I feel like I've already gone over this recently, but I'll just focus on your questions.

CBT has really helped me in organizing my thinking. I have bipolar disorder and PTSD and both of those tend toward racing thoughts, rumination, and negative self-talk. Being able to slow my mind down and work it like I'd work a problem or a puzzle is really constructive for me. I can now make sense of what is going on up in this head of mine, and that has led to healthier behaviors within myself, my family, and my relationship with my husband.

CBT didn't always make sense to me because at first I was so good at suppressing my own thinking that it was hard to access my thoughts. That's another really helpful aspect of CBT for me; I do much less suppression than I used to do.

My t has NEVER given me worksheets to fill out. He prefers to keep practicing it with me verbally in therapy until I internalize it, which I've gotten pretty close to at this point. He sometimes gives other kinds of homework, but not really specifically CBT stuff.

In therapy, we do focus on thoughts (that's the cognitive part). It's a lot of working backwards through things. Hard to explain. For instance, I told him today how much I am dreading some work meetings for the next two days. Rather than continue to simmer in the feelings of anxiety and anger about the meetings, he had me back up. What am I thinking about when I'm thinking about the meetings? What am I dreading?etc. Then I looked at my thoughts and could sift through them, deciding where I was catastrophizing, predicting, mind reading, etc. By the time I left his office, I was much calmer, no longer angry. I'll be able to go into those meetings and be much more relaxed. As far as exposures go, I'm not exactly sure what you mean. Are you talking about dealing with phobic kind of situations? That would certainly be a cbt thing, but those aren't my kind of issues really.

I have an excellent t and we get along very well. There is a lot of laughter between us. We genuinely like each other. I've been in therapy with him now for 5 years. I'd say in the last year I've finally gotten to where I've started really internalizing what I have learned. It was a slow process, complicated by very complicated bipolar disorder with med adjustments and hospitalizations.

While I still have difficulties with bipolar disorder that lead to depressive episodes, I am finally spending more time stable than unstable which makes it even easier to practice my CBT skills regularly.