As a treatment it is recommended for a number of problems that are considered to have a psychological component. All forms of addiction contain this psychological component. Good therapy can help a person to understand more clearly the nature of their addictive cravings. This insight proves invaluable when it comes to building new healthier ways of coping.

Cognitive therapy offers patients the possibility of gaining power over destructive thought patterns and teaches how to replace inappropriate ways of thinking with ways that function better.

Behavioral therapy does the same thing for behavior. It offers patients insight into behaviors that are self destructive and provides them with substitute patterns of behavior that are not only more appropriate but support them in their attempts to become whole again.

It is however possible to use therapy as an excuse not to move on and take up life's challenges. In this way something that is meant to provide a way out of the destructive pattern becomes destructive itself. This is a lesser-known danger but a danger all the same.

Good therapy provides a vehicle for the patient to use to get from a bad place to a good one but some people are disinclined to move on. They begin to use the therapy itself as a crutch, a substitute for the challenges of real life. In this way therapy takes on many of the characteristics of an addiction that is to say it becomes yet another inappropriate coping mechanism a further means of escaping reality.
 

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