The therapeutic alliance is the working relationship between client and therapist. According to a growing body of research, the therapeutic alliance may be the most important factor to a successful therapeutic outcome — more important, even, than the therapist’s theoretical orientation, or approach to therapy. So, what makes a therapeutic alliance successful? The key factor…
Jumping to conclusions is a cognitive distortion, or a faulty pattern of thought, in which a person makes unhelpful assumptions that are not supported by evidence (Burns, 1981, 40–41). These “jumps” are leaps into the unknown. Jumping to conclusions is a particularly common cognitive distortion because we all must draw conclusions based on partial or…
Blaming is a cognitive distortion, or a faulty thought pattern, that causes a person to wrongly assign the responsibility of a negative outcome either to oneself or another. This cognitive distortion occurs when one wrongly blames another for one’s own actions, or when one wrongly assumes responsibility for others’ actions. Examples of blaming others Often,…
The CBT triangle (or cognitive triangle) is a model for illustrating the relationship between thoughts, behaviors, and emotions. This model acts as a map for understanding the relationship between these three points (thoughts, behaviors, and emotions), and how we can make changes to habits of thought and behavior to help us feel better. This relationship…
Overgeneralization is a cognitive distortion, or a faulty thought pattern, that causes a person to generalize the outcome of one or several negative events to all similar events. It is the error of drawing a big conclusion from a small sample (Burns, 1981, 40–41; Beck, 2021, 253). We all have to make inferences and assumptions…
Online counseling (or online therapy) is the practice of providing outpatient psychotherapy services remotely through the use of an online platform. In this article we will trace key points of the history of online counseling from the founding of the discipline of psychotherapy in the 19th century to the present day. 1890-1910: Origins of psychotherapy…