@Discombobulated - thank you for your last post. I think just about any broadly accepted model of treatment will work for at least some clients. What I've read is that CBT does seem to work in the short term for quite a lot of people, but that the improvement does not seem to hold up long term. One analyst said that there are studies suggesting that CBT probably enjoys a placebo effect because clients undertake this therapy already persuaded that CBT is highly effective. That's due to how much good press is out there for CBT. CBT does genuinely teach some valid lessons about sound thinking. However, studies are showing that a shrinking percentage of people are responding to CBT because, supposedly, people are presently more psych-sophisticated and less in need of learning that that they have cognitive distortions. That principle has been circulating in the ether long enough that many have already integrated that concept. A new paradigm comes along and has it's heyday, whereby many find the latest insights it offers to be bracing and that seems empowering. Then time goes by and "the novelty wears off" so to speak. People find that an enhanced insight only takes you so far.

Mankind tends to believe that the more we know, the fewer problems we'll have. Yet humanity's problems don't seem to be shrinking, either on a micro or macro scale. Freud introduced profound new insights, for which he deserves to be regarded as a giant among thinkers. He believed tha8t the practical application of those insights - psychoanalysis - would relieve a great deal of suffering. Uncover a repressed youthful trauma, and you'll be less neurotic. For a while that idea was all the rage. Nowadays, not so much. Freud's legacy, I believe, is that we do better understand how a psyche becomes damaged. He was less successful in figuring out how to fix it. He made us smarter, but not necessarily better, which was his aim as a physician.

A description of CBT sounds compelling. Provision someone with certain tools, and they'll use them to reconstruct their dysfunctional approach to life . . . . . . or they won' t, and failure will be their own fault. It's all a matter of application. Ultimately, you pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. Do the work, and you'll improve.

The suffering client says I've been working on this all my life. Well, you just didn't have the right tools. I can't help but be skeptical.

I'm glad your mixed approach worked for you. I believe the following: Many who attribute their recovery to therapy would have recovered in any case. Their affliction ran its course.