I know this is a long post but I believe it is one worth reading. I was given a book by my T that included Paradoxical Treatment for CBT.

This is designed to confront your fears/phobias and eventually overcome them.

Put your paradoxical plan into effect--do it with zest.

Paradoxical intention: Do what you fear! (Don't try to increase the fear reaction.) Worry even more! Try to stay awake! Try to like a messy house! Like dirty floors and dishes! Avoid trying to have a climax!

Symptom prescription: Increase the unwanted behavior! Increase the fear! Do the feared action more often! What do you have to lose? You have been doing the unwanted behavior anyway! If you have no trouble producing more unwanted behavior, do more! Since that damn, lousy habit wants to occur so badly, make it occur over and over! Do it until you are sick and tired of it (like the boy caught smoking and forced to smoke three strong cigars, one after another).

Changing your outlook and goals: What seems crucial to you at one time may paradoxically become unimportant in the long run. Small breast development may humiliate a girl at 16 but please her at 35. You may long to be the best guitarist, basketball player, or sex object in school but get very little satisfaction out of that skill when you are 50. It might be nice to have someone's love but it isn't a necessity! It hurts to be rejected but it isn't the end of life! Challenge your harmful irrational beliefs!

Keep following the plan until the desired goal is reached.

In several of the paradoxical methods there is a strange situation, namely, you are trying to produce acts you really do not want to continue. Thus, you actually win by failing, i.e. you finally stop producing the unwanted behavior and it does not occur as often as it did before. In effect, you will threaten to begin producing the unwanted behaviors in excess again if the behaviors do not go away and stay away. At this stage, you will often find your acts or your worries somewhat silly or humorous and certainly unnecessary. If so, you are successful.

Time invovled

It may take only a few minutes to say, "to hell with struggling with this problem any more" and think of ways of increasing or exaggerating your problem. Ordinarily, the results will come in a week or two and, occasionally, even sooner. Sometimes you will need to read about the method and put considerable effort into producing the unwanted habit ad nauseam.

Common problems

This method, thus far, has almost entirely been used by therapists with clients. In most cases, the therapist does not explain the method to the client but instead with tongue in cheek prescribes more and more ridiculous behavior. For example, a therapist may seriously tell a compulsive housekeeper that cleanliness is important and perhaps she should get up at five AM to do a couple of housecleaning chores before breakfast, then wash and vacuum the floors every day, wax all the wood work, and hire a cleaning person once a week to wax her floors, take the wax off the woodwork, and clean the silverware. Furthermore, throughout the day she should take five minutes every hour to tell herself how important it is to everyone in the world that her house be spotless, that her dishes sparkle, etc. Eventually, as more and more cleaning is added to the daily schedule, the patient realizes that the therapist is being facetious. This kind of playful teasing and ridicule may not be possible in self-help, certainly you can't deceive yourself about the purpose. But you can learn to laugh at yourself.

Effectiveness, advantages and dangers

Many therapy cases have demonstrated that paradoxical methods work, but case studies are open to a lot of misinterpretation. Frankl (1975) also mentions that many people have simply read about paradoxical methods in his books and applied the methods in their own lives.

In the last ten years, more research has been done (Weeks, 1991). One finding is that different methods are needed with resistive clients (those who rebel against the therapist's directions). For instance, when procrastinating students were told to "try to bring about your procrastination deliberately," only the resistive ones procrastinated less. The non-resisters didn't reduce their procrastination (Shoham-Salomon, Avner, & Neeman, 1989). Paradoxical methods have been shown to work with insomnia and maybe agoraphobia and other fears but many studies have design faults. We need better controlled studies and research that compares a variety of treatment methods, including self-application or bibliotherapy.

The greatest advantages of these methods are their simplicity and speed (when they work).

This therapy was recommended by my therapist. Has anyone tried it? If so, is is sucessful? I don't know......Just have lots of questions.