Posted by Dinah on March 15, 2006, at 10:34:08
In reply to What does it mean when a T does mostly CBT?, posted by CareBear04 on March 15, 2006, at 9:03:49
Naturally there are as many different CBT therapies as there are practitioners, unless they're straight by the book. My therapist mainly does CBT, because that's mainstream therapy right now. But he's only strictly by the book if that seems to be what's called for.
In general, you can expect that the therapist will focus more on the here and now, as opposed to the past. The therapist probably won't get into the therapeutic relationship unless you bring it up. And then they have varying degree of skill working with it.
They're really a lot like teachers. They teach you to recognize patterns of thinking that aren't useful to you. They'll also teach you behavioral techniques to control the physical symptoms of your illness. DBT is also skills training, with a bit more emphasis on eastern philosophy. Distress tolerance and radical acceptance are two of the skills I remember. It's considered, when practiced by a skilled practitioner, to be more validating of the client's present experience while also encouraging change.
Neither are particularly introspective, but more change oriented.
For those that it works well for, it works very well.
For those who aren't suited to it, it can be not quite enough.
But I think that the skills they teach can be useful to anyone. I still use my relaxation skills and my OCD thought challenging skills.
But what it didn't do was teach me what was behind my OCD thoughts. It didn't go deep.
poster:Dinah
thread:620541
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20060312/msgs/620578.html