CBT focuses on recognizing your own thinking about whatever is going on so that you can see how your thinking affects your feelings. It is a way to slow down the flood of emotions we sometimes get. Works very well actually. So when the T talked about managing your thinking, he wasn't ignoring the feelings at all, but rather recognizing that if you can slow down and recognize your thought patterns (which is hard enough in itself), then perhaps your emotions would begin to become less overwhelming. That is very basically what CBT does. It doesn't ignore emotion, but instead works on those connections between our thoughts and our emotions.