Is CBT manipulative?

Beat me to it.

If I can figure out to express it I will. Right now I can't write it down correctly

I agree a lot with what you said. I saw a T for four sessions this Summer who was a strict CBT. She was very judgemental, told me I didn't want to get better, and basically blamed me for everything. It was a very not good experience. It has soured me on CBT.

Personally I am surprised at all of the negative feelings toward CBT. My T is a trauma specialist who uses CBT, DBT and EMDR among other things. Maybe he is doing CBT totally wrong but I have always felt 100% in control during CBT. First, he would never start a reframe session on something unless I agree that my thoughts about a subject are not helpful.

Once we both agree that my automatic thoughts are not helpful, he will ask me what emotions my thoughts bring out. (These are never good feelings)

We will then discuss what cognitive distortions are causing my reactions.

Finally, he will ask me for reframe ideas on the issue. Usually I am clueless and he will proceed to give me multiple reframe options. He is always careful to ask me if any of these seem helpful. He emphasizes that I should only attempt to work on reframes that seem remotely true to me. He says if they do not feel true, I may have a yeah but, response and to write that down and we can address it.

The most important thing is that I am always in control. If I can provide rebuttals as to why my thoughts are helpful we do not proceed. If it is not disturbing to me, we do not proceed. If the reframes are not believable I am told not to practice them because they will not work.

If this is the way CBT works, I don't see how it is manipulative or degrading.

I may be off base here but it sounds like your thoughts regarding you living situation and career (although they may be true in your opinion) are having negative consequences. It sounds like you are feeling inferior and possibly ashamed. You are not wanting to participate due to these feelings. It just may be helpful to consider other ways of looking at the situation and allow yourself to feel better about yourself.

I know this is not the popular opinion here but it is my experience.

Not a fan of CBT... and I have felt the therapists I consulted to be manipulative (and aggressive / passive aggressive)

I won't go into the CBT comments since I agree with you, OP. As far as just the reunion itself goes it's likely there will be a couple doctors and a professor, but I was thinking the same thing as missbella when I read your post. Family property, family business, financially stable (it sounds like), and intelligent enough to think matters through for yourself. And stand up for yourself too. A lot of them could only wish to be in that position. Truly.


The rising young politician will treat you well if no one else does because politicians have to be nice to everybody. (That's actually gotten me through a lot of snobby political science parties.)

This sounds like a very good approach and maybe I wouldn't mind this one so much in certain situations. I think you're lucky with having a skilled T

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.

I think the belief that you are a "loser" is the cognitive distortion. It's even internally inconsistent with what you said about being strong and having shown great courage. Where's the "losing" in that?

If your belief is that others from your prestigious high school would see you as a loser because of your job or living situation or the "failure" to have social accessories such as children or a boyfriends, that's one thing. In that case if you okay with how you are living your life, then that would suggest you ignore people who judge you for this.

But if you truly believe you are a "loser" then that suggests you want something different for yourself, and that the natural follow-up to that is you would be out looking for a different place to live or a different job or a way to get out there and date or make plans to be a single mother. It doesn't sound like that's what you want or what you're aiming for.

I think the problem with cognitive distortions is that they keep you stuck in certain patterns of behavior. Such as, oh, I'm such a loser, I couldn't possibly go to a reunion with people (some of whom are probably just like you, making choices other than being highly ambitious) who are so much better than me. Maybe this is a good thing, but maybe your belief about your "loser" status keeps you stuck and isolated.

Or maybe it's something like "I'm such a loser, and I can't change my life no matter how much I want to. I have to live at home, I have to work in the family business, I can't find anyone to date, etc etc etc."

I have found in my experience with therapy that therapists are particularly unlikely to collude in your negative beliefs about yourself, whether they are CBT oriented or not. I don't think CBT is the problem per se, but an unwillingness to engage in less distorted thinking it.

Nobody can manipulate you into thinking about yourself positively, whether you call that "CBT" or something else. I also think that asking you to consider your beliefs and their impact on your life and whether it might be helpful for you to change your thinking is straight forward. Manipulation is not. Manipulation is not asking you directly, as your T is, it is an unstated motive intended to effect an outcome that is not out in the open. So I think you've got it exactly backwards, it is a suggestion that you consider changing your thinking. It is your choice whether to do so or not.

Thank you everyone. I'm currently having a very hard time and I don't feel like participating in this discussion concerning my personal issues.

However I'd be glad if anyone has any more general thoughts or experiences with CBT. For example I've noticed that Stopdog was considering writing about his experience. Others are of course welcome as well. I'll read all your replies, I'm just not sure I'll be able to respond.

Thank you zoiecat. This might sound so pathetic... Even though in real life I'm not very into physical hugs, I'd really appreciate some virtual hugs today.

I did CBT but found that, like medication, my brain manages to find ways round it

I think we are all equipped to know ourselves if we trust it. There are practices like meditation that can assist in getting distance from habitual thought patterns. External feedback can be useful, but I'd say only rarely.

In my experience having a therapist "help" with this means becoming their puppet, exchanging your distortions for theirs, paying them to indulge their guru fantasies, and pretending the detached insights of a virtual stranger have some great meaning. I dont see the point of arbitrarily hitching your wagon to one of these people. They are not smarter or more perceptive than other people. I imagine the longer they sit in that chair the more skewed their thinking.

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.

Thank you for your hugs! :-)
These are some very interesting and well written posts.

Seeker, I never had CBT. But theoretically, I wouldn't want to invite another human being into my stream of consciousness. So much of my childhood was open for inspection, but my thoughts were the one thing I was entitled to keep to myself.

I'm perhaps opposite of many people here in that I can be too confessing, or be manipulated into expose my vulnerability to people who don't hold my best interests. I've had the project through adulthood of learning to protect my privacy when advisable.

'CBT is a scam and a waste of money', says leading psychologist | Daily Mail Online

Thanks so much. This is exactly my point. I simply don't like CBT as it's too shallow and simplistic.

However what's even more important is that I'm not able to submit myself to absolute control of T over my thoughts. Just like you for the most of my life I couldn't control what happened to me (health, war, bullying, alcoholic father) I still don't fully feel in control of my body (looks, health). My thoughts is the only thing in my life where I feel free and fully in control.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy discussing external stuff and I enjoy learning new things learning about different opinions and lifestyles, that's not an issue. However I'd have a huge problem allowing T to say "your thinking is broken, let's fix it" and then they would externally fix my thoughts by brute force, just like you fix a broken leg. When it happens like that I feel vulnerable, submissive, fully controlled by them and feeling like I lost the last thing I have in this life - my thoughts. My whole childhood I've been told I have no right to feel the way I felt because the reasons for the situations and for my neglect were rational. So I had to be a smart girl and be ashamed and hide my feelings otherwise I would be an irrational burden and make things worse for my family.

And now CBT tries to bully me in a similar way. Saying have nothing because I'm not even able to think on my own I need someone else to think for me too.

I know this sounds extremely lame and pathetic and it wouldn't pass a logical analysis (please no need to say how illogical this is, I know). But this is how I feel.

Of course I'm in therapy for change. But I do so much better with an open philosophical discussion, normal talking, finding patterns, lifestyle changes... The change of my thoughts has to be gradual and hidden, so I feel that it's me who's in control not some worksheet or T.

CBT, to me, only applies short term solutions to what might be a deep fear. If I have a phobia of something and you apply these temporary techniques toward it I may show some short term positive gains, but if you never treat the root cause of the phobia it will creep back over time.

The worst is the assertion that if CBT doesn't work for you then it is you who has the problem not the technique.

Another thing I found very strange was how is CBT supposed to help with trauma memories?
My T only tried it once and since my reaction was almost terminating she never did it again.
When it comes to painful childhood memories, what's the point of trying to persuade the client that it really wasn't that bad? That it must have been much less serious than the client remembers? So instead of getting validation and support, you are made ashamed of your negative emotions basically saying it really wasn't that bad and you're exaggerating? That should make me calmer? That should increase my self esteem and help me manage anxiety?
I absolutely never understood the point of that technique on experiences of childhood emotional neglect. As if I didn't suffer enough as a child, now when I talk about my experiences I'm made look like a total hysterical idiot who has no right to complain because my memories are flawed and nothing that bad really happened. To me, that was absolutely deeply retraumatizing and extremely hurtful.
Fortunately, that was at the very beginning of my therapy and my T understands me much better now. We've found a better and more helpful ways of working together.


Maybe because it was my first encounter with CBT it is another reason I can't stand even mention of it.

Seeker...I am sorry that you have had such a negative experience with CBT. I too suffered abuse and neglect in all forms for the first 20 years of my life. As a result, I have many negative thought patterns and blame myself for the abuse. My T has helped me change those thoughts through CBT to validate my experiences and begin to put the blame where it belongs with those that caused the abuse.

Your T should never want to you change thoughts that you do not agree are disturbing. Next time they attempt this I would tell them that you feel the thought or behavior is helpful and useful and find no reason to change it.