does anyone else absolutely hate CBT / ERP

[wildflowers1996]

I am so sick of having this treatment pushed on me; I know people mean well but it only makes me feel worse.

 

[LaVieEnRose]

I dislike all alphabet soup therapies.

 

[Forveleth]

I tried to get CBT for the longest time because I genuinely think it would help me. However, every therapist I went to (despite advertising they were qualified for CBT) would resort to plain old talk therapy which does jack shit for me. So, personally, I love CBT and I hate talk therapy. Unfortunately, therapy only helps if the person participating is open to it and if they style of therapy fits for them.

 

[AmericanMary]

I hated CBT

 

[astonishedturnip]

There's a kernel of truth to CBT. Neuroplasticity is real and our internal language shapes our thinking and reactions. Repeatedly spiraling into negative thought patterns will just trap you in a habit. For normies with minor issues, these can be effective and helpful.

However... I emphasize, FOR NORMIES. This tripe is utterly useless for most real problems. You cannot rearrange your thinking to will yourself out of severe mental or physical illness, poverty, grief, OCD, trauma, etc. In these situations, it's frankly gaslighting.

Yes, if your problem is something minor and simple like being nervous before a speech or too hard on yourself after a failure, it's pretty easy to turn that around. But telling yourself to "reshape and rethink" a sincerely miserable and unfixable situation is garbage. And don't even get me started on the tenets of "gratitude and acceptance." Like my depression is going to sulk away defeated because of woo bullshit.

When my therapist busted these out I knew it was over. First of all why would anyone pay $200 per session for something you can get online for free, implemented by a hack who just clumsily forces you to align with this thinking and gets upset if you don't brainwash yourself immediately? Secondly it felt like putting a single bandage on a gaping open wound. Sure the future is terrifying because of inevitable tragedy that WILL devastate me (which the therapist even agreed with) but uhhhhh don't worry about it bro lol have u tried yoga

 

[Felodese]

CBT is for people with minor issues or those who are experiencing their first depressive episode.
In order for CBT to actually work you need to have a healthy foundation. You need to know what healthy feels like, what security, comfort, selfesteem etc feels like. If you've never experienced any of that, you wouldn't recognize it if it punched you in the face, and then you can't think yourself well - because you never learned to think or reason in a healthy way.
Another part I hate is the "no one can make you feel bad unless you let them" bullshit. So what if your family disowned you, or you got bullied every day at school, or someone raped you? If you feel bad about any of that, that's on you, not the people who victimized you. It's your fault if being treated like shit makes you sad/depressed/suicidal. You should simply accept every bad thing that happens and chose to think more positively about it and then everything will be fine.

 

[Jorms_McGander]

I've had CBT and it wasn't effective for me. I didn't hate it; my reaction was more that this therapy is something that I have already been able to figure out by observing myself over my lifetime and therefore it can't be the solution for my problems.

That's not entirely true though, because there is what's called willfulness. When I felt that the therapeutic structure was ho-hum and the information offered was too elementary, I was then unwilling to do the practices associated with CBT. My emotions were hopelessness and abandonment, as I got my CBT referrals through hospital stays and I felt that this was the best available help for a person like me. This is pre-diagnosis for me. The adage goes: "if you see hoofprints, think horses before zebras" and I was still in my horses days. Doctors were treating the most common options, and the most commonly successful treatment is CBT.

But anyway, it was not a fit for myself and my diagnoses, and I was very willful about it. I would not engage in any of the practices associated with changing the emotion-thought-behaviour cycle because I was stuck in thoughts of "this stuff is KINDERGARTEN!" It's worth noting that any therapeutic structure feels like kindergarten if you are not willing to practice the material. By the way, that's the opposite of willful. Willing.

To compound those difficulties, my emotional reaction to the situation was incredibly strong and I did not have the skills to cope with that reaction at the time as I had gotten no appropriate diagnosis or treatment. I'm really trying to avoid saying dumb shit like "it works if you work it" but I am regretting that because it would have been much shorter to just say that.

Taking a compassionate view of myself, this pattern of thinking is best viewed as an obstacle to myself accessing treatment rather than as a failure of CBT, or of myself. I was a patient whose reaction to treatment was to scoff, and I needed additional coping skills and a trusting connection and just lots and lots of things needed to be true for therapy to have an effect on me.

Therefore, the additional structure of DBT and its inclusion of skills to handle extremes of emotion became the thing to try.

Also, I was diagnosed with BPD and therefore gained access to publicly-funded DBT, which I did not gain access to due to waitlists and pathetically small seat numbers. I paid out of pocket, which is bullshit. And, that was the program to help me.

CBT is baked into DBT, by the way. Hence the similarity in acronym. It's not taught the same way it is in CBT, but these programs are effective when they are compatible with a patient, and the patient is willing to invest, etc etc.

I don't know what it's like to have a condition that responds directly to medication but I gotta say as a patient whose most effective treatments are therapy, I feel a little envious.

 

[jbear824]

I have tried CBT and DBT but my mental illnesses are highly treatment resistant. I've been in therapy for over 20 years.

I also have ADHD, and I do not learn like everyone else does. I learn through being hands on. My therapist likes to send me home with homework, which is pointless because as soon as I get home, the mental illness takes over and renders doing it myself impossible.

And the of course I get told I'm just not trying hard enough. Or I'm not willing enough to put in the work.

Our mental health system as it is, is not designed to help those of us seriously afflicted. It's definitely designed around normies who can be pushed back into the workforce quickly.

And yet, they won't let us kill ourselves either. It's fucking cruelty. It's barbaric and all for the sake of fucking money.

 

[KuriGohan&Kamehameha]

CBT is for people with minor issues or those who are experiencing their first depressive episode.
In order for CBT to actually work you need to have a healthy foundation. You need to know what healthy feels like, what security, comfort, selfesteem etc feels like. If you've never experienced any of that, you wouldn't recognize it if it punched you in the face, and then you can't think yourself well - because you never learned to think or reason in a healthy way.
Another part I hate is the "no one can make you feel bad unless you let them" bullshit. So what if your family disowned you, or you got bullied every day at school, or someone raped you? If you feel bad about any of that, that's on you, not the people who victimized you. It's your fault if being treated like shit makes you sad/depressed/suicidal. You should simply accept every bad thing that happens and chose to think more positively about it and then everything will be fine.

This is precisely my issue with CBT, especially now that it is marketed towards everyone and their mom.

The success of CBT for relatively minor or short term issues has seemed to overshadow how it is inappropriately prescribed as a panacea to large groups of patients with extremely deep rooted and complex issues.

I have even seen posters with links to CBT websites in public, these sorts of methodologies are baked into any aspect of mental health treatment now for whatever reason. Doesn't matter what your problem is, if you have any symptoms that can be construed as mental, it's off to CBT with you.

It really annoys me, as someone who has self-reflected and contemplated my own situation a lot, and done CBT therapy many times, how people just will not believe that there are individuals who CBT doesn't work for.

I fall into the complex PTSD camp, and no amount of telling myself, oh I'm not getting abused right this moment, I'm being irrational, it's all thoughts, etc makes anything better. I think the MH field is very ignorant to the reality that people who go through an abusive childhood and go on to develop PTSD, bipolar, psychosis, etc or other complicated problems have many knock off socio-economic effects.

We aren't just left to deal with the pain and the scars, but a lack of financial and pragmatic support if you have no family members, difficulty with relationships, finding and maintaining employment, and many other aspects of adult life that are designed for healthy, neurotypical people.

CBT to me just felt like extensive gaslighting- should be called continuous brain torture instead.