Psychotherapy. Opinions on CBT( cognitive behavioural therapy)

TippRebel1

Hi. Just wondered what your opinion of CBT is. It's a popular form of psychotherapy and seems to be the number 1 choice for many issues such as anxiety and depression, and other issues too. The premise is it's all about looking at how your thoughts, behaviours can affect your mood, and about making changes in how you think or behave( or both) to improve how you feel. There is homework between sessions, which include things like " thought challenging " or " worry diary " .. The idea being to challenge the worrying thought for example in the case of somebody with a lot of anxiety. Then after challenging it, come to a more realistic conclusion. There are many other methods within the CBT framework of course... Just wondered what you thought about it. It differs from the other types of psychotherapy as it's about getting the patient involved, and working towards goals, rather than talking about their feelings for a session, or talking about an unhappy past. The therapy is very structured and geared toward making changes.... There is little emphasis at all, if any, on why you feel a certain way or behave a certain way, but mostly its about recognizing the unhelpful thoughts or behaviours, or both, and making changes... working towards goals...

This type of therapy seems to be very popular in the UK and Ireland. Just wondered what your thoughts are on it? There are many who claim it is superior to other types of therapy.

Peacemaker

If your priority is symptom relief, then I can see how CBT would appeal to you, but personally I favour a humanistic approach. I think it can be unrealistic to go for CBT looking for a quick fix because human distress is usually not that simple as far as I'm concerned. That's my opinion. If CBT helps someone, great.

As I say, I'm biased towards a humanistic integrative approach.

Valmont

Not all CBT is about quick fixes for anxiety or depression. In addition to identifying and removing the more superficial negative automatic thoughts and dysfunctional assumptions, CBT can go deeper into analysing one's core belief system; these are the values that you hold at the centre of your life. For some people these values are explicit and consciously chosen while others 'absorb' them throughout out their childhood and adolescence without any real conscious effort. For this latter group a longer course of CBT can infer what these core beliefs are allowing an individual to possibly make lasting changes in their life.

hawkwind23

I have an interest in Psychology and undertook some CBT a few years back.
I found it very helpful in recognising some negative reflexes to certain situations, i was able to identify where my mind was having one experience and linking that to a stream of negatives that altered the outcome of any given scenario.
with the CBT i was able to identify when i was making assumptions on a situation with no factual information , i was then able to use the facts to form a more reasonable impression and allow my mind to travel more freely.

i suppose its one of those that can be made as complex or simple as you like.
i enjoyed reprogramming myself which is incredibly simple but with deep and complex long term benefits.

As a layperson i would not imagine it would be of any short term benefit bar maybe talking about a problem.

perhaps it only works as a conduit to induce self programming.

I would have nothing negative to say about it , not going to make any dramatic changes but if your interested in the subject and aware of the subtleties then i found it very useful and would enjoy doing more.

just need to win the lotto

JuliusCaesar

Peacemaker wrote: »

If your priority is symptom relief, then I can see how CBT would appeal to you, but personally I favour a humanistic approach. I think it can be unrealistic to go for CBT looking for a quick fix because human distress is usually not that simple as far as I'm concerned. That's my opinion. If CBT helps someone, great.

Unfortunately, while you are entitled to your opinion, the evidence is against you.

Peacemaker wrote: »

As I say, I'm biased towards a humanistic integrative approach.

In what other science does 'bias' trump evidence? >sigh<



We've a loooong way to go until counsellors and psychotherapists adopt a scientific approach.

Valmont

JuliusCaesar wrote: »

We've a loooong way to go until counsellors and psychotherapists adopt a scientific approach.

Scientific in what respect, exactly?

DM addict

Valmont wrote: »

Scientific in what respect, exactly?

Evidence based practice?

Valmont

I suppose there a lot of practitioners out there who adopt approaches that would not have as much empirical support compared to something like CBT. However, if one such therapist is making their clients happy I don't really see the problem. Consider the forties and fifties when psychoanalysis was all the rage - I don't think evidence matters so much when popular opinion is involved and if the clients are happy, what's the problem?

dlouth15

JuliusCaesar wrote: »

Unfortunately, while you are entitled to your opinion, the evidence is against you.



In what other science does 'bias' trump evidence? >sigh<



We've a loooong way to go until counsellors and psychotherapists adopt a scientific approach.

I'll admit that I have no training or experience matters of psychology.

I wonder however whether other less specific therapies lend themselves as sell to statistical analysis as CBT. There may be a bias in favour of CBT because it tends towards resolving a specific issue. Another therapy may be equally helpful but not lend itself to measurement in this way.

For example, a client may be seeing a psychodynamic therapist for a number of years. Eventually several problems clear up. Even if the therapy was helpful, to what extent can we attribute the problems clearing up to the therapy itself? It is probably difficult to conduct objective clinical trials in this area where many factors are at play at once.

Note I'm not claiming one form of treatment is better than another, but rather suggesting that some forms may be more amenable to clinical trials, and therefore a greater number of clinical trials will be conducted.

Thus it may not be valid to conclude that absence of evidence is evidence of absence of effectiveness.