I have always been a little confused by the idea that it's one thoughts alone that upset one, rather than what actually happened. Like my mother died when I was a child. This seems to me to have been an intrinsically upsetting experience, and I can't get my head around the idea that it would have been possible to think about it in a way that would erase the pain of it.

I remember being totally confused by the Stoics when I read them in college, long before I had ever heard of CBT. Like their ideas about grief just didn't reflect my lived experience at all, and it seemed to me they were trying to deny the normal, human response to death.

But I realize plenty of other people find this kind of thinking useful! I get it for some things, and even for some types of grief, but I have a hard time agreeing that it is always one's thoughts that are the real problem.