Okay, question here: how is having you stand aside and look at your thinking styles to recognise them as not working for you manipulative? Isn't this the very purpose of therapy to begin with? We don't go to therapy to merely have our thinking and behavioural patterns validated. We go because they are not working for us. It is the therapist's job to find ways for us to see that, acknowledge it, and provide us encouragement and resources to change. CBT is but one avenue to accomplish that. I mentioned the buy-in. I think you have to buy-in to therapy as purposed to enact some change in ourselves as the very reason we go there.