Posted by baseball55 on July 11, 2016, at 19:11:33
In reply to Re: CBT anyone? » SLS, posted by Tabitha on July 10, 2016, at 13:38:23
I would find this type of approach really unhelpful and irritating too. The T I have does not take the position that thoughts lead to depression. Her approach is more that depression leads to thoughts that exacerbate depression. But, as I said, in my case the major issue was not so much to relieve depression as to control suicidal ideation, which is, I've come to realize, a kind of distorted thinking.
> I did the type of CBT where you take a piece of paper, write down your thought, identify which CBT thought distortion category it matches, write an alternate thought to replace it, then write how you feel with the new thought. I used this early on in regular therapy, and tried again later from a workshop in managing anxiety for cancer patients. I think you were supposed to feel an emotional change after doing the exercise, and perhaps find yourself not having the distressing thought any more. To me it felt about as emotionally compelling as doing long division or maybe writing a haiku. A nice little distraction and sense of having solved a problem, but not otherwise therapeutic. Besides, I just have way too many thoughts jumbling around in there. It's like trying to weed a huge field of weeds, where the weeds grow up so quickly that by the time you've pulled one, three more have grown.
>
> Also, I was never convinced by the basic premise that emotional states are caused by distorted thoughts in the first place. Sounds backwards to me. The darkness factor of my thoughts is changed so radically by mood states, it's very difficult to believe that I have some pre-existing set of thoughts causing the mood changes. If thoughts are causing the moods, then does that mean I somehow re-programmed my thoughts in between the mood swings? Why didn't I notice myself ripping down all those dark thoughts and replacing them with hopeful peaceful ones, or vice versa?
>
>
poster:baseball55
thread:1090316
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20150512/msgs/1090406.html