I know it isn't realistic (for financial and other reasons) to expect formal therapy to be a cure-all for negative automatic thoughts and self-limiting beliefs, so I am trying as best I know how to uncover such thoughts myself and replace them with better ones. I am seeing slow but positive progress.

I'm running into a complication though - I'm noticing that many of my negative thoughts seem to be interacting with one another, and are supported by even older, more basic negative expectations, ridiculous inner rules and drive conflicts. It's beginning to get frustrating to cut through the clutter.

Has anyone else discovered that there are very basic fundamental thinking errors, maybe made as far back as childhood, which spin off into more nuanced negative thinking later on in life? One of my big problems is I'm uncovering a sort of "fundamental nonassertiveness" effect. I'll read about a negative thought process, try to apply the insights myself, and realize I am just not standing up enough for my own self-chosen basic values and strongest drives when a negative thought casts doubt on them. It's like I don't have the self-trust and intrapsychic assertiveness to say, "I want to believe this, and that it is okay to believe this, because that would actually make me happy and confident and trigger better effort on my part". There's a lot of subtle "Maybe I don't deserve..." and "Maybe my best won't work..." stuff going on here that is getting confusing (especially since my family was big on encouraging persistence and self-confidence, to my recollection, qualities I feel I have lost a lot of). Not sure what is going on here, but it's getting annoying. Learned helplessness eroding psychological resilience maybe?

Self-directed CBT is working, but I feel there's a missing element to the technique I can't quite define. Any thoughts???