Quote:
Originally Posted by Lola5
I'm in CBT therapy and have been for over a year. One thing that has been annoying me is cognitive restructuring. I understand the point of it and its usefulness, but I get really irritated when my T uses it instead of acknowledging something is bad.
Here's an example from a few days ago. I slipped while walking into a deli because it was raining and banged up my knee. Because of this I got to work late and my boss yelled at me for five minutes and threatened to fire me. I was upset because that would mean I would have to drop out of school because I couldn't pay for it. I had to do an hour-long presentation and I got stopped by two people every few minutes who tore apart every point I made. I got to school later and learned I flunked a test I took and am on the verge of flunking out and not getting my degree.
I told this to my T who told me (as he always does) that I need to do cognitive restructuring and can't only focus on the negative so he had me list positive things that happened, which were: I had a good coffee in the morning, the stain on my pants from the fall wasn't too visible and I didn't hit much traffic on the way home. Then he said "see, it wasn't a completely bad day."
But these positives are MINOR compared to negatives. This happens on a regular basis where I'll have major negatives happen and want to talk about them, but he'll insist I list some positives (which are minor), like that I had a nice breakfast or a friend responded to my text and then point out that these are positives I'm failing to see. When I try to argue that the positives are minor, he says I'm undoing the cognitive restructuring I should be doing.
Do you guys think I'm just being resistant to CBT? How do I deal with the annoyance?
|
My therapist did a great deal of CBT with me, but he wouldn't have handled your example the way your therapist did. My therapist would have helped me explore the level of anxiety and frustration I was having, that feeling of being overwhelmed. He would have had me figure out what my thinking was about that plethora of crappy day events and how my thinking was driving my emotions. Eventually he would have helped me see if there was a different way of thinking about those events and coping healthily with those events that was more helpful to me. He WOULDN'T have had me invalidate my experience and feelings by ignoring them and trying to do a Pollyanna act (if you don't know who Pollyanna was, just consider it sunshine and rainbow thinking). Makes me wonder if your therapist is terribly skilled with CBT, but hard to know based on only one example.