CBT w/o a Dr?

[smallstar]

Hi everyone, I have been reading much on this website about CBT, and I find it very interesting. Is this something you can do on your own, without a dr's care? To me it seems like you can. Just wondering........:confused:

[karai]

Hi sadstar12,
I have been reading a lot also, on this site and elsewhere. I really don't think CBT can be done to yourself without the ablility to see yourself objectively and also know the "answers" to fix whatever bothers you. I talk to myself a lot (in my mind, sometimes out loud if I'm in a private place) and try to reason with myself or try to make sense of my reactions to negative situations that I've experienced, but even though I could describe or explain the situation to myself and ask myself a lot of questions, I could never resolve my problem because I was not objective. I couldn't look at it from another perspective except my own, which of course, was filled with emotion and historical (hysterical) baggage. If you had a very close friend or sibling who you trusted completely, and that person was very empathetic and knowledgable, well then maybe you could give it a shot. But I truly think you will still end up needing to talk to a professional. Hope this helps a bit.

[tmays]

I think it depends on the individual. Since cbt's success depends on you the patient to do the work between sessions I think a self-motivated type of person could do it on their own. But it certainly would help to have someone to help you come up with your counter thoughts initially until you get the way they need to be done. I liked having the security of meeting each week to go over things but by the midway point I felt like I was in control of most if not all of the progress I was making and I think that is the way cbt is supposed to be.

[confuzzed]

there's a very interesting book out there that might help you:
How To Be Your Own Therapist by Patricia Farrell, Ph.D
(there are others books out there with the same subject, I just found this one one day)
I have was going to a therapist that uses CBT up until recently (not a pretty story about leaving:mad:)
and I've been reading this book. The book does caution you that it's a lot of work to be your own therapist and it's hard work. I've found that it really is hard, but you can do it if you set your mind to it.:)
I'm going to try harder now about helping myself and see how I do.:rolleyes:

[Trev57]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think that our beliefs and values are at the core of our innapropriate responses to external events. We become frustrated, fearful or angry when we experience an event as unjust. For my own part I have in the past held rigid views about how things should be and as a result have experienced anger frustration and fear at responses that I perceived to be unfair. It is from this standpoint that we find it so easy to blame others for our frustration, fear and anger.

It might seem that the hardest part of CBT is deciding which responses are appropriate and acceptable to us, and those which are not. It might also seem that the easiest way to address our feelings is to simply change our values and beliefs. This is no easy task because our values and beliefs can be so ingrained that we may find them almost impossible to change. I think that most of the people on this planet respond to external events in a balanced and rational way, they accept that each of us is entitled to our own views and that our views do not have to be rigid. They can also accept or reject our views, they can also accept or reject the way we respond to them as a person. When someone rejects our response to them it does not mean that they reject us as a person, it means that our beiliefs, opinions and values might be different to theirs, and this is absolutely ok. If everyone held the same views, opinions and values we would be called robots.

So for me, it is not simply a question of deciding which responses, beliefs, opinions and values are correct, but that I can accept that every individual is entitled to have their own responses, beliefs, opinions and values. If I can't do this this, why should anyone else allow me to have them ?

[tmays]

there's a very interesting book out there that might help you:
How To Be Your Own Therapist by Patricia Farrell, Ph.D
(there are others books out there with the same subject, I just found this one one day)
I have was going to a therapist that uses CBT up until recently (not a pretty story about leaving:mad:)
and I've been reading this book. The book does caution you that it's a lot of work to be your own therapist and it's hard work. I've found that it really is hard, but you can do it if you set your mind to it.:)
I'm going to try harder now about helping myself and see how I do.:rolleyes:

It sounds like you are on the right track. I used the book by Obitz and Craske and it is really good and simple to digest. Keep at it and I am sure you will make great strides over time:)

[tmays]

Trev for me it has not been so sweeping but more of an adjustment in the way I view circumstances or events that is helping me. Really none of my core values have been altered at all and I have not noticed much if any changes in my beliefs or opinions. For me it has been more a case of getting rid of all the noise that cluttered the messages.

[confuzzed]

thanks for the encouraging words, tmays!!
I'm going to check out the authors you mention too.

[tmays]

YW confuzzed. I hope they are helpful to you, the TEA form exercise is really helpful to me fwiw and I do them daily.

[tmays]

Hi confuzzed! I wanted to check in and see how you are doing at being your own therapist? I hope you are having success:)

[tmays]

Are you still around confuzzed? Just wondering how it is going for you? Hit me back here:)

[tmays]

Happy New Year everybody. I hope everyone is off to a good start in the new year:)

[ASchwartz]

Hi Tmays,

Happy New Year to you, also. I hope you are off to a good start. I am.

Allan :)

[Endlessnight]

Could someone please tell me what CBT is?

[malign]

CBT stands for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
It's a way to bring the negative self-talk that most of us have to consciousness, to counter some of the unreasonable things that are usually buried in that self-talk, to change the way we feel by changing the way we think. There are a number of threads in the Psychotherapy forum that address the technique (with varying degrees of success, since we're mostly laypeople here.)

[tmays]

Hi Tmays,

Happy New Year to you, also. I hope you are off to a good start. I am.

Allan :)

Thanks Allan! So far so good:)
Let's make it our best year ever:D

[tmays]

CBT stands for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
It's a way to bring the negative self-talk that most of us have to consciousness, to counter some of the unreasonable things that are usually buried in that self-talk, to change the way we feel by changing the way we think. There are a number of threads in the Psychotherapy forum that address the technique (with varying degrees of success, since we're mostly laypeople here.)

Great description Malign! Good job:)

[firefoxsilver9]

i'm currently using a website called MoodGym. its a computerized CBT and it seems great. check it out.

[Luna-]

I'd like to second what firefoxsilver9 says about Moodgym. I haven't finished it, but have found useful what I have done so far. If you don't have access to a CBT therapist but want to try CBT, I can recommend it as well.

[Cynthia]

I cannot believe I have not seen this thread before. I highly recommend the CBT book by Sam Obitz and Michelle Craske. It's real simple and the TEA form exercise is invaluable. If you work on countering your thoughts in them everyday you will be better than you ever thought possible sooner than you ever thought possible:)
The moodgym site you mentioned sounds really good also!

[tmays]

This is a great thread:) I use the TEA forms from the book by Obitz like Cynthia and they are great but this moodgym computerized cbt sounds really good also:D