Adults, 18 and over In person in West Hartford

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) in West Hartford, CT

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is built on a simple observation: what keeps depression and anxiety going is rarely the original event alone, but the loop of automatic thoughts and protective habits that grew around it. We offer structured, one-on-one CBT in person for adults at our West Hartford office.

Request an appointment See how CBT works

Illustration of an adult's hands resting on a journal during therapy

Present-focusedStarts with how the problem operates in your week right now

Between-session workReal change happens in the 167 hours outside the office

ERP & CBT-I includedSpecific protocols for OCD and chronic insomnia

Coordinated with psychiatryShared chart when you take medication here too

What CBT is,
and what it is not

CBT has a reputation in pop culture for being alecture on "positive thinking" or a stack of corporate worksheets. Good clinical CBT is neither.

What it is

Catching bad predictions and testing them

When you are anxious, your brain overestimates how likely a bad outcome is and underestimates how well you would handle it if it happened. When you are depressed, it tells you nothing will help before you even try. Those conclusions happen fast, so you act on them: you stay home, you check the lock a fifth time, you put off the email, or you stay in bed. CBT slows that loop down, puts the thought on paper where both of us can look at it, and tests what happens when you do something different.

What it is not

Positive affirmations, or venting for a year

Nobody in this office is going to ask you to look in a mirror and repeat cheerful slogans when your life is genuinely hard. If a fear is realistic, we treat it as a problem to solve, not a distortion to argue away. At the same time, CBT is not an open-ended hour where you recap your week and leave with nothing to do. Every session has a point, and you should always know what you and your clinician are working on.

Six ways we use CBT
at our West Hartford practice

"CBT" is an umbrella term. Treating panic attacks looks very different from treating depression or insomnia. Your clinician picks the version built for your specific problem.

Cognitive restructuring

Most people do not notice their automatic thoughts; they only notice the drop in their stomach that follows. In session, we rewind a bad moment from your week to find the exact sentence your mind produced right before your mood sank. Then we check the facts. Not to force a rosy spin, but to see whether you are convicting yourself on evidence that would not hold up in any other part of your life.

Often used forGeneralized anxiety, depression, social anxiety, self-criticism

Behavioral activation

Depression tells a very convincing lie: wait until you feel like doing something, and then do it. If you wait to feel like it, you can wait for months. Behavioral activation flips the order. We schedule small, specific actions first, before the motivation shows up, because in depression energy and interest almost always follow behavior rather than preceding it.

Often used forMajor depression, flat motivation, withdrawal after a loss

Graduated exposure and ERP for OCD

Avoidance works for about twenty minutes. You skip the meeting, leave the grocery store, or wash your hands again, and the alarm drops. The catch is that tomorrow the alarm rings louder. For panic and phobias, we build a ladder of avoided places and climb it one rung at a time until your nervous system gets bored of ringing the bell. For OCD, we use Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), facing the obsession without performing the compulsion that feeds it.

Often used forOCD, panic disorder, agoraphobia, phobias, health anxiety

CBT for Insomnia (CBT-I)

Lying awake in bed for three hours doing math about how tired you will be tomorrow teaches your brain that the bed is a place for worrying, not sleeping. CBT for insomnia fixes that pairing. It uses sleep scheduling and stimulus control to rebuild a strong sleep drive, and it outperforms sleeping pills over the long run without the morning hangover.

Often used forTrouble falling asleep, 3 a.m. waking, dread of bedtime

CBT adapted for adult ADHD

Standard time-management advice fails adults with ADHD because it assumes the problem is not knowing how to buy a planner. Most adults with ADHD own five planners. The real obstacles are task initiation, time blindness, and the habit of giving up on a whole week the moment one afternoon goes sideways. We work on external systems that survive a bad day, alongside medication when you take it.

Often used forAdult ADHD, chronic procrastination, deadline panic

Overwork and perfectionism

In high-pressure jobs, the rule in your head is often that anything less than 110 percent will end in disaster. So you double-check emails at 11 p.m. and never take a real day off until you hit burnout. We treat perfectionism the same way we treat any other anxious habit: by testing what actually happens when you do a task at an ordinary human standard and close the laptop.

Often used forOccupational burnout, high-achieving anxiety, caregiving strain

General descriptions of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy draw on the National Institute of Mental Health overview of psychotherapies. Which approach fits your situation is decided at your evaluation.

Conditions where CBT
is a first-line tool

Select a condition below to read our plain-language guide on how we evaluate and treat it.

Generalized anxiety Depression Panic disorder Social anxiety Obsessive-compulsive disorder Insomnia Adult ADHD PTSD and trauma Work stress and burnout PMDD

What a course of CBT
looks like over time

The point of CBT is to hand you the tools so you eventually do not need us anymore.

Visit 1

Mapping the loop

We look at what brought you in, how the problem plays out in a typical week, and what you have started avoiding or overdoing because of it. You leave knowing what we propose to work on first.

Weeks 2 to 4

Catching it in the wild

You start noticing the thoughts and protective habits while they are happening rather than three days later. We pick the first small between-session experiment together.

The middle weeks

Doing the different thing

Weekly sessions where we review what happened when you tested the skill, troubleshoot what got in the way, and move up the ladder. If nothing is shifting after several weeks, we change the plan rather than repeating it.

Finishing up

Spacing out

Once you are steady, we move to every other week and write down a blunt, one-page relapse plan: what your early warning signs look like and what you will do in the first forty-eight hours if they return.

Cost and insurance

Contact the office to check your coverage and expected cost per session before scheduling.

Insurance

Outpatient CBT is billed as individual psychotherapy and is covered under most commercial and Medicare plans, subject to your deductible, copay, and whether the clinician is in network for your plan.

Before your first session

The office checks your benefits and tells you your expected cost per session in writing before you start. If your insurer requires a referral or authorization, we find out then.

Self-pay

Available if you are out of network or prefer not to use insurance.

Where we meet

In person only, at 10 Princeton St, Ste N, West Hartford, CT 06110.

Questions about
CBT therapy

Common questions from adults considering Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

Is CBT just positive thinking?

No. Positive thinking is telling yourself everything will be fine when you have no idea if it will. CBT is about accuracy. When you are anxious or depressed, your brain tends to treat a worst-case guess as a settled fact. In CBT, we put that guess on the table, look at the actual evidence for and against it, and test what happens when you stop acting as if the worst case is guaranteed.

Will I have to do worksheets between sessions?

You will almost always leave with something to try before the next week, though it does not have to be a paper worksheet. Fifty minutes in an armchair is not where habits change. Sometimes the task between sessions is catching three automatic thoughts in the notes app on your phone. Sometimes it is driving two exits on the highway you have been avoiding, or getting out of bed at the same time four mornings in a row.

How many sessions does CBT usually run?

It depends on what you came in to fix. A focused problem like panic attacks, chronic insomnia, or a single phobia often responds to a structured course of weekly sessions over a few months. Longer-standing depression or severe OCD takes longer. Either way, your clinician reviews progress with you out loud rather than letting appointments run forever by default.

Can I do CBT while taking medication?

Yes. For moderate to severe depression, generalized anxiety, panic disorder, and OCD, combining CBT with medication management tends to work better than either one alone. Because our prescribers and therapist work in the same West Hartford office and share one chart, your medication and your therapy are planned together.

Do you use ERP for OCD and CBT-I for insomnia?

Yes. Standard talk therapy often makes OCD worse by turning into an hour of reassurance-seeking. We use Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) for OCD, and we use Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) when sleep has fallen apart.

Are CBT appointments held in person?

Yes. All sessions are in person for adults 18 and over at 10 Princeton St, Ste N in West Hartford. We do not offer telehealth.

Other approaches we use

CBT is one of several structured therapies offered at this practice.

Start with a therapy evaluation

One appointment to map out what has been keeping the problem in place and decide whether CBT is the right tool for it.

Request an appointment Call the office