Posted by Tabitha on March 26, 2011, at 1:47:11
In reply to Re: People who've lost faith in therapy, posted by Daisym on March 25, 2011, at 0:23:57
Thanks for adding your thoughts, Daisy.
Regarding CBT, I think I got quite a dose of that. I found the parts about learning to recognize the typical thought distortions useful. But after a point, it felt like just another variant of the rest. Instead of hunting for hidden mood triggers and childhood influences, I had to hunt for hidden distorted beliefs. I can't count the times I heard "what's the belief behind the feeling?". If no explanatory beliefs came to mind immediately, then her questioning encouraged me to speculate. So again I felt like I was spinning stories about myself that seemed plausible but never really felt entirely true. And no matter how many beliefs we identified and challenged, it didn't seem to reduce the amount of emotional distress I was living with.
On whether I would have been better able to identify the mismatch had I had more information from the internet, I kind of doubt it. That's the thing-- I didn't realize at the time the tools weren't working. I thought my therapist was better able to judge the results than I was. I'd regularly complain it wasn't working and I should terminate. She could convince me there really was progress, and put all kinds of meaning on it that sounded good that I wouldn't have been able to come up with myself. I wanted that version to be true. Alternately she'd divert it into a discussion of what might be going on in our relationship to make me want to terminate. She'd no doubt find something that bothered me and talking about it would be a relief, so I'd conclude that my doubts were really some reflection of some emotional drama or some relating defect in myself. At some point I decided to try even harder to go along, to put my faith in her (and the process) and conclude she knew better. After all, her story of me making progress was a lot more appealing than my story of it just not working, when I didn't have an alternate plan.
And of course, I understand there's no way to know if I would have been better or worse without it and in the big picture, everything I did led me to where I am today, so in that big, big picture there's no harm done. But having to view it in that way is part of my frustration. Seems like after so much invested, I should be convinced it really helped significantly. It's just nuts that I went for so long, and can't even say conclusively whether it helped or hurt.
poster:Tabitha
thread:980953
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20110324/msgs/981170.html