Some thoughts on CBT therapy...

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Hello,

So in CBT, there is this concept of irrational thinking, which my therapist broke down into a number of habits and most of them have to do with having an overly negative attitude and emotional reasoning. Problem I am having digesting this, is again like many other forms of help, it assumes that you have a negative attitude that is incorrect to real life. Why do you have to have poor judgement to have issues? I don't feel I have poor judgement except in anxiety. This is removing merit to your own thoughts to me. It says that, for example, one could "mind read" and assume someone dislikes them but what if that was a fact? What if this person said, "yo I dislike you". What then? There is no solution in CBT, and in fact under CBT, I should be depressed because by removing emotional reasoning which I don't normally have (except in anxiety which is pretty common) and focusing only on facts. Well the fact was told to you and if you can use logic and say A, B or C caused that person to dislike you then under CBT, that is a valid to be depressed.

Also look real life negativity, having no social skills suck and that is obviously a fact for a lot of people but lets go deeper. Are people that kidnapped and abused having irrational thoughts by having PTSD? Not to me, seems like they have a valid reasons to be upset. Another example, if someone doesn't want to be around you and told you, you were abusive and you looked back and you found merit in their words. Would that not be a valid reason to feel bad?

The whole thing seems invalidating really but its late and I should probably go to bed but I have been upset by this all day.

In fact I pretty much already apply this and am still depressed,

One of the reasons I don't act on my suicidal thoughts is realizing without emotional reasoning and logic that that would probably hurt people around me but just as much as that is pure fact without adding any irrational thoughts (Which again, happens in anxiety). Then why can't it be a pure fact that someone can be a bad person. Why can't someone look objectively at their life and say, you know that sucks and not be accused of having irrational thoughts? The whole concept sucks, I hate it.

this won't be my most eloquent post because it's late but I have a different perspective I'd invite you to consider.

first: there is such a thing as depressive realism. Depressed people actually estimate MORE accurately how their actual performance on a task was, than non-depressed people. The latter tend to overestimate their performance, introducing a significant error.

second: Maybe it's not whether your assumptions and believe are ACCURATE or VALID that matters... but instead, some beliefs tend to motivate you positively and some tend to make you give up. So never mind testing the accuracy of a belief. Instead, ask yourself, Well, will thinking this way make me happier or more discouraged?

example: mind-reading error. "That person dislikes me, I can just tell."

- now you could prove or disprove this belief by having a third party ask them how they feel ... more or less (because people could cover up their true feelings)

- but never mind that. Will this belief motivate me to be friendly and cooperative with the person, or withdrawn and sullen towards the person?

Reject the belief/assumption not on the accuracy or validity of the belief; reject it because it does not lead to fruitful outcomes.

I hope you are getting the point here. This alternate perspective on CBT is often not addressed by the therapist, but it should be, because for very literal thinkers the traditional CBT reasoning is troubling.

DCJ I hope this helped you. Please hang in there and work with your therapist, and you could even print this out and show it to them. This is not a theory that is original to me, but I'm afraid I can't remember who took this alternate perspective. But anyway, please give it a shot.

I guess CBT can be of some use to everybody but I'm not sure autistics necessarily have any flaws in their thinking, and indeed understand quite well their behaviors that, e.g., cause social deficits. The problem is there are limits to how much we can modify our behavior on a permanent basis to prevent negative outcomes. Also you have to question whether such behavior modification is even healthy for the person long term.

Private Idaho, CBT is only partially about behavior. I'd say the more significant part of it is the cognitive things. Our view of the world can predispose us to anxiety and/or depression. For a given situation, do we view it as the glass is half full, or half empty. Is a new situation going to be a problem - or an opportunity? See, we haven't even discussed our behavior, but only our view of things.

For this reason, I think CBT can be very valuable to those autistics who are experiencing anxiety and depression - which is not all autistics, but certainly common enough in our community.

I'm sorry it's not working for you, and sincerely hope you can find the best therapy that works for you.

At least you are trying and making an effort with therapy to improve your life, that is something to be respected because it can be difficult for people to overcome their fear, dislike or apprehension towards recieving treatment. Personally, I haven't been to therapy myself in several years, even though right now I might significantly need it.

CBT is an awful form of therapy, imho, even if it's the most extensively studied.

It usually applies best to normal functioning N.T.s with normal lives, not people with mental disabilities or forever alone people.

It also does not take into account external factors whatsoever, and seems to think all life problems are purely within one's own head and mental state of mind.

It's for negative thinkers with good lives, not realist and accurate thinkers with genuinely bad lives.

Of course, your mileage may very, but it's clear you don't like it yourself and find it useless.

For Aspies, I'd recommend maybe ACT Therapy; I've heard much better about it.

Here's what an insightful person on Reddit's r/ForeverAlone section had to say on CBT:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ForeverAlone/c ... t_be_very/

Quotes:

Also, to the OP: I hope you're feeling a bit better today. I totally get that your problems are not tiny, and that they are not all in your head. For reference, I just came from my doctor, and I said I was frustrated I was not conveying my thoughts very well - and she told me that in fact I express myself extremely clearly - and I still don't think she understands what I was trying to say.

Basically, it sucks when someone who is trying to help you, and they are certain they understand, and you are certain they don't. It's that glass wall. I hope you feel understood here.

Hey, here goes a triple post. I just found an article that I thought was very relevant to your troubles with CBT:

http://www.karger.com/Article/FullText/447013

It's basically a study that got extremely good results with treating patients with social anxiety, including patients with avoidant personality disorder (54% of the participants). They found of that pure therapy is much more efficient than a combination of therapy and drugs, which was previously thought to be superior.

The interesting thing about the study is that they use a variation on CBT that they call Meta-Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. I'm not certain what that means in practice, but what they say is that this brand of therapy is more focused on attention and attention processes than the brand of CBT that is commonly practiced in the UK and US. I assume this means that they are more focused on how people pick up social information, which might have more practical value for autistics, who do this in a different way.

I'm not certain what the actual treatment looks like, but it might be worth mentioning the article to your therapist. It seems he is not picking up on the processing part of your challenges, and without that part of the puzzle, it's hard to discern what is treatable, and what is not.