Experiential avoidance (EA) refers to a person being unwilling to remain in contact with certain uncomfortable thoughts, bodily sensations, and emotions, and taking steps to escape or avoid these experiences. EA has been linked with several different psychiatric disorders, difficulty identifying one’s emotions, and difficulty with emotion regulation. It is …

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a highly effective form of psychotherapy applied to treat a range of mental illnesses including, but not limited to, depression, anxiety, somatic symptom disorders, substance use disorders, trauma-related disorders and eating disorders. CBT originated as an application of psychological research on learning theory to the …

Many randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have shown that dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) is effective for many different mental health problems. However, one important factor to consider when interpreting findings from RCTs of DBT is patient dropout, as dropout can compromise the validity of trial findings. A greater understanding of patient …

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is characterized by unwanted intrusive thoughts (obsessions) and repetitive behaviour like excessive checking and cleaning (compulsions). Cognitive theory proposes that everyone (or nearly everyone) has unwanted intrusive thoughts, but that those with OCD hold maladaptive beliefs that lead them to interpret such thoughts as catastrophic. As a …

Sleep disturbances are highly common, particularly among individuals with anxiety symptoms or disorders. In fact, sleep disturbances and anxiety influence each other: sleep problems can serve as a risk factor for the development of anxiety disorders and, conversely, anxiety disorders can contribute to problematic sleep. Anxiety sensitivity, the fear of …

To catastrophize about poor sleep is likely something that everyone will encounter during episodes of sleep difficulties. The tendency to catastrophize about sleep disturbance and associated daytime consequences is particularly common among individuals with insomnia disorder. Due to a lack of self-report instruments designed to assess insomnia catastrophizing, we developed …

Insomnia is very common, affecting up to 37% of adults, and is linked to a host of mental and physical health problems. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) is recommended as the first line treatment for insomnia by the National Institutes of Health, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, and …

Exposure therapy is a highly effective treatment for anxiety disorders. This approach calls for individuals to remain in anxiety-provoking situations long enough to acquire threat-disconfirming information about the situation and build new safety associations. A commonly debated aspect of exposure delivery is the inclusion/exclusion of safety behaviors. Safety behaviors are …

Cognitive-behavioral approaches for people with opioid use disorder may be more widely circulated in clinical settings with the recent Food and Drug Administration approval of a mobile app that provides cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to patients with opioid use disorder.  As such, perhaps now more than ever, enhancing the precision …