Quote:
Originally Posted by franki_j
So today I saw my T for the first time in a month; we had a double session. I told her I had been feeling depressed, hopeless, couldn't get out of bed for a couple days this week b/c of my job situation. I also eventually told her I had been having suicidial thoughts and she kept asking me to elaborate but I didn't want to.
She specializes in CBT, and we started talking about my thoughts regarding how I feel about myself, ie worthless, stupid, hopeless, etc. She said they were cognitive distortions and pulled out her list of cognitive distortions and started saying what type of cognitive distortion I had. Then (and she ALWAYS does this) she asked, "Well, if one of your friends was unemployed, would you tell them they were stupid and useless?" and of course I said no. She is always asking me this question: "Well, if someone else were jobless/didn't have a PhD/received a bad grade would you think they were stupid, etc?" And the answer is always no, I wouldn't,and then she always asks why I think this way about myself if I don't hold other people to the same standard. I understand where she is coming from, but it doesn't change my belief about myself. I feel like she is trying to logically talk me out of how I feel about myself, but it's not working, and I told her that her "technique" wasn't helping.
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I totally understand about having one set of rules for ourselves and another for a friend, making the hypothetical friend thing pretty meaningless. I think many of us are our own worst enemies, rather than our own friends- and that's the problem! CBT is based on the idea that feelings, thoughts and actions are connected, and a change in one will lead to a change in the others- so changing your thoughts will change in your feelings. However, there does seem to be a group of people for whom all the cognitive work does not shift their feelings about themselves- it feels like an empty exercise. Paul Gilbert talks about developing Compassion Focused Therapy (a third wave variant of CBT) for this group of very self critical people. There are lots of fab free resources online, including whole workbooks. This is a good website:
http://www.compassionatemind.co.uk/