What is Cognitive Therapy?

Cognitive Rehabilitation, not to be confused with cognitive behavioral therapy, is a treatment usually provided by speech-language pathologists.  Don’t let the name of speech-language pathologist fool you, we are also trained in cognition and everything brain related! Cognitive Rehabilitation is NOT computer games like Lumosity, or filling out Sudokus.  It is also NOT talk therapy – we do not address any psychological issues. Back to Sudokus and Lumosity. Will those activities hurt you? No. But they definitely don’t help you when you lose your car keys or remember that important conversation you had with your boss.  Good cognitive rehabilitation is learning strategies to improve how you perform. Almost like learning tricks for a chess match would help you for your next game, cognitive rehab is learning tools that will help you perform better tomorrow. Do we work on getting areas like memory better? Yes and no.  We will teach you all about it, and tell you how to do it but the work will be for you to do. Sitting in our office and memorize word lists that have no meaning to you isn’t the best use of time and resources. Good cognitive rehabilitation is individualized. That means it is tailored to you and what your challenges are.  This is why we will always have a job! Lastly, a good cognitive therapist should be able to be fired after a handful of sessions (for most concussions). At this point your tool kit should be full and you should be performing better in your daily life.

To recap, a good cognitive therapist will 1) make you do the work (but not computer games), 2) give you an incredible toolkit to perform better and 3) only see you for a handful of sessions.