Okay for me to close the book on therapy?

[Deleted member 1496]

During my therapy days, CBT was popular. Instead of years of talk therapy, CBT focused on my brain's "unhelpful thinking styles." If I were to recognize and correct my cognitive distortions, my negatives thoughts that prevent me from happiness would be minimized; happiness and hilarity ensue. I remember my therapists decided my problem and solution before my first session even finished. Is that the way CBT is or was?

Looking back, I think CBT was wrong for me. My therapists ignored or dismissed my family's (and anyone else's behavior), as if it was irrelevant, as if I was a complainer. But my past with my family was my present. No one, including my therapists, talked about going NC (no contact). If anything, they promoted the myth of good parents. It's not that I didn't have negative thoughts, but now I feel like that wasn't the *highest priority issue. Focusing on cognitive distortions was like trying to put out a fire but ignoring the fuel, heat, or oxygen sources. "I can't breathe because of the smoke" is answered by "Are you sure you're sitting up straight?"

After I quit therapy, a light began to glow these last few years. In my dad's home country, a couple strangers talked back to him. Whoa, maybe I'm not the problem; maybe my dad's an asshole. Then, my former best friend's spouse began to call her out at different times for lying to me, taking advantage of me, treating me like I didn't matter, etc. Whoa, maybe there's a legitimate, objective reason I feel sad. And when a person refused more help, saying he didn't want to take advantage of me, my internal reaction was "that's controllable?"

Anyway, outside of this forum, I feel like people think I'm a quitter or lazy because I don't try therapy again. But I see those decades as a waste of lots of time, money, and effort for me, especially given I can't talk about suicide, my insurance plan has limited therapists, and I'm old. Am I wrong for closing the book on therapy?

 

[GoodPersonEffed]

I think you're rational to close the book on something that not only didn't help you rise up, but kept you down, that gaslighted you and said your experience and interpretation was wrong, that reinforced illegitimate power over you instead of helping you connect with your self power and self-mastery.

I've had cbt, ans well as the effects of trauma, and I find it ridiculous that it's so highly rated in studies for overcoming PTSD. There are some good elements to cbt, but trauma is not held nor holding sway in the same parts of the brain as cognition. Cbt didn't heal my trauma, it helped me as one tool of many for analyzing and understanding things, and only in that way was it empowering for me. What serves me to get free from trauma and return to awareness and to my self are EMDR, TAT and EFT, and anything that supports me in understanding abuse, boundaries and learning how to attain self-respect. (If you're interested in tools that have helped me, see my threads on learning boundaries, manipulation tactics, self-respect, assessing relationships, brainwashing, and the abuser's belief system.)

Cbt can be used to say, "You're wrong," or it can help identify self-harming thought patterns (but not the root causes). When it's used to say "You're wrong," it's abusive and disempowering. When it's treated as the be-all end-all and not just one tool that's applicable in a limited amount of situations, it's bullshit, and in every therapeutic setting I've been in where the bullshit (along with meds) had supremacy, there was either a covert or overt tone of control and abuse, to keep one down, not at all to lift them up and help them to get free and experience self-determination.

There are so many other modalities out there. I support your decision to close the books on therapy, and likewise to seek sometime who practices different modalities and who supports you in self-mastery and determining your own path and helping you to achieve if, to serve you and help you become ever more capable to steer your own ship.

I loved all the revelations you shared. You seem to be finding self-respect and awareness. If cbt was keeping you from that, imo it was controlling and abusive, and you've gotten yourself free of it, having gone no contact with it.

 

[woxihuanni]

Therapy for people currently undergoing abuse is merely another lick at the abuser's ass and another kick to the target of abuse.

How about stopping the fuckers from abusing, eh? Does not occur to anyone. They are 'free to do as they will and be as they are' but the target is 'wrong to feel what they feel'. Yeah.

 

[Gnip]

Therapy for people currently undergoing abuse is merely another lick at the abuser's ass and another kick to the target of abuse.

How about stopping the fuckers from abusing, eh? Does not occur to anyone. They are 'free to do as they will and be as they are' but the target is 'wrong to feel what they feel'. Yeah.

For me, therapists are parasites who are looking to make money and a living off the wrongdoing of others. I do not permit that with my psychiatric care. My psychiatrists have one job, to prescribe medications and other medical treatments to help me keep going. The damage that others have done to me is none of their damned business.

If biofeedback was available in my area, I'd use that, since it's hard science with nothing subjective about it.

There's simply no money to be made by these parasites with treatments that actually work. These profiteers make fortunes by PREVENTING their victims from getting better. Therapy's nothing more than a lucrative scam.

 

[woxihuanni]

For me, therapists are parasites who are looking to make money and a living off the wrongdoing of others. I do not permit that with my psychiatric care. My psychiatrists have one job, to prescribe medications and other medical treatments to help me keep going. The damage that others have done to me is none of their damned business.

If biofeedback was available in my area, I'd use that, since it's hard science with nothing subjective about it.

There's simply no money to be made by these parasites with treatments that actually work. These profiteers make fortunes by PREVENTING their victims from getting better. Therapy's nothing more than a lucrative scam.

I got this shit indirectly from some dumb lady who goes to therapy and keeps burning her life down deliberately anyway. She thinks she knows all the things there is to know and gives me crap like 'you don't love yourself'. HER problems are all in her head but unfortunately mine are made by a criminal and has nothing to do with my psyche. It is disgusting when someone so intellectually and emotionally stunted presumes to give you second hand propaganda instead of offering to witness against a criminal, for instance.

 

[BitterlyAlive]

I know what you mean. I already know how my thought patterns are irrational, distorted. Challenging them really doesn't help. It doesn't address the real issues, the root of the problem. And being told over and over how I'm "wrong" when it can't really be helped (believe me, I've worked hard to try and change it on my own) honestly is really triggering for...personal reasons.

My therapist wants to try EMDR, but she's holding off until my depression is under control...lol... So at the moment it seems like the root of everything is trauma and cPTSD, and those require something more intensive than what general CBT therapists seem to do. Because my anxiety and depression aren't situational, they're not created by my thoughts. My thoughts don't help, but again they're not the root of the problem. CBT is too superficial - at least in the way that most therapists seem to present it.

I don't know if that really made sense but I'm trying to say that you're not alone. I get it.