How does Cognitive Behavioral Family Therapy (CBFT) work?

South Boulder Counseling utilizes a fusion between a more traditional family counseling framework and a less commonly used technique: Cognitive Behavioral Family Therapy (CBFT).  Mainstream family counseling is a type of psychotherapy designed to help families resolve conflicts and improve communication.  It is a great choice for a family that usually gets along great but has reached a bit of a tough patch.  

CBFT takes it one step deeper.  CBFT aims to permanently change interactional patterns between family members.  We do this by exposing distorted beliefs held by each family member.  

What are the family’s core beliefs about each other and how do they affect interactions?

Let’s try applying CBFT to the fictional Hernandez family.  The mother of the family believes that teenage Marco is lazy and reliant on her.  She continues to wake him up for school at age 16 because she believes that he is unreliable.  Marco somewhat accepts his mother’s view of him, but also deep down recognizes that he is capable of more.  Marco doesn’t try to ask his mother to back off because his core belief is that his mother is overly sensitive.  Marco feels he must walk on eggshells around his mother, and that helps perpetuate the status quo where he does too little and she does too much.  

If this family were to come to my office, we would begin by exploring the unhealthy patterns that play out in the family system.  

Rather than spending our therapy hour arguing about who does what (or blaming and shaming), we open up an awareness around the “why.”  

Cognitions (or “thoughts”) lead to emotions which creates behavior.  This behavior reinforces our cognitions.  Marco’s mother believes her son to be incapable so she feels anxious that he will be late to school which leads her to wake him up.  The fact that she wakes him up every day reinforces her belief that he is incapable.  Marco also is reinforced in his reliance on his mother because it is easier to go with the flow than break away.  

Cognitive-behavioral family therapy reveals how each family member is influenced by but also influencing each other.  

We see how mom’s behavior leads to behaviors, cognitions, and emotions in her son.  The reverse is also happening. 

If the Hernandez family were in my office, I would aim to shed light on these patterns and interrupt an unhealthy cycle.  No one needs to be stuck where they are.  Family progress can come with reflection and intentional disruption of entrenched patterns.