Posted by Dinah on June 2, 2003, at 11:20:19
In reply to Re: CBT and metacognition » Dinah, posted by Larry Hoover on June 2, 2003, at 10:11:40
I was merely remarking on my own experience. Mind you, I didn't have formal CBT therapy at the time.
What happened was this. In my preteens/early teens I basically fell apart. All at once I became the picked on kid at school, we adopted my brother, and various and sundry other stresses. I developed an all consuming phobia/OCD obsession with people vomiting. I became almost agoraphobic. I behaved very badly (acted out). I went to a psychiatrist for a year, and was on thorazine for that time. One day I decided I didn't want to be that way any more.
I didn't have any access to CBT or CBT literature. I was only thirteen or fourteen. But on my own I came up with many things that I later recognized from CBT. And I did them very well. I became functional again. As far as I or anyone else knew, I was just fine.
When I went into therapy twenty years later for a recurrance of my OCD symptoms under the new stressers of marriage, my therapist was very CBT oriented. But he discovered that it just didn't work with me. Because I could believe everything he said with every fiber of my being. I could do the homework. I could say what I was supposed to say, and believe it too. I couldn't possibly believe it more. But it didn't reach deeply enough. I had an intellectual understanding and belief in what he said. I had lived it for twenty years. But I simply could not stretch it deep enough.
In fact, with some OCD self help books based on CBT principles, I pretty much conquered my OCD. Or at least got it under control enough that it was no longer a problem for me. I can sing my obsessions. I can laugh at them. They go away. The panic attacks pretty much stopped. But guess what? My OCD had served a purpose. Without the OCD, other symptoms emerged. My mood regulation abilities destabilized. I went from a relatively high functioning person with OCD to a not well functioning person with my OCD under control.
CBT, with me, had its limitations.
I'm not denying its usefulness. I'm just saying that with some people it works better than with others.
I like CBT, I prefer DBT. But I just think it needs to be seen as a tool, not a cure-all.
(P.S. If I had it all to do over again, I'd take back the OCD and panic attacks, and never have tried to overcome them. I don't know what purpose they served, but whoo-boy, it must have been an important one.)
poster:Dinah
thread:230572
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20030529/msgs/230788.html