[scott88keys]

Intellectually I know all about CBT--cognitive behavioral therapy. I could give a lecture on it. I could write a book about it. I can apply it to everyone else's issues. On my stronger days, I can apply it to myself. The hospital based all it's treatment on that. My therapist brings it up from time to time. My problem is it doesn't seem to apply--or I can't seem to apply it--because I'm so down in the hole, my self-esteem is so low that it just seems like it would take soooo much energy and strength to use CBT and question/argue with my negative thoughts that I don't even try. Yet I know that CBT is supposed to be used for healing those negative thoughts and negative self-image. But I can't seem to get up out of the hole to apply it to myself. For example, I just don't feel like I measure up--lots of insecurites and inferior feelings. CBT would question all those negative assumptions--but I tell myself it's no use 'cuz I'm a loser, always have been, always will be, so don't bother with trying to argue myself out of it. Does that make any sense?

Scott

[MyBestKids2]

Yes, Scott, it makes perfect sense. I had CBT training (inpatient 30 day program) and DBT (outpatient 1 year). I can't (or won't) apply either to everyday or major things. I too sometimes think its because I'm worthless. Sometimes just feel like the battle is over and I lost. Maybe if I had my own personal 24/7 personal CBT trainer......hmmm

Take care,
Dee

Scott - I know exactly what you mean. I had CBT in hospital, both inpatient and partial. Nothing worked or registered emotionally. I couldn't get past my feelings.

I have given up on CBT and really only believe in working through my issues with the psychoanalytic/psychodynamic model. Thoughts and feelings need to get connected and CBT does not do it for me....

I hear you.....

[splitimage]

I love CBT. I had a lot of CBT therapy in my alcohol treatment program and it was also used a lot when I was in the psych hospital last summer. It took me a while to get used to using them, but now I find thought records really helpful for challenging negative beliefs about myself. But I'm in a relatively good space right now, I'm not in a deep depressive episode, not sure how well it would work if I was.

One book that I find helpful that I'm working my way through is Mind over Mood. It's CBT based obviously, but it has all kinds of practical exercises to do to help you look at various aspects of your life. It and my T are slowly chipping away at some of the negative beliefs I have about myself.

spltimage

[jurplesman]

I must admit that CBT is one of the best therapeutic tools available, but unfortunately it can fail many people because CBT assumes it's all in the mind. It is wrongly assumed that bad and illogical thoughts cause bad emotions. This overlooks completely that an unhealthy body is unable to produce the feel good neurotransmitters so necessary in feeling good and being logical!

In counselling we need to eliminate FIRST of all any source of ill-health that prevents the body from producing serotonin.

Thus BIOCHEMISTRY COMES BEFORE PSYCHOLOGY.

Depression is a Nutritional Disorder

Hey. What you are saying makes good sense to me. I think that part of the problem is that while SOME distressing emotions are the result of cognitive distortions (etc) not ALL of them are.

Sometimes... Instead of trying to change our emotion (by trying to figure out what implicit cognitive distortions might be producing it)...

What we need is for the feeling to be acknowledged and... Accepted. Its okay to feel sad sometimes. Its okay to grieve. Its okay to feel angry.

Sometimes what I needed was for someone to sit with me while I experienced the emotion and just... Empathise with me and kind of feel it too. Just so I wasn't alone in that.

And that... Would make it less distressing. So I was better able to employ self care strategies like distraction.

Maybe... You just DO feel sad. And maybe... The sadness needs to be acknowledged and accepted rather than challenged and rather than people attempting to undermine it.

My t taught me how. Now I am better at giving myself inward hugs and good vibes. When thoughts occur in my head like 'you are a worthless piece of %#@&#! and you deserve to die' I don't try challenging them - challenge just makes them go stronger in an attempt to counter-challenge. Instead... I just acknowledge that the thought occured in my head - but that doesn't mean I believe it. And... I give myself an inward hug and try and feel warm vibes to myself and maybe reflect on something that I did that I feel proud of or happy about.

Any of this make sense?

[(JD)]

(((Scott))) No, it doesn't make sense, but I know it does to you because that's the way you are thinking right now. That's why CBT could help you. You must counter those negative thoughts, even if you begin with only realizing the thought and that it's "just" a thought that you might need to change.

It's a process. Usually someone who needs to do this has a long habit of negative thinking. (Often caused by others constantly putting them down and creating the pattern of not being good enough no matter what.)

I like the list of 10 common cognitive distortions because it gives a good place to begin. (They're sticky posted.)
Take one and work with it, and know that you are beginning to heal.

Your T can help you immensely with these. (Just agree to not stay angry at them when they show you errant thinking.)

It's worth the effort. You are worth the effort.

[its_me]

I don't really care for CBT either. My T continues to attempt to get me to realize that it isn't the feelings that are controlling my life - it is the thoughts that I have (which of course are probably 99% negative). I just cannot seem to connect the 2.

I alos like the 10 common cognitive distortions and I can see almost all of them in my daily life - but I continue to have the hardest time making any sense of it all.

I've always been such a feeling based person and unfortunately the feelings are mighty negative - but I keep trying - maily because I hear others say CBT really is beneficial and also because my T continues to find a way to take everything and anything that I am feeling and relate it to my thought process.

I guess you just have to keep open to it and maybe it will fall into place - that's what I keep trying...

[sunrise]

For me, it seems that my feelings are the root of the issue, not the thoughts. To heal, I need to deal with my feelings. CBT seems to want to focus on thinking, which of course will not get at the root of my problem. I think different therapies work for different people. Scott, you say you can't seem to apply CBT because you are so down in the hole. Could you work on improving being so down by other methods? Then when you feel somewhat better, maybe CBT would then be useful? Can you ask your therapist if he/she has any other tools in his toolbox besides CBT and ask if you can try those for a while? It's worth a shot. If your T is strictly CBT and you really feel stuck, you could look for a new T with a wider range of skills.

[Mouse_]

I had a friend that had opted for CBT, she would call me self indulgant for the kind of feelings processes I talk to her about..one day she gave me an example of her therapy that day, she said that she had mentioned about wanting her mother so bad but her mother ignoring her plea's she had taken it to mean something about her...her CBT therapist had said to her, what if your mother wasn't ignoring your crys but was busy thinking of something else??? My friend seem to think that changed everything, then I said, what if your mother wasn't busy thinking other things and had ignored your crys?...my friend stopped and looked at me...I asked her how that would have felt?....she didnt want to contemplate that..she wanted a solution that was simple, easy...

[Perna]

I think CBT is useful, just not very comforting and if one wants comfort, one is not left with much. One can do CBT in the vacuum of one's own head, but I want human interaction.

I think either way, mouse, whether one's mother was "busy" and couldn't attend to one or whether one's mother didn't "want" to attend to one, CBT can help so we understand that it isn't about the other person, it's about what we want. It doesn't really matter why the mother didn't attend to one, if one wanted attending to or even needed attending to (if one were very young) understanding that can help (me, at least) attend to myself better and braver so I listen to myself better, but it can't solve the hurt of mother not attending. . . but then, no type of therapy or therapist can. However, a therapist attending now, can help give us the feeling sense of what it feels like to be attended to well and we can learn that skill for ourselves and to apply to others. So, maybe I think CBT is a useful "half" of the equation but no one thing is a whole I don't think.

i've never felt comfortable with the cbt side of the schema therapy approach my T and i have been working on. The more towards cbt he goes, the more broken our connection becomes... even when he tries to be subtle and i don't know that's what he's doing...

one thing that has always bothered me about cbt-type approaches is the lack of evaluation process about the thoughts themselves, or feelings for that matter. Maybe you feeling like a dork for honking at the next car in traffic was because your conscience realized you were being a dork.. whereas evaluating the "bad" feelings as being unproductive and resulting from erroneous thought processes lets you act like a dork with rampant abandon!

long before i entered therapy, and knew CBT by term only, i resisted going into therapy myself because it seemed like the "benefit" most people i knew were getting was a means of absolving themselves and then liberally applying that to their behaviour without much scrutiny... perhaps the failure there was in not teaching people to evaluate. It would make sense to most people that feeling sad might have its proper place... but so does guilt and anxiety, they just need more control, like weeds. It makes perfect, normal sense to feel anxious about a tax audit for example