CBT Workbook

My psychiatrist recommended this book to me, and my therapist brought it up too. He might be giving me some worksheets, but I may end up buying a copy. Apparently, it's a really good thing to use for working through personal problems, and my psychiatrist says everyone with a mental illness or emotional problem should have one.
I've never even heard of it until last week. Has anyone else used this thing? Has it helped you?

I receive CBT from my psychologist, and in my opinion CBT only works if you do your homework. Then you have to apply what you've learned in real-life situations.

I do 5 cognitive restructuring exercises per month.

Are you doing cognitive restructuring?

Not yet, or at least I don't think so. I haven't even started doing CBT yet. I was just curious whether anyone else had heard of it or used it.

I have to admit that I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, but what is the name of the book?

Is the name of the book the CBT Workbook?

The one I was told about I think was the CBT Toolbox, but I'm finding that there are several of them for different things. I probably should have put the actual title in the original post, sorry.

I'm a huge fan of CBT but it's not for everyone. You must be prepared to do the work.

Don't try to do the workbook in one sitting! Take your time.

I spend at least 10min daily doing worksheets, charts, and lists.

In my experience I have found CBT to be little more than a scam. I think of it as the AA for mental illnesses. Some of the self-help books that tout CBT go so far as to say that if you buy the book, you won't need therapy.

I spent over a year trying CBT with a therapist. I used a number of workbooks, did my homework and really tried to make it work for me. I just couldn't get it. I went so far as to read Beck's Depression text – the sacred text for treating depression with CBT – but the theories just didn't resonate with me.

CBT was the go-to treatment for decades and it is only within the past five years or so that it has been scrutinized and reevaluated. I think that the core premise is flawed – very, very basically one need only change the way one thinks to change one's feelings or perceptions. If you can buy into that, it may work for you. But it's not the cure all therapy that people thought of it a decade ago. It used to be sold as a therapy that didn't need medication – that's not the case any longer.

To me, CBT is a kind of mental astrology: if you believe in it, it will probably help.

If I were you, I would ask your shrink or therapist to explain what CBT is and if you think that it may work for you ask for a specific workbook to buy.

My opinion, of course.

I'm sorry you feel so negatively about it but each to their own

I think that after a year of working my butt off trying to make it work for me, I just came to think of it as a sham. Lately, even the most prominent CBT psychologists and psychiatrists are saying that it's a good therapy for "light depression, anxiety, eating disorders, etc." But even that has been called into question.

The 'success rate' of CBT has been declining since 1977 - faster in the pst decade. There have been numerous studies that have found CBT to be no more, and even less, successful that traditional treatments. CBT also has greater drop-out rates than traditional therapies.

I don't know who was the first to note that there is no room for agency - free will - in CBT. It has been suggested that CBT makes the assumption that free will does not exist. I do not believe that.

I'll compare it to AA again - you have to be a 'true believer' for it to work. During my longest hospitalization, I had to attend AA, CA, etc., meetings sometimes twice a day. Not because I was addicted to alcohol or drugs (I have a single drink at Christmas and I snorted cocaine once in college - not exactly an addict) but because it was part of the program. Luckily, I was mute most of that time so I was never asked to 'share.'

AA is exactly like CBT in that it refutes agency. I take complete responsibility for my mental illnesses. I'm responsible for my isolation, depression, anxiety, schizoaffective disorder, all of it. I don't understand where some of my demons come from but the majority come from life-long immoral decisions that cost me the two people that I loved most in my time. I've visited some protestant churches where they have 'altar calls' and watched as overly-emotional people have run - literally run - down the aisle to be saved. Maybe for the 3 time that month. Even most protestant theology teaches agency, but these folks are giving it up, stoked by emotion rather than a jot of theology.

The CBT, AA, etc., cheerleaders have more blind faith than me. As much as I loathe myself I feel that I am paying the price of actions and decisions. It isn't helping, that's certain, but I can't blame my situation on anyone but myself.

It terrifies me to feel this way. But I'm unwilling to blame anyone else for my moral failures and so I blame myself.

Ciderguy: I'm not a big fan of anything that refutes agency either. I hate AA for that. I was an alcoholic for a year and a half that cured myself buy not totally abstaining, but cutting back to a few times a year and making sure I don't binge, because I knew I had total control of my alcoholism. Of course, that's something AA proponents have told me they don't approve of.
If it is indeed like that, I won't even bother purchasing my own book, but I'm going to at least give the worksheets a shot. I do like self-reflection and reading, so it sounds, other than what you just said, like it's right up my alley.
Thank you for the insight into the negative side of this, and I will definitely pay attention to the material to see if it does do what those stupid "12-step give yourself to a higher power programs" do.

I have found CBT tools very helpful for the last 30 or so years. CBT does not cure mental illness IMO but for me it is very helpful in keeping my relationships with others healthy. It does not promote a "higher power"; it focuses on the fact that we can control our thinking and that controlling your thoughts helps with feelings. I find it to be about self-control. The book probably costs less than a therapy session, it might be worth a try.

I agree with other posters, you have to do the homework for it to work.

That's a good idea – let your therapist give you some worksheets before you purchase any workbook. Ask him/her about their definition of the treatment and, if possible, maybe talk to those who have undergone the therapy. One of the hinkyest things about CBT, for me, is that Aaron Beck proposed the treatment only for milder forms of depression: others in the mental health fields took it and ran with it, and it was just as effective for treating severe major depressive disorder as sacrificing a black goat every day ensured a good annual crop.

Although I often say that I've been depressed since shooting out of my mom's birth canal (which just reminds me of Venice) during my stretches of severe MDD episodes, I find that I'm much more confused than usual. That may be the reason that I write so much when depressed, as I'm having social phobias/anxiety this time, and journaling aids my thought process, I think. My therapist said that I'm the only patient that he has ever felt as if he felt he should caution against journaling. Another thing that makes me feel odd about my therapist.

I'm overly zealous about self-reaction, and I suppose that spending as much time writing as I do, and reading as much as I do about what exactly might be going on in my mind, could be a bit obsessive but I don't have much else to do.

For almost two years, I dated a woman who identified herself as an alcoholic. She told me up-front – I didn't think it odd at the time because I was looking at a wine list, and since so seldom drank alcohol, it was no big deal. I tried to be supportive but – GOOD GOD! – the very first time that she rather forced me to come to a meeting!

She called and was incoherent (this was before we reached out and touched one another with cellular signals), but I finally understood that she had been drinking and that she was asking me to take her to an AA meeting.

When I got to her house, she was wailing like a banshee and collapsed in the front hallway. I felt terrible for her. I thought that she must have been on a binge for at least a day. It was hard to talk to her because she was blubbering so. She finally understood that I was asking how much she had drank. She made gestures towards the kitchen as if it was a villainous dungeon and I went and looked and, from what I could she, she'd consumed about one-half of the contents of a standard Reidel sherry glass that had been filled with a pretty good Chardonnay, sitting beside the glass on the kitchen island.

When I went back to the hallway, I asked a question that (I was to learn) a sober person should never ask a self-identified alcoholic - "Is that all that you had to drink?" The Banshee returned, but she was easily understood this time because every third word was "relapsed."

As we were on our way to the AA clubhouse, I tried - and tried and tried - to get the story straight. There was no way. Sharron was in a state that I had never seen or experienced - an active and violent self-hatred. There were a bevy of friends waiting, and they know what to say, I guess. I just hid behind the crowd to wait for an elder to appear, hoping that he or she would instate some order. It never happened.

The party finally moved indoors, which I felt would be refreshing, at least, considering the heat and humidity outdoors. Instead, I felt as if I had been cast to the ground by a legion of very, very weak demons; the type who would have, in the 1960's through 1980's, created a wall of pithy office cartoons that were on their 163rd round of being Xeroxed by that number of previous 'piths.'

And I was spot on. The terrifying Xeroxed pages were everywhere. There MUST be a name for that type of office decor. I have one old friend in the interior design businesses for office interiors. I'll call her later this week and see if there may be a name for wallpapering an office wall with multitudes of paper that same things such as "THIMK!" or "You don't have to be crazy to work here, but it helps!" That kind of crap. That's the absolutism that is always at the ready for self-loathing, self-professed alcoholics whether they drink a dram or a bottle.

I think that it would be possible to attend a dozen AA meetings, read the Big Book, read a few of the CBT books that are written for the client and come up with a pretty accurate synthesis of the diagnosis and therapy for the two. Both would be superficial treatments (they already are that!), but some CBT hawkers guarantee cures in ten one-hour sessions, plus homework, and AA fans work on the tattoo philosophy: once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic, so there's no cure for it; you have to continually "work the program." I've yet to understand the idea of the need to identify yourself as an alcoholic for the remainder of your life. "Hi, my name is Guy, and I'm an alcoholic. I've been sober for 43 years." "Hi, my name is Joyce, and I'm an infant. I was born 27 years ago."

So, to conclude, I think very much the same of CBT as I do AA. Both – and it's important to think of this rationally – operate under the assumption that emotions are either bad, or worse, morally neutral; and that we can overcome our emotional thoughts, via CBT, by changing our thinking and, via AA, by keeping a "moral inventory."

Really have a lot more that I'd like to write, but my caregiver's here, and I need to scoot to the shower. I have lots of anger over the cons of AA and CBT. Lately, I've been viewing them as almost interchangeable. I was never an alcoholic but I was around the people who were "working the program," and I've suffered through CBT non-treatment and read even more so I consider myself somewhat knowledgeable about the therapist-client expectations and though I went above and beyond with working CBT, it failed me, or I failed it. No matter how much effort I put into it, I could never look through the telescope and see Santa in the evening sky on Christmas Eve.

Oh - that higher power stuff... when I was hospitalized, I would be forced to attend all AA/CA meetings – even the beginner's meeting, or whatever they call them. The meetings where everyone in the room runs up to grab a new white poker chip? Maybe that's another step? But when the higher power thing came up, it was inevitable that someone would say, "your higher power could be a door knob." I don't know if that's a regional U.S. phrase or if they say poignée de porte in France or used ostium furunculus for those first AA meetings in Rome. Regardless - the first time that I heard that phrase, I couldn't help but laugh. I had to leave the room. Someone wrote a message here about the appropriateness of laughing or giggling when they saw others in pain. The reasoning behind laughter at pain has psychological logic and meaning. I'm not sure that's also true of laughing at others who are seriously contemplating the nearest doorknob as capable of having supernatural (or superhuman) powers.

By the time I was forced to go to those meetings when I was hospitalized, I would look around the room to see if anyone else was having a similar first experience like my own but what I usually saw were five or six people looking at the doors – the type of door that have push panels instead of knobs.

If you do get some worksheets, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts about them. I am not completely dismissive of CBT; I just don't think of it as a treatment for serious mental illnesses.

Ciderguy: First, let me say, you are a phenomenal writer. You should really consider doing a blog or something like that, if you aren't already.
Thank you for all of the insight into the CBT stuff. I still haven't started it, so I don't know what it's like first hand, but what you've said will help me remember to look at it a little more critically rather than just blindly doing the worksheets without really thinking about it (from what it sounds like, it doesn't work if I don't think about it anyhow).
I agree with you 100% about AA. I am a former alcoholic, not a current one, and I think it's insulting to insinuate to people that they cannot recover or that they have no control over their actions. I even still drink, albeit rarely, and I don't over-indulge.
I sincerely hope you're wrong about CBT, because I'd really like for it to work for me, but I am definitely taking what you say into some consideration going into it.

I think CBT works well for acute mental illness but not necessarily for chronic, severe mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder. I believe this is especially true when one is symptomatic. When getting out of bed is a challenge nobody is going to get me to do my CBT homework.

That said, when I have been stable and able to concentrate on the exercises found in one of my books (yes, I have 3) I have found CBT helpful. It builds skills that I can draw upon when I am having an episode. While it may not prevent the episode, it makes going through it more manageable for me.

Good luck on your CBT journey.

That's been my experience. It isn't going to "cure" serious mental illness, and it definitely isn't going to work in the midst of a serious episode of depression, etc. However, I found working on developing those skills during those times I was more stable ended up helping me cope in healthier and more effective ways down the road so that eventually episodes of depression/hypomania, etc. became less disruptive to my life. I don't see it AT ALL as a short term therapy, particularly if being used to work on serious mental illness, but long-term I found the CBT skills I learned to be the absolute most useful skills I have taken out of therapy with me. I use them as a matter of habit now and it has completely transformed my confidence, lowered my anxiety, lessened the depression, etc. Took a LONG time to get to that point though; anyone who says it is quick and easy doesn't really know what they are talking about.

Yes, I have it. Yes it's ok. It can help map feelings and behaviors and with setting life goals, goals that can include feelings and how you feel physically. It's more than just worksheets. Maybe see if you can find it at a library? If your pdoc and t feel this would be a direction that's beneficial for "you", then why not? I remember there's somewhere in this clients guide to cbt that mentions the basis of psychology is rational thinking.

Hope you find that it works for you!

I hadn't thought of that. I will have to check.