Unlike psychoanalysis which looks at the unconscious meaning behind the behaviour, CBT focuses on the current problem and assists with orienting an action. CBT helps you to identify the unhelpful patterns and thoughts (such as beliefs and attitudes), then aids you to understand its impact on your behaviour.
CBT helps you to understand how emotion, thought and behaviour influence each other and how by changing a distorted thought you can change the feeling and behaviour. It teaches you how to do a reality check and think logically when you come across various situations and assists you to evaluate situations better rather than merely basing decisions on assumptions and/or beliefs.
CBT is about helping individuals create their own goal and using their logical thinking and appropriate behaviours to build pathways to that goal. CBT also gives an opportunity for individuals to gain life skills and tools in order to decide on how they want to feel and act, not how they have been told to act. As an example, if a person believes that drugs and alcohol makes them feel better and happier, CBT is about guiding them to unlearn this belief by using their logic to learn that drugs and alcohol are dangerous and a thief to their intellectual mind.