What is CBT and How Can It Help You?

Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is a form of psychotherapy that addresses psychological issues by focusing primarily on the cognitive and behavioural dimensions of your emotional and behavioural concerns (i.e., the way that your thoughts, beliefs or thinking influences your emotional and behavioural responses). CBT also focuses on problem solving, finding solutions, improving coping, helping clients to challenge distorted cognitions (e.g., thoughts, beliefs) and change problematic behaviours. Your emotional or behavioural responses are also changed through exposure to specific situations, cues, narratives or places that trigger distress and maladaptive responses. Homework is often assigned.

Different treatments focus on different aspects of your concerns, including behaviours, cognitions, emotions, perceptions, and relationships. The psychologists, psychotherapists and counsellors working through CFIR are trained and skilled in providing various types of psychological treatments. They are also dedicated to discovering what will work best for you. Contact us today to book your initial appointment or to arrange a free 30-minute consultation.

Depression: The Role of Unprocessed Feelings and Emotions

by: Dr. Dino Zuccarini and Tatijana Busic


Do you find yourself struggling to cope with the intense feelings and emotions associated with depression?

In this second post of our four-part series about depression, we’ll provide you with a few of many psychological views of how unprocessed feelings and emotions might lead to depressed feelings. In the following post, we’ll provide you with various strategies you can use to deal with depression on your own, or in your relationships with others.

Feelings and Emotions Associated with Depression

Depression involves different types of difficult emotional experiences, including chronic negative feelings and emotions (e.g., fear, sadness, anger, worthlessness, guilt, shame, irritability, restlessness or lethargy, detachment and numbing). Depression is, of course, a broader mental health diagnosis that consists of many different features, as outlined in this series’ first post in which we addressed what is depression. Depression is different than normal grief in which we feel sadness for a prolonged period of time in the aftermath of the loss of a loved one (i.e., loss of a parent, child, sibling or friend).

Unprocessed Feelings and Emotions as Signals of Need in Depression

Our feelings and emotions provide us with important information about our self, others and the world around us. Depression is a signal to us—a calling for us to listen to our feelings, emotions, desires, and needs.

Some of us are unable to clearly identify, label or express our feelings and assert our needs. Being able to figure out our feelings, emotions, and needs is, however, critically important. It is important because our feelings and emotions guide us by providing us with a sense of what is significant to us in our environment both at home and work. Emotions signal to us that we have concerns, goals, and needs and that some type of action may be required by us to deal with these concerns, goals, and needs in our environment. When we do not attend to our feelings, emotions, and needs, we can create a world that feels false to us. We can become disconnected from what’s really important to us and in our relationships, which can result in hopelessness, anger, or detachment and withdrawn feelings.

In our relationships, it’s important to process our feelings, emotions, wants, and needs. Depressed individuals may have difficulties managing their emotions and figuring out what they need from others. If we can’t figure out our feelings, emotions, wants and needs, we won’t be able to approach our friends, family members, partners, or even employers with our concerns or needs. Some individuals become out of touch with how others can sometimes provide us with responses that can be valuable to us—-only if we actually know what it is that we need from others, feel entitled to ask for support, and risk expressing our vulnerabilities and needs to others (i.e., to listen to us, help us sort out our feelings, verbal reassurance or physical reassurance through a hug etc.) can we realize how others can be a source of contact-comfort, and soothing to assuage the distress in our everyday world.
When we can’t sort out our feelings, emotions, and needs, we can’t get in touch with ourselves and how others might be able to respond to us in ways that can make life better for us. Depression sets in as hopelessness grows—with depression, it becomes more and more difficult to reach for support and increasingly we withdraw, detach, or are irritable and angry, which pushes people further away from us.

Loss and Grief, Meaninglessness and Purposelessness

Life can be a symphony of losses. Many of us struggle to cope with unresolved losses that are accompanied by grief, and possibly a sense of meaninglessness and purposelessness. We can experience loss in many ways—loss of loved ones in our close relationships (i.e., death, separation), and the loss of self and identity as we transition through various life stages or as a result of unexpected changes to our mental or physical health.

We may experience the loss of a parent, partner, child or friend through death, separation or divorce—and experience normal grief. Some individuals will grieve these types of losses and eventually return to feeling better—albeit life is never the same with the loss of a loved one. Some individuals, however, will not recover as well. The loss may create a deep sense of loss and grief about the relationship with the loved one—this loss may also remind you of various other past losses in life in which your emotional needs were unmet—increasing a sense of loneliness, pain, guilt, shame, and isolation. When we have not appropriately grieved our losses, the pain and sadness of previous losses can accumulate and surface unexpectedly—prolonging your recovery time.

Loss of a loved one might also leave you with a shattered sense of your self, identity, and future—if so many of your life plans were associated with the lost loved one. Re-discovering who you are separate from your lost one can take time. Hopeless despair, sadness, and anger can also emerge when it is difficult to reconnect with others, and re-create a renewed sense of meaning and purpose after these types of losses.

We also experience loss and grief as a result of changes caused by normal lifespan changes (i.e., change in roles and identity), changes in our physical and mental abilities, and health status. When these changes occur, some individuals have to face loss related to unmet expectations and unachieved goals—the lost hopes of what we thought our lives would be. Changes in our life circumstances (i.e., children leaving home, loss of employment etc.), health status (i.e., mental and physical changes associated with illness or aging), alter our capacities and possibilities of functioning in ‘old’ ways. When we experience loss or a lot of change, we can lose our bearings and struggle to find meaning and purpose in life again. Over time, we can begin to feel hopeless about ourselves. You can lose a sense of vitality as you try to re-define what’s of importance to you in the aftermath of all of these changes.

How Psychotherapists at CFIR Can Help

Psychotherapists at CFIR can support you to deal with your emotions, including helping you to get to know your feelings and emotions, label them and figure out what they might mean to you. Some of us of have strong emotions that need to be dimmed somewhat but still understood. Sometimes strong emotional reactions come from unprocessed feelings, emotions and needs from our past relationships, and losses, or from losses in present-day life. Psychologists at CFIR provide cognitive-behaviors, existential-humanistic, emotionally-focused and psychodynamic therapy strategies to support you to deal with your emotions, understand what these important signals mean to you, and to help you to take action in the world that will promote self-growth and recovery from your losses.

In the next blog post of the series, we will be providing you with strategies on how to deal with your feelings of depression. We’ll be outlining strategies for ‘yourself’ and strategies for ‘your relationships’. Aside from seeking psychological services to help you with your symptoms, there are many things you can do to feel better on your own.

Read more additional posts from the ‘Depression’ series:

Learn more about our Depression, Mood & Grief Treatment Service.

Depression: How Your Thinking Can Lead to the ‘Blues’

by Dr. Dino Zuccarini and Tatijana Busic

Are you tired of struggling with low energy, negative thoughts, and feelings that seem to absorb so much of your day? You may be suffering from the debilitating symptoms of depression.

This is part one of four in our blog series about depression. These posts have been created to help you consider what might be at the root of your feelings of depression. In the first two blogs, we write about some common causes of depression; particularly, about how you’re thinking and how the way you deal with your emotions might be causing or contributing to your feelings of depression. Finally, in the last blog, we provide you with strategies you can use to deal with depression on your own, or in your relationships with others.

What is Depression?

Depression has many different symptoms. When we’re depressed, we experience symptoms, such as, chronic negative feelings and emotions (e.g., sadness, worthlessness, guilt, irritability, restlessness or lethargy), loss of interest or pleasure in previously enjoyed activities, difficulties with attention, concentration and decision-making, changes in appetite or weight, fatigue, bodily aches and pain. Individuals suffering from depression are also typically bombarded by a chorus of negative thoughts about themselves, others and the world around them. These negative thoughts and feelings may be at the root of your depression.

How Our Thinking Paves the Road to Depression

There are several biological and psychological causes of depression. Let’s review a few ideas about how your thinking can contribute to depressed feelings.

1.  Negative Views of Our Self and Others

Your depression may be linked to negative thoughts and feelings you are having about yourself, others or the world around you. These negative thoughts and feelings can emerge from difficult life experiences at any time in our life—from childhood onward to present-day challenges we are facing in our lives. These difficult life experiences can affect how we might think and feel about our self and others (i.e., thoughts and feelings of inadequacy, worthlessness, incompetence, a sense of being unlovable and insignificant). When you think and feel negatively toward yourself and others for a long period of time, you can become hopeless. You can begin to attribute negative situations and events in your life to negative thoughts you have about your self. A sense of hopelessness about our self further blocks us from being able to achieve our goals and get our needs met. You might also believe that others think and feel the same way about you, which further deepens the hopeless feelings.

As a result of childhood or present-day challenging life experiences, we may have also developed a negative view of others. Others may have been harsh, inaccessible or unsupportive to us during some difficult life moments—and now, it may seem to us that all others are unreliable, undependable and untrustworthy, or potentially harsh and judging. These views of others may diminish the likelihood that we’ll be able to connect with friends or family for support when we are facing challenges and need others the most.

When we hold a negative view of ourselves and others as a result of past or present-day life experiences, we can begin to feel hopeless and less capable of meeting our goals, concerns, and needs, and unable to reach out during times when we are in need of others support and care. These negative views of ‘self ‘and ‘other’ cascade into feelings of depression over time.

2.  Unrealistic Standards, Ideals and Expectations Fuel Perfectionism and Self-Criticism

We all have standards and ideals that create expectations that then guide our thinking, behaviours and emotional reactions toward others. From childhood onwards, the outside world through our parents, teachers, and employers place expectations and demands on us. We also develop our own expectations about our own and other people’s behaviour (i.e., how we and others ‘should,’ ‘ought to,’ or ‘must’ think, feel, and behave). Our expectations can sometimes be unrealistic and unachievable, which can create a great deal of pressure and stress in our lives. Unrealistic expectations of others may also create difficulties in our relationships with others. When we are too overly driven by our own and other’s unrealistic expectations, we can become hopeless trying to keep up with all of these demands. We can also lose touch with what we are really feeling, preferring, desiring, wanting or needing for ourselves.

Some individuals maintain unrelenting, rigid standards and ideals about how they or others should perform in the world. In these circumstances, some individuals may have unyielding and high expectations about their performances. They may strive for perfection in their endeavours, and be self-critical and harsh toward themselves when they do not meet these expectations. A self-critical internal voice may emerge that continuously judges or berates the individual (e.g., ‘you dummy’, ‘you’re lazy’, ‘you’re weak’, ‘you screw things up all the time’). Research affirms that self-criticism and perfectionism are often cornerstones of depression.


Perfectionism and self-criticalness may initially work together inside of you to ensure that you perform well. You may criticize yourself to improve your performance so that you will see your self or others will see you in a more positive manner. The more we drive ourselves in this manner, the more we wind up feeling overwhelmed and stressed. We start living an unbalanced life that can feel overwhelming and stressful. Over time, perfectionism and a self-critical voice can create a sense of guilt for not performing adequately, and hopelessness about our self (i.e., global, negative view of your own self as inadequate, not good enough, and worthless). Some individuals can also be critical and harsh toward others for failure to live up to their demands. This can create difficulties when you are engaged in either constant conflict with others or others decide to disconnect from you and you becoming increasingly isolated over time.
CFIR psychotherapists can support you to deal with your negative views of self and other, and the unrelenting self-criticism and perfectionism that might be at the root of your depression. We integrate cognitive-behavioral, mindfulness and acceptance and commitment, and psychodynamic-based approaches to help you deal with the thinking that might be contributing to your depressed feelings.

Read more additional posts from the ‘Depression’ series:

Read more about our Depression, Mood & Grief Treatment Service.