"CBT" is short for Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. This type of counseling involves well-established techniques that focus on methods to help people adjust to stressful events in their lives, such as transplant. CBT teaches simple methods of relaxation as ways of coping and problem-solving after transplant to reduce worries, bothersome thoughts and fear surrounding your diagnosis and treatment. More specifically, CBT teaches techniques to help re-train the body and learn how to relax, as well as training a person to react differently to items that bother them.

CBT as part of the Looking Forward Study
Each session will last about one hour in length and will be conducted one-on-one, over the phone. The counselor will teach you how to pick out those experiences of your diagnosis and treatment which were the most stressful and which memories cause you the most fear and worry. When you work with the counselor, you will decide how stressful each memory is and list those memories in order from the most stressful to the least stressful. You will then be taught how to relax and remember each of these experiences without becoming upset. The counselor will also teach you how to identify fearful thoughts that cause you to feel stressed and anxious. He or she will review ways to change those thoughts to more helpful thoughts. The counselor will also give you homework assignments to help you become more comfortable with memories of your cancer diagnosis and treatment.

To learn more about our study team, click here.