Cognitive behavioral therapy homework assignments

If you plan to assign educational materials, ask in your first session whether your client prefers audio or written media. When you give the assignment, take a few minutes to go over it with your client. Give an example of how to complete it and make sure they understand the process. You’ll also want to explain the purpose of the assignment.

Psychotherapy homework is often allocated to patients as part of their care. Homework activities are incorporated in this way to practice techniques taught in therapy, enable people to adapt the skills they have gained in therapy to real-life circumstances, and to strengthen the particular issues experienced in therapy.

worksheet The cognitive triangle illustrates how thoughts, emotions, and behaviors affect one another. This idea forms the basis of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT). Perhaps most important to CBT, when a person changes their thoughts, they will also change their emotions and behaviors.

But it only works when it is provided by clinicians who have been well-trained in CBT and when the person who is in therapy is motivated, sticks to treatment recommendations, does homework and finishes treatment.