I was reading over my last post and realised that I had said that I finished with CBT. A huge mistake. The idea of CBT is to change the way you think, so if you have a negative thought you challenge it and try to think through it rationally. Obviously in that case you never finish with CBT: it's meant to be a skill you learn for life.
The thing is, and I've said this to my GP, I can identify the bad thought and think up ways of challenging it, but I don't believe the challenges. If I think I'm not good enough for this job and I rationalise it and say that I am, I was interviewed and successful, I think of that as a fluke, or being good at interviews and not as proof that I'm good enough for the job. I also found when I was attending a therapist that I was being asked to challenge thoughts that were actually factual. For example, it's difficult to discuss my research with anyone in my law school as I'm the only one in that particular area. I was asked how I would challenge that and when I said I couldn't because it was a true fact she wanted to know how she could check it was true! Luckily I was able to say there was a list of all the interests of people in the law school on the internet and it could be verified there.
So, I can see the point of CBT to an extent, sometimes we do need to be taught how to "look on the bright side" as I coined it. But it's not a panacea to end all ills and yet it seems to be virtually the main and only form of therapy that's available.
2 comments:
I know exactly what you mean about CBT being the only therapy that is out there. That is what all the money that has been pumped into the mental health budget is being spent on because somebody, somewhere has said that CBT is the best talking treatment for people with depression. But this is a very simplified view of things and while it may be beneficial for some, particularly those who have mild to moderate depression and who have been recently diagnosed, it is not the only type of therapy that is needed.
When I first went for assessment for psychotherapy, the psychologist that I saw concluded that CBT was not the therapy for me. It is not the way that I think about things that causes me to be depressed. I can fall into a deep depression when everything is going well and I am not having any negative thoughts.
I think that you are having more of a crisis of confidence than anything else and it is something that I have suffered from all my life. I feel that I'm not good enough for something even though deep down I know that I am capable of doing it. I just need someone to give me a kick up the backside every now and again to remind me that I can be a very capable person. It was only by going through the psychodynamic psychotherapy that I did for a year that I was able to realise that this was what happened to me and by looking back into my past life the factors that caused me to be like this were discovered.
This is not something that I had ever consciously thought about, it was my subconscious taking over and making me that way.
I shall send you an email and tell you a bit more about my visit with the psychologist this morning and the problems that I had getting him to understand why I couldn't answer some of the things that he was asking me.
There's just been alot of money injected into mental health services in my area, so for once all different kinds of therapies rather than just CBT are on offer. I'm fairly sure this was ring fenced govt money so it might be worth digging around to see if that's happened in your area. The funny thing is that most of the GP's here still don't know there's money for psychological services, the news is filtering out via patients.
Thinking of you and hope you have a good w/e, BG Xx
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