Quote:
Originally Posted by WishfulThinker66
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.
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I think it's about how it's executed, who gets to decide what thought patterns are helpful/unhelpful, and differing opinions of how change happens. Manipulativeness isn't my main issue with CBT, but there are times I've had people try to use CBT techniques in ways that seriously felt like gaslighting--where they completely devalued my own viewpoints of where my beliefs come from and how true/useful they are, and essentially tried to bully me into believing something else. You could argue that that's poorly executed CBT, and I'd agree, but it also seems to be a common enough dynamic that it's a fair criticism of CBT on the whole.
I also fundamentally don't agree with CBT's viewpoint of how change happens. At least for me, it has never seemed remotely effective to just try to change thoughts without looking at where they come from and respecting the fact that maladaptive coping mechanisms still arise as
coping mechanisms--there are reasons behind them, often powerful ones, and they can't just be dismissed.