The Beauty of CBT
What is your experience of CBT?
I was diagnosed with depression when I was 13. It took CBT a while to work. I think this was due to my immaturity - I was not working hard at CBT because I believed the medication they had put me on would solve the problem and I made little effort to let the medication take any effect, drinking myself stupid on a regular basis.
However, when I finally grew up, I saw the beauty of CBT. The concept, in hindsight, seems so simple. It is basically taking time to see what your thoughts are, how they got there, how they are affecting you and how you can change them.It was challenging at times. I remember sometimes leaving my sessions frustrated that I wasn't getting it. 5 years seemed like a long time seeing my therapist on a weekly basis. However, I truly believe that there is no reason for CBT to take five years. If you are open minded and prepared to work a little bit, it will work wonders.
Just as I was discovering the beauty of CBT and watching it transform my understanding of my depression and how my mind worked, my best friend was seeing a psychologist for depression also. He tried to do CBT with her, but she hated it, said it was useless and a hopeless concept that didn't work. This opened my eyes to two fundamental beliefs- 1. that everyone is affected by depression differently and everyone's depression is different, therefore every patient requires a personal treatment plan that is relevant for them and 2. that CBT doesn't work for everyone!
Recently, I have had a bad episode of depression. However, unlike my many episodes in the past 7 years since my diagnosis, this one has been very different. I have experienced depression in a new way. This has meant my treatment has had to be different. CBT was not the best approach as I was not experiencing negative thoughts or processes, I wasn't thinking, feeling or doing much at all. So the CBT process was almost irrelevant. So when my GP referred me to this website and another CBT focused self help site, I was reluctant that either would help.
However, I have been amazed by how much I have still got out of the CBT concepts, values and beliefs, even if the fundamental five areas exercise is not one that is specifically going to help me much, exploring the modules on this site has allowed me to organise my thought and feelings and assess where I am up to in my illness. Therefore, although CBT may not be for everyone at all times, I stand by it being a fundamentally effective approach to tackling depression, and one that all should try with an open mind as even if they only take snippets of information, the snippets are likely to be useful.
What is your experience of CBT?
SEE
CBT encourages people to stop and think -
1. What was the thought?
2. Context of the thought (event)
3. How did I feel?
4. How did I react?
This first part of CBT, which YCW would call the SEE, is getting to grips with the full reality of what happened, taking into account what was fact and what may have been based on emotion.
JUDGE
CBT then encourages people to think about how the situation made them feel and how it affected them and others involved.
ACT
In CBT, the final stage is to transform the thoughts into positives, so that the feelings and ACTions become positives also.
This is just a small thing I've noticed that has made me think, made me smile and see two concepts I have a good understanding of, from yet another angle.
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