
What Is Behavior Therapy, and Why Is It Important?
Behavioral Therapy: Definition, Types & Effectiveness
Behavioral Therapy – StatPearls – NCBI Bookshelf.
What is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT): What It Is
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy – an overview | ScienceDirect Topics
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): What It Is & Techniques
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT): What It Is & Purpose
Motivational Interviewing | Psychology Today