steph.mcg Posted March 25, 2011 Report Share Posted March 25, 2011 i was hoping that you guys could share your knowledge and experience about cbt im basically wondering about a few things, what exactly it is and how it helps, and what its best at helping. thanks xx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hummm_mabbe Posted March 25, 2011 Report Share Posted March 25, 2011 Hi there Broadly, CBT works on the theory that you 'feel the way you think', and that underneath feelings and moods are your automatic thoughts, beliefs and 'rules' for yourself and the world. When an event happens to you, its the meaning you bring to it, not the event itself, that makes you feel as you do. Thats the theory anyways. It works on a few levels. At first you will work on identifying your moods, and seeing what events lead to them. You do this with a 'mood diary' and you start to look for patterns. Then you move onto 'challenging' automatic thoughts, by catching what is going through your mind when things trigger you. In essence you try to identify the ways in which your interpretation of those events might be making you feel worse, and try to find an alternative way of viewing it that feels less painful. As a result of the common automatic thoughts you have, you identify the deeper rules and then core beliefs, and again you work on challenging them - but at this stage you do whats called 'behavioural experiments'. You actually go out and do things to test out the alternatives, or to try and 'disprove' the old beliefs. As long as your challenges are convincing to you, and the new evidence you get from the experiments is compelling, then it leads to emotional change. Its tough to say what it is and isnt good for. I believe that if you are quite in touch with emotions, and understand what they mean, then CBT can really help. I had trouble because I found i didnt know what my feelings meant, so it was hard to translate them into thoughts and also hard to make an alternative make me feel any different. Also some people that are already overly rigid or intellectual might find CBT makes them worse, as it reinforces that tendency to be too rational. It also presumes you are able to form a 'therapeutic alliance' with your therapist from the start, so if you suffer from deep trust issues it might be difficult for you. Its meant to be helpful for depression, anxiety, some people with personality disorders (when heavily modified), eating disorders ... pretty much everything. Its kind of suck it and see to find out if it fits with you. Its also important to find a therapist you like, trust and have faith in and the therapist can be 50% of the treatment. It did help me for a while, but I think that had more to do with the therapist I was seeing at the time combined with some powerful meds I was on. Sadly the change didnt last for me. That said there are '3rd wave' versions of CBT that combine it with other things to make it more effective. I had pure CBT. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steph.mcg Posted March 26, 2011 Author Report Share Posted March 26, 2011 wow, that was quite the reply! thanks i might give it a go and see if it works for me then :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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