What is cognitive-behavioral therapy like?

kuhtreen

Could someone who has done it, or knows someone who has, please tell me what the therapy sessions are like? What happens during them? Did it really help you with social anxiety/phobia? Thanks.

sabbath92002 · Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 10:25 am Post subject:

CBT is flawed, try ACT instead.

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http://www.contextualpsychology.com/act

Argamemnon · Expert User Joined: Jan 15, 2008 Posts: 713

sabbath92002 · Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 10:30 am Post subject:

Argamemnon · Expert User Joined: Jan 15, 2008 Posts: 713

Thanks sabbath92002.

sabbath92003 · Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 11:06 am Post subject:

kuhtreen · Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 5:40 pm Post subject:

Argamemnon · Expert User Joined: Jan 15, 2008 Posts: 713

creznor · Newbie User Joined: Dec 18, 2007 Posts: 20

The problem I have with ACT is that it's like the Intelligent Design of psychology. It takes clinically proven, scientific ideas (CBT) and ties them in with spiritual ideas (Budhism). If you ask me, I would say that the inventor of the approach just did this to sell and make money. He knew that most people used spirituality and religion to give them a sense of guidance and meaning to their lives, so he capitalized on this fact in order to sell these "new" ideas to a much larger audience.

Anxiety and depression are nothing more than bad habits of insecurity that you pick up. There are obvious genetic predispositions, but that doesn't mean you have to be a slave to your mind for the rest of your life. It means that the person has a lower threshold for susceptibility. That's all. If you have a habit of smoking, what are you going to do, tell yourself it's ok, become one with your habit, and then continue to fill your lungs with harmful cigarette smoke hoping that you quit? No, you're going to starve the habit until the feelings to smoke go away. That's how I view anxiety and depression, that's what seems logical, and that's what has worked for me and many of my friends.

jayo · Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 6:51 pm Post subject:

CBT is based on questioning automatic negative thoughts that cloud our days with anxiety and fear.

If you can see that your anxiety is a state of mind largely perpetuated by defeat thoughts then you dismiss those thoughts replacing them with fresh positive thoughts.

This works but requires patience and persistence.

It makes complete sense - you will always get more back of what you focus on!

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