Help CBT

[Acopia]

Can you hit me with your experiences of CBT? Apparently they want to try me with CBT for anxiety and distress intolerance.

I'm not keen, but want to gather thoughts..

Thanks,
-Acopia.

 

[NeverEndingProblem]

I've tryed it before. It didn't helped me at the time, but it was possibly because either I didn't try hard enough or I didn't quite 'gel' with whoever was taking it. I'm gonna give it another go of it if the opportunity arises.

My advice is learn all you can (the therapist will give you handouts etc) and put some serious effort into it (especially if your paying for it).

 

[MichaelNomad123]

CBT is useful if you apply yourself to it. It's less about your story and more about identifying "maladaptive" behaviours that are preventing you from doing whatever it is you want to do with yourself. It is commonly applied to conditions like depression and social anxiety. You will spend the first couple of sessions talking about your past, your problems and your ambitions. The idea is to confront your issues and build on them with positive experiences. For example, I was given "homework" to take the bus. My therapist offered to go on the bus with me (really). I was also asked to attend a group session with other folks having social anxiety issues.

It was interesting and weird, but at the time off-putting for me. CBT is designed to only last 8-12 months, contrary to the popular belief that therapy should last years. This idea perpetuated in films and otherwise is based mostly on psychoanalysis -- a completely different type of therapy. CBT is very pragmatic as a practice but does require your application. I didn't have much success with CBT because the application part was difficult due to my very cynical and depressed mindset. I can see it being extremely helpful to someone that really committed to it.

 

[GoodPersonEffed]

I'm not a fan of CBT. Here's a recent post on it, and my comment on that thread:

During my therapy days, CBT was popular. Instead of years of talk therapy, CBT focused on my brain's "unhelpful thinking styles." If I were to recognize and correct my cognitive distortions, my negatives thoughts that prevent me from happiness would be minimized; happiness and hilarity ensue. I remember my therapists decided my problem and solution before my first session even finished. Is that the way CBT is or was?

Looking back, I think CBT was wrong for me. My therapists ignored or dismissed my family's (and anyone else's behavior), as if it was irrelevant, as if I was a complainer. But my past with my family was my present. No one, including my therapists, talked about going NC (no contact). If anything, they promoted the myth of good parents. It's not that I didn't have negative thoughts, but now I feel like that wasn't the *highest priority issue. Focusing on cognitive distortions was like trying to put out a fire but ignoring the fuel, heat, or oxygen sources. "I can't breathe because of the smoke" is answered by "Are you sure you're sitting up straight?"

After I quit therapy, a light began to glow these last few years. In my dad's home country, a couple strangers talked back to him. Whoa, maybe I'm not the problem; maybe my dad's an asshole. Then, my former best friend's spouse began to call her out at different times for lying to me, taking advantage of me, treating me like I didn't matter, etc. Whoa, maybe there's a legitimate, objective reason I feel sad. And when a person refused more help, saying he didn't want to take advantage of me, my internal reaction was "that's controllable?"

Anyway, outside of this forum, I feel like people think I'm a quitter or lazy because I don't try therapy again. But I see those decades as a waste of lots of time, money, and effort for me, especially given I can't talk about suicide, my insurance plan has limited therapists, and I'm old. Am I wrong for closing the book on therapy?

I think you're rational to close the book on something that not only didn't help you rise up, but kept you down, that gaslighted you and said your experience and interpretation was wrong, that reinforced illegitimate power over you instead of helping you connect with your self power and self-mastery.

I've had cbt, ans well as the effects of trauma, and I find it ridiculous that it's so highly rated in studies for overcoming PTSD. There are some good elements to cbt, but trauma is not held nor holding sway in the same parts of the brain as cognition. Cbt didn't heal my trauma, it helped me as one tool of many for analyzing and understanding things, and only in that way was it empowering for me. What serves me to get free from trauma and return to awareness and to my self are EMDR, TAT and EFT, and anything that supports me in understanding abuse, boundaries and learning how to attain self-respect. (If you're interested in tools that have helped me, see my threads on learning boundaries, manipulation tactics, self-respect, assessing relationships, brainwashing, and the abuser's belief system.)

Cbt can be used to say, "You're wrong," or it can help identify self-harming thought patterns (but not the root causes). When it's used to say "You're wrong," it's abusive and disempowering. When it's treated as the be-all end-all and not just one tool that's applicable in a limited amount of situations, it's bullshit, and in every therapeutic setting I've been in where the bullshit (along with meds) had supremacy, there was either a covert or overt tone of control and abuse, to keep one down, not at all to lift them up and help them to get free and experience self-determination.

There are so many other modalities out there. I support your decision to close the books on therapy, and likewise to seek sometime who practices different modalities and who supports you in self-mastery and determining your own path and helping you to achieve if, to serve you and help you become ever more capable to steer your own ship.

I loved all the revelations you shared. You seem to be finding self-respect and awareness. If cbt was keeping you from that, imo it was controlling and abusive, and you've gotten yourself free of it, having gone no contact with it.

 

[Disappointered]

I was involved in some CBT and DBT and in my case it was total nonsense and abuse. I really think medical doctors and therapists need to be heavily reigned in.