How CBT Therapy Helps with Anxiety and Depression

You’ve probably heard of CBT therapy before (short for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy). Maybe your doctor mentioned it, or a friend said it helped them through a hard time. You’ve for sure heard about it on TikTok. You might be wondering what it actually means, or if it could help you too.

The short answer: CBT helps you understand how your thoughts, feelings, and actions are connected, and how changing one can shift the others.

What CBT Actually Is

CBT is a type of therapy that helps you notice patterns in how you think and respond. It’s not about “thinking positive” or ignoring pain. It’s about slowing down enough to see what your mind is telling you, and then deciding whether it’s helping or hurting.

For example, you might notice thoughts like:

• “I’m not doing enough.”

• “Something bad is going to happen.”

• “I should be handling this better.”

CBT therapy helps you step back from those thoughts and ask:

• Is this true?

• Is there another way to see this?

• What happens when I believe this thought?

Over time, that awareness creates space to breathe, to choose, and to respond differently.

How CBT Helps with Anxiety

When you’re anxious, your brain tends to focus on what could go wrong. CBT helps you recognize those worry loops before they take over.

You learn to:

• Notice when your thoughts are racing ahead of reality

• Challenge catastrophic thinking

• Practice grounding and calming techniques

• Reconnect with what’s actually happening in the moment

For postpartum anxiety, that might look like learning to manage intrusive thoughts, reduce checking behaviours, or cope with the fear that something bad will happen to your baby.

How CBT Helps with Depression

When you’re depressed, your brain often filters everything through a lens of guilt, failure, or hopelessness. CBT helps you identify those patterns and gently test them against real evidence.

It also helps you re-engage with small, meaningful activities- usually the things depression convinces you don’t matter. This is called behavioural activation, and it’s one of the most effective ways to lift mood and motivation over time.

What to Expect in CBT

A CBT therapy session usually feels structured but collaborative. You and your therapist work together to understand what’s keeping you stuck and experiment with ways to shift it.

You might:

• Track patterns between your thoughts, emotions, and behaviour

• Learn simple tools to challenge or reframe unhelpful thinking

• Practice coping skills between sessions

• Reflect on what’s working and what’s not

It’s practical and skills-based, but it’s also deeply personal. Good CBT therapy moves at your pace and always considers your lived experience, culture, and context.

Why We Use CBT at Bloom

At Bloom Psychotherapy, we use CBT with some people because it helps people build real, sustainable change, not just insight.  Whether you’re coping with postpartum depression, anxiety, fertility struggles, or burnout, CBT can help you untangle the noise in your mind so you can respond with more clarity and self-compassion. 

While CBT is often recommended, at Bloom, we focus on you at the centre of therapy. If CBT feels warranted, or like a good fit, we try some concepts. If another approach resonates more, we go that direction. We believe that a one-size-fits-all approach is counter-productive, and we prefer to meet you where you are at, and work from there. 

You don’t have to silence your thoughts. You just need to learn how to work with them.

If you’re curious about whether CBT could help you, reach out. We can talk about what’s going on and whether CBT- or another approach- might fit you best. Our team is fully trained in CBT and many other approaches, so we’re happy to figure this out together. You can book an appointment, or connect with our Client Coordinator to help you find the right fit.