Cognitive psychotherapy techniques as a means of overcoming negative experiences of students

Introduction. Today, cognitive therapy is one of the main methods of the cognitive-behavioral approach in psychotherapy, which is one of the leading areas of psychotherapy in the world. Cognitive psychotherapy effectively fights patients’ emotional and personal problems based on the assumption that the causes of a person’s psychological problems lie in thinking errors. Students and young people in general are one of those age groups that, due to a number of objective and subjective reasons experiences special internal conflicts and difficulties. The purpose of the article is to identify the negative experiences of students and the use of cognitive psychotherapy techniques when working with them. Materials and Methods. The solution of research problems was provided by a set of complementary theoretical (analysis of scientific, methodological literature on the studied problem, comparative analysis, comparison, generalization) and empirical (testing, forming an experiment, calculation of rank correlation coefficient) methods. Results. The following problems were identified that are sources of negative experiences among students: problems associated with professional identification; problems associated with disappointment in the chosen specialty; problems in interpersonal relationships associated with avoiding intimacy; problems in interpersonal relationships associated with a strong sense of jealousy; a number of specific problems associated with specific irrational ideas or cognitive distortions. The developed training of rational thinking and recommendations for improving the processes of psychotherapy, psycho correction and psychological counseling, which can be used by the psychological services of universities, are presented. Discussion and Conclusions. The expected effect of the implementation of psycho-therapeutic work based on cognitive therapy techniques is to reduce the level of anxiety, negative feelings of students, increase their self-esteem, which creates a favorable psychological basis for educational activities. The provisions and conclusions create the prerequisites for further studying the potential of cognitive psychotherapy in the practical aspects of normalizing the psychological health of various social and age groups.