What is CBT supposed to do?

Chuchoter

OK I know this isn't for personal issues and I hope this doesn't come across that way (if its in the wrong place please move it to where its supposed to be). My therapist gave me these CBT worksheets where you're supposed to be rational about a situation and balance your immediate reaction and alternative (more logical) thoughts. But the thing is by the end of these sheets I'm like wow things are so much more crap than I originally thought when I'm rational about it. How is CBT supposed to work and what am I doing wrong?

JuliusCaesar

CBT isn't supposed to make you more logical or rational. It's about thinking about the possibility of there maybe being other points of view, other ways of looking at things, which might be more helpful to you. But you should actually be discussing your opinions and misgivings with your therapist!

Anyway, here are three links here and here for the meantime.

(People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them.
Epictetus )

hotspur

JuliusCaesar wrote: »

CBT isn't supposed to make you more logical or rational.

Unless you're unlucky enough to get an REBT therapist who thinks they're the next Albert Ellis. Unfortunately I have experienced that in the past.

OP, filling in thought records is supposed to help not make you feel worse. As JC said, address it with your therapist next time.

At a more abstract level the truth is that cognitive disputation is ultimately about trying to inculcate in people an adaptive, optimistic attributional bias. The purpose is as a tool to help you feel better. The optimistic biases which protect us and make us feel good such as attributing successes to internal, permanent, pervasive factors and failures to external, temporary, non-pervasive factors are helpful to have in life.

Removing the biases which make us think optimistically and make us feel good is not a good use of CBT techniques, altering the pessimistic biases which make us feel bad is a good use of it.

If in using thought records you are coming to "rational" conclusions that things are worse than you thought and it's making you feel bad then that's definitely something I would address with my therapist. Maybe something has been miscommunicated?

Gibs

Filling in these sheets is quite a skilled activity and can take a lot of practice to get them right. They can sometimes appear to be deceptively easy but it takes time to become good at identifying the thoughts that may be contributing to your difficulties.

The main purpose of these forms is to help you develop an awareness of the potentially unhelpful patterns of thinking you are engaging in that are impacting on how you evaluate situations and ultimately on how you are feeling.

You should definitely explain to your therapist the kind of difficulty you are having. He or she won't be disappointed or surprised and would probably much prefer to know what's going on so that you can work through the forms together and make them a positive, useful tool insteaqd of a source of frustration for you.

Cinful

crayolastereo wrote: »

But the thing is by the end of these sheets I'm like wow things are so much more crap than I originally thought when I'm rational about it. How is CBT supposed to work and what am I doing wrong?

Your CBT has missing components. Consult your therapist.