Cognitive Behaviour Therapy
What it is
Whether it can help you,
A brief case study using CBT
You’re smart, capable, and outwardly holding it all together - but inside, things feel increasingly unsustainable.
You’ve hit a point where stress, anxiety, or emotional exhaustion are no longer manageable with your usual coping strategies.
This isn’t about needing “more self-care.”
It’s about interrupting deeply ingrained patterns before they take a long-term toll.
I’m Dr Claire Plumbly, a clinical psychologist specialising in intensive trauma and burnout recovery for professionals who need deep, lasting change - delivered with clarity, efficiency, and psychological depth.
You’re smart, capable, and outwardly holding it all together - but inside, things feel increasingly unsustainable.
You’ve hit a point where stress, anxiety, or emotional exhaustion are no longer manageable with your usual coping strategies.
This isn’t about needing “more self-care.”
It’s about interrupting deeply ingrained patterns before they take a long-term toll.
I’m Dr Claire Plumbly, a clinical psychologist specialising in intensive trauma and burnout recovery for professionals who need deep, lasting change - delivered with clarity, efficiency, and psychological depth.
CBT is particularly effective for anxiety, stress and depression.
CBT is often the first treatment offered in the NHS for anxiety disorders and depression. This is because there is a large body of evidence showing how effective it can be.
The emphasis in CBT is on developing an understanding of how your thoughts, emotions, behaviours and bodily-sensations all relate to each other. It then teaches you ways of intervening at any of those four levels to have a positive impact on your whole system
Who Can CBT Help?
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) can be helpful for people experiencing anxiety, depression, stress, low mood, and unhelpful thinking patterns that are getting in the way of daily life.
It is particularly useful for those who feel stuck in cycles of worry, rumination, avoidance, or low confidence, and want practical tools to understand how their thoughts, feelings, and behaviours interact. CBT supports people to notice patterns that maintain difficulties and to develop new ways of responding that feel more balanced and effective.
CBT can also help those who feel driven by fears such as making mistakes, being judged, or not coping, and who want a structured, evidence-based approach to creating change.
How Does CBT Work?
CBT begins by building a shared understanding of the difficulties you are experiencing, such as anxiety, low mood, stress, excessive worrying, procrastination, or patterns of avoidance that are impacting daily life.
We also take time to understand your current circumstances and pressures at work and home. Together, you and your therapist map out how your thoughts, emotions, physical responses, and behaviours interact to maintain difficulties in the present.
You then learn practical, evidence-based strategies to help you notice unhelpful thinking patterns, test out alternative perspectives, and gradually change behaviours that keep problems going. Therapy often involves structured exercises to practise between sessions, supporting change in everyday situations.
Over time, CBT helps you feel more confident in managing difficult thoughts and emotions, reduce avoidance, and respond to challenges in a more balanced and flexible way. Many people find they feel more capable, less overwhelmed, and better equipped to cope with future stresses.
Case Study of CBT
Sophie* runs her own PR company and sought therapy after noticing she was working longer and longer hours but feeling increasingly stuck. She felt overwhelmed easily and was procrastinating a lot, repeatedly delayed decisions, and found it difficult to delegate to her team, worrying that others wouldn’t meet her standards. As a result, her workload continued to grow while her sense of progress shrank.
During therapy, Sophie realised she had perfectionistic thinking that linked self-worth to performance. Tasks were approached with an underlying belief that work must be done “properly or not at all,” which led to avoidance, over-editing, and constant second-guessing. Although highly capable, she felt anxious about being judged and feared letting clients down.
Using Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, sessions focused on identifying unhelpful thinking styles such as all-or-nothing thinking, intolerance of uncertainty, and overestimation of risk. Together, she and her therapist mapped how these beliefs maintained anxiety and reinforced behaviours like overworking, criticising herself and reluctance to delegate.
Sophie learned practical CBT strategies to set more realistic standards, break tasks into manageable steps, and test out new ways of working, such as delegating small tasks and submitting work without excessive checking. Between sessions, behavioural experiments helped build confidence through experience rather than reassurance.
Over time, Sophie reported reduced anxiety, improved efficiency, and a greater sense of momentum. She became more able to delegate, make decisions, and run her business in a way that felt sustainable rather than exhausting.
*Sophie is a fictious character that I've created for the purposes of demonstrating how CBT works. The information here comes from many years experience working with similar themes arising from client sessions.