Posted by badhaircut on January 14, 2004, at 12:03:10
In reply to Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy success stories?, posted by pierce on January 13, 2004, at 16:32:15
I've had some personal success with CBT techniques applied by myself based on books by David Burns, Albert Ellis, and Aaron Beck in relieving depression and anxiety over the last 6 months.
That's compared with virtually *no* improvement with 14 different drugs & combos, unilateral ECT, light boxes, conventional psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, exercise, and nutritional stuff over the last 20 years. Also, simply reading CBT books several times over the last few years did nothing helpful.
Depression typically kept me lying on the floor in a kind of physical pain, like an elephant was sitting on top of me. Anxiety about other people's opinions has often kept me indoors or away from social opportunities. (That's an over-brief summary.) Relief from that elephant has only come with CBT techniques.
Since I learned (through rather hard, repeated practice) some basic CBT techniques, like recognizing and challenging certain kinds of underlying assumptions (toward perfection etc), I've frequently gotten lasting relief from torturous feelings. For a while I (jokingly) considering having "All-or-Nothing Thinking" tattooed on my hand because it's so often how I start to look at bothersome situations. (CBT suggests disrupting all-or-nothing presumptions.)
In comparison to most other therapies, CBT attempts to do so little! But what it attempts to do is very specific. After years of goose-chasing in insight therapies, I appreciate that.
I have an appointment coming up with a bona fide cognitive-behavioral therapist (not a dabbler). I want help with my "Avoidant" behavior, which I think is a bigger problem than my depression and may have fostered it in the first place.
pierce-- Are you considering CBT?
-bhc
poster:badhaircut
thread:300301
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040110/msgs/300638.html