Cognitive Behavioural Therapy ?

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I have finally got my first appointment tomorrow since speaking with the Doctor a few months back.. I am going for CBT whatever that is ? anyone know ? Not sure if it's what I was after but it's a first step apparently and then may lead to other sessions. This first one is a group session so again not too sure what it's going to do for me...
Starting to think the Doc got the wrong end of the stick !

Stu

Hm, I don't know exactly, but it depents what's your problems, but it's supposed to be good by various conditions.

"The premise of mainstream cognitive behavioral therapy is that changing maladaptive thinking leads to change in affect and in behavior but recent variants emphasize changes in one's relationship to maladaptive thinking rather than changes in thinking itself. Therapists or computer-based programs use CBT techniques to help individuals challenge their patterns and beliefs and replace "errors in thinking such as overgeneralizing, magnifying negatives, minimizing positives and catastrophizing" with "more realistic and effective thoughts, thus decreasing emotional distress and self-defeating behavior" or to take a more open, mindful, and aware posture toward them so as to diminish their impact. Mainstream CBT helps individuals replace "maladaptive ... coping skills, cognitions, emotions and behaviors with more adaptive ones", by challenging an individual's way of thinking and the way that he/she reacts to certain habits or behaviors, but there is still controversy about the degree to which these traditional cognitive elements account for the effects seen with CBT over and above the earlier behavioral elements such as exposure and skills training. Modern forms of CBT include a number of diverse but related techniques such as exposure therapy, stress inoculation training, cognitive processing therapy, cognitive therapy, relaxation training, dialectical behavior therapy, and acceptance and commitment therapy.
According to Gatchel et al. (2008), CBT has six phases:
1. Assessment
2. Reconceptualization
3. Skills acquisition
4. Skills consolidation and application training
5. Generalization and maintenance
6. Post-treatment assessment follow-up"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_ ... al_Therapy

CBT pretty much goes like this.

You:
My leg is broken.
Therapist:
It's only in your mind that your leg is broken, we're gonna learn to climb mountains!
You:
But my leg is broken...
Therapist:
All right, well, maybe it is broken, but no matter, we can still climb mountains if we believe!
You:
Well OK...
Therapist:
This is the first step in the beginning of your new life!

And then the therapist instead of trying to fix the broken leg, just tells you to try climbing mountains with a broken leg. It is about trying to make you believe certain things are logical or illogical. So as far as, say, social anxiety, they convince you, say, that your social anxiety is illogical. Then you have less social anxiety because you believe it's illogical to have it.

For normal folks, this might work somewhat, as normal people tend to not be logical thinkers, and may legitimately have some illogical thought processes. So fixing their illogical thought processes is easy. For someone with Aspergers, though, this sort of therapy is 99% useless. Because what happens is, generally at least in my case, I just argue the therapist's logic forever, and in most cases they can't "beat" me in the logic arguments, so they usually end up giving up. The overwhelming majority of most therapy is CBT based in some way, because it's cheaper than psychoanalysis as it takes less time, and it's I guess more effective for most people.

Basically I just see CBT as a fancy way of going "Well pull yourself up by the bootstraps!" You'd probably be better off just going to Walmart (or the Dollar Store) and buying some random motivational books and reading them, you'd probably have better results.

I had similar experiences to 1000knives. CBT seemed to involve denying my problems existed, rather than attempting to tackle the root of the problems.

CBT is not about deluding yourself, it is about correcting erroneous perceptions of yourself and the world in general due to distortions in your cognitive thought processes that result from having a mental disorder/illness.

You cannot use CBT to make some physical injury magically disappear. You can, however, use CBT to realize that you are not at fault for being born with a disorder that makes you different. It encourages you to find your own path in life, a path that will most likely differ from that of a normal person, but one that is actually capable of bringing you happiness.

Whenever I think of behavioral therapy, I think of reward-based behavior modification, which only worked for me in potty training.

I think it's important to understand that a balance has to be achieved with CBT and ASDs. CBT can only go so far to ameliorate your condition. The truth is, by virtue of simply having an ASD, you truly do have an actual, immutable condition that cannot be negated by any degree of wishful fantasy; and you must, eventually, confront this unfortunate nature of your life. I find CBT to be very useful. Can it take away your autism? No. Can it transform you into a neurotypical? No. But can it help you cope with life? Yes... or at least, I think so, anyway.

cbt is good - variant rebt is even better imho

here's a good free on-line cbt moodgym.anu.edu.au/welcome

cbt helps you spot 'warped thinking' that you are doing

Las its not what I was after, but it seems i need to have one on one sessions as the first step, they could refer me after that, I did tell them I am after a diagnosis rather than help. I got this far on my own !

Stu

Doesn't work on ASDs due to the fact that they're not irrational thoughts. Social phobia? Yeah, it'll work.

Well you can't "cure" ASD with it, but a lot of autistics have developed maladaptive hapits where it can help.

I have a lot of maladaptive hapits myself. Thinking too much about negative situations, spending too much time avoiding negative situations and so on...!

The main issue with CBT is that it does not address the sensory scrambling issues in AS. You can rehearse what you want to say a bazillion times, but when you're actually doing a conversation, you will still hear yourself saying something else besides what you tried to say, and you'll still have trouble switching concentration from listening to watching to trying to do eye contact etc. So it may help, but won't address the core issues. Also, I don't know much about it, but CBT doesn't seem to address improvisational skills, either, like when a conversation goes totally somewhere you'd never expect and your script doesn't cover it. The Army says "train the way you fight" and I'm not sure CBT is real-world realistic unless you practice in the real world.

In my friend's experience, it meant ''reducing passifying and negative thought patterns'', and working towards a positive, proactive attitude. Realizing anxiety is all in the mind, thereby step by step reducing it. It really helped!

yes i found REBT (a form of CBT) very helpful. gives perspective. helps apply other tools, and to wind down the intensity of social (e.g. unlearningasperger.blogspot.com.uk)