Posted by littleone on December 18, 2004, at 17:28:45
In reply to Re: Long treatment, long post, posted by dawnfawn on December 17, 2004, at 6:25:55
> I am very disappointed in CBT. The reason, I feel it is the NIKE approach to moods--eg. Just do it. If you feel anxious just stop being anxious, talk yourself out of it. If I could talk myself out of it would I be anxious? A real paradox.
Hi dawnfawn,
I'm in long term therapy at the moment, but I have read a zillion CBT books (okay, maybe a slight exageration there) and my T has tried Behavioural Therapy on me.
Even though I'm not concentrating on CBT as such at the moment, I can certainly identify various faulty thinking patterns within myself. When I think these things, I just feel absolutely terrible, so I try to replace my thoughts with a more rational script.
However, when I do this, I often don't *feel* better. I've corrected my thoughts and am thinking along a more rational line, but it doesn't seem to flow through to feeling better.
When I asked my T about this, he said that often just changing the thoughts isn't enough. That there are underlying beliefs at play. You need to change the belief to *feel* better. And you can't change a belief by thinking about it. You need to experience real life experiences (sorry about the shoddy wording there) that disprove the belief. And you need to experience that disproving over and over.
And I would tend to agree with others here that hypochondria is a way to deal with underlying anxieties. You may have done long term therapy previously, but the fact that you still have an underlying anxiety seems to indicate that something is unresolved or you haven't come to terms with something or whatever.
You could do all the CBT you want and eradicate the hypochondria, but if you don't address the underlying anxieties, they will come out another way. Whether that be via a mental health issue or a physical ailment or whatever.
Just my 2 cents.
poster:littleone
thread:430242
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20041218/msgs/431359.html