/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.15917255]

Does cognitive behavioural therapy work? What are some good books to learn it?

[Anonymous No.15917260]

>>15917255
Not when compared to exposure therapy, which is the worst but fastest way to get over your issues.

[Anonymous No.15917274]

CBT is great, my mom is a CBT specialist so I get my mom to give me CBT every day

[Anonymous No.15917555]

>>15917274
That's great! My mom gives me cock and ball torture too. It's a great way to relieve tension.

[Anonymous No.15918282]

Personally, I didn't find it helpful, because rational arguments don't work when it comes to your lower-level systems that actually cause your symptoms. You cannot convince yourself out of a panic attack with rationalization, no matter how good the argument, because the part of you that is having the panic attack doesn't respond to verbal and abstract reasoning.

Statistically, it's about as effective as any other psychotherapeutic method, which has some controversial implications for the entire field of psychotherapy. Namely that it's all a placebo at best.

http://www.coherencetherapy.org/files/dodo-bibliography.pdf

[Anonymous No.15918447]

>>15918282
Interesting i have a few psychology friends and despite being bored of it (its psychotherapy for worker ants) they say its the most effective in terms of results. The only thing they hate more is marketing psychology which apparently every department is filled with today. Also it doesn't mean you should reason yourself out of a panic attack. Also where does it say that with CBT you reason yourself out of a mood (panic attack)? You supposed to find the reason why you have them and expose yourself to that stimulus.

[Anonymous No.15918454]

>>15917260
I used to have an anxiety disorder and exposure therapy is literally the only way to recover.

[Anonymous No.15918576]

>>15918447
>You supposed to find the reason why you have them and expose yourself to that stimulus.

The cognitive part is about identifying negative automatic thoughts and beliefs and reasoning against them. If I have the intrusive thought "everyone is starring at me and thinks I'm weird" which naturally produces anxiety, a CBT therapist would recommend looking for evidence, testing out these assumptions and so on. This is very difficult to do in the moment and even if you do find rational evidence and conclude that it is improbable, you will likely discount that evidence because of the overwhelming emotional and sensory overload of information that is telling you otherwise. Direct experience trumps abstract reasoning every time.

It's pretty easy to see that there's a distinction between two systems here: system 1 and 2. One is fast, unconscious, automatic and one is slow, conscious, deliberate. The whole assumption of CBT is that you can change the first one by playing by the rules of the second one. Logic and reasoning only work with the slow, conscious system but anxiety, depression etc. are all the result of the first system that controls motivation, perception, affect etc. I can consciously and rationally conclude one thing but still have system 1 have the opposite judgment and create conflict.

>>15918454
After exposing yourself to a situation or stimulus, you will likely get desensitized to some degree, but the vast majority of people that "get better" eventually relapse into old behavior because the cause is never actually addressed or cured. The paper I linked shows that systematic desentization is one of the therapies studied and it has the same effect size as the rest of them when you properly account for placebo.

Exposure might over time spontaneously cause some kind of re-organization of the structure of your psyche and manifest itself as a change in beliefs, attitude and so on, but this is largely blind luck. Obviously, to change the automatic processes governed by system 2, one needs to go through the right "corrective" experience that re-organizes it, but it's not simply a matter of exposure. It can just as likely back fire and your social anxiety could become worse after a few negative experiences.

[Anonymous No.15918652]

be afraid of thing -> start doing things that makes you afraid related to thing -> learn from it and adapt.

it's one of the simplest ways to get out of your bad situation. however if you are at rock bottom you often do not have the energy to do anything, so some medication may be required

[Anonymous No.15918654]

>>15917555
Thanks for explaining the joke. The world now knows your IQ

[Anonymous No.15918656]

>Just think happy thoughts lol

[Anonymous No.15918662]

>>15917255
If you're a midwit: Yes
If you're on either end of the bell curve: No

[Anonymous No.15918665]

>>15918652
that would be ERP

[Anonymous No.15918668]

>>15918654
He's from reddit, be nice.

[Anonymous No.15918700]

>>15918576
Agree with most of this, but in intellectually-challenged people (i.e., most of the population) output from System 1 often gets 'reified' and entrenched into the states of System 2. Their immediate emotional responses dictate their worldview, in other words. In such cases, correcting stubborn system 2 structures can help render the corresponding system 1 responses more amenable to change.

[Anonymous No.15918739]

>>15917255
>Does cognitive behavioural therapy work?
No. Good thread.

[Anonymous No.15918755]

>>15918576
Sounds like someones got a case of that PTSD

[Anonymous No.15918806]

>>15918576
Well I had panic disorder alongside various physical symptoms and depersonalisation so it wasn’t anxiety about anything external as such. I couldn’t say how my experience with exposure translates to other types of anxiety disorders. Perhaps I just got lucky but I recall over time with exposure that the various sensations both bothered me less and weakened and eventually dissipated over time. My cause was a prolonged period of stress in my life that led to me developing the symptoms. When that stress resolved the anxiety revolved around not wanting to experience those symptoms. I may be unusual in that regard in that after the event it became largely a psychosomatic phenomenon. I agree that the experience wouldn’t necessarily translate perfectly over to something like social anxiety or GAD, but I understand it works for OCD category disorders too.

[Anonymous No.15918809]

>>15918454
>used to have anxiety disorder
Huh? How did you rid yourself anon? Didn’t think they went away

[Anonymous No.15918840]

>>15918809
See >>15918806

It may depend on the type of anxiety disorder or ‘anxieties’ you have but in my specific case exposure worked after a few months of recovery work. Exposure as a methodology has several variants like ACT or ERP but it’s basically the same principle of recognising irrational fears and then undertaking the process of habituating and desensitising the subconscious mind to the unwarranted accompanying thoughts and sensations. You can do it yourself with resources off the internet but you have to be really persistent and it can get demoralising at times. There are specialised therapists that it may be better to work with but YMMV as to their competence and efficacy. Again, I can’t say if it would work for every time of anxiety disorder but it worked for mine.

[Anonymous No.15918871]

>>15917255
I was introduced to it by an army psychologist and it really kickstarted positive change in my life. Maybe just check out some youtube videos first?

[Anonymous No.15918970]

>>15917255
I did my first round around 15 and it was stupid. The people who write the books, and supply the therapy in person, are often major degenerates anyway.

[Anonymous No.15918990]

>>15918282
This chart is fucking garbage.

[Anonymous No.15918998]

>>15918990
Did I miss some meme therapy?

[Anonymous No.15919011]

>>15918998
Psychotherapy chart. And has only memes instead of an actual textbook. Garbage, anon. Unironically. Starts with the DSM-5 KEK The person who made this just gathered a bunch of books from some meme authors. You are definitely better copying the syllabus of some random uni psychology course.

[Anonymous No.15919080]

>>15919011
>>15919011
It's an introduction that goes over various approaches and its important texts and authors. Cognitive therapy features Beck and Ellis, behavior therapy features Skinner, integrated together you get Young for Schema therapy, Linehan for DBT and Hayes for ACT as distinct approaches. A textbook or a "CBT for dummies" would likely spoonfeed you the relevant information, but I found that reading the original texts by the original authors a lot more interesting and insightful. The rest are less practiced but anyone interested in psychotherapy should know about them as they offer unique perspectives.

>a bunch of books from some meme authors

Which of these do you consider memes? They're all important in their respective approach.
Aside from the cheeky DSM recommendation, they're all pretty solid reads.

[Anonymous No.15919127]

>>15917255
CBT to understand your maladaptive habits + Exposure therapy = Best anxiety treatment

Please don't listen to faggots on this board who tell you to read Freud or Nietzsche and that CBT is nihilistic + blah blah blah reductive psychology is nihilistic blah blah. Most people on this board are extremely retarded

[Anonymous No.15919129]

>>15919080
This is no introduction to psychotherapy, anon. It is definitely missing something introductory to psychology too. And maybe tell people that they can't diagnose themselves? This chart is shit with meme authors and exposes people to their biases.

[Anonymous No.15919165]

>>15919127
Second this. You don’t need to read Jung to get over your anxiety. There’s a difference between affected ennui and a clinical condition.

[Anonymous No.15919173]

>>15919127
Do I need a therapist to do those things or is it something I can try myself?

[Anonymous No.15919176]

>>15919165
Exactly. Its not that Authors like Jung or Freud are bad, I think they play a huge role on psychoanalysis and people should read them, but 95% of your problems usually don't have any deeper meaning besides you being a pussy

[Anonymous No.15919181]

>>15919127
>Most people on this board are extremely retarded
Coincidentally, the most profound discussions happen around times that most Americans would be asleep.

[Anonymous No.15919184]

>>15919173
You can try to read CBT alone and implement yourself to exposure therapy but I would always recommend a therapist honestly

[Anonymous No.15919191]

You need to incorporate exposure into CBT. It absolutely works for anxiety issues, and is by far the best treatment for them. I suffered from panic attacks so crippling I hardly left my house for two years, I know what I’m talking about. Don’t know how effective it is for something like depression though

[Anonymous No.15919215]

It looks like we have some people here who really know what they're talking about, so, what if you've been an isolated anxious and depressed mess for over a decade, with BPD, living alone with no living relatives or friends. How do I go about getting help? Can I get myself institutionalized and fixed like the celebrities do?

[Anonymous No.15919224]

>>15919181
No shit, Amerimutts are mentally impaired

[Anonymous No.15919253]

>>15918739
CBT is meant for depression you retarded nigger, its meant for anxiety. CBT only cures depression if your chronic anxiety is the cause of it

[Anonymous No.15919261]

>>15919129
Those textbooks are generally milquetoast and give you extremely distilled principles like "be nice to your patients, bro" meanwhile you read Ellis and realize that a more aggressive approach also works and there are no actual rules. You learn more from trying to get a full picture of what's out there than just memorizing what some textbook author believes and regurgitating it on a test.

Why shouldn't people diagnose themselves? Most trained therapist simply ask about the requirements in the DSM and it's all based on self-report anyway. There's more "scientific" measures like Milton's inventories because they do various calculations and statistics but they keep it behind a paywall. Those might be worth a visit but 99% don't use such tools.

And which of these do you consider meme authors? An introduction like that wouldn't exist without these authors experimenting and thinking about new approaches.

[Anonymous No.15919263]

>>15919215
What are you anxious about anon? Then, to what extent can honestly say those anxieties are legitimate? You can start there.

[Anonymous No.15919264]

>>15919253
Is not meant*

[Anonymous No.15919266]

>>15918809
Anxiety disorders are very treatable. The process is simple, just difficult, as it requires you to allow your body to scream at you that you’re about to die without reacting to it. Over time with these non-reactions, your brain learns what it’s been falsely perceiving as a threat isn’t a threat at all, and will send off less and less panic alarms at you that will also gradually decrease in intensity. It sounds impossible but people overcome it all the time. It requires 100% commitment though, more than almost anything else

[Anonymous No.15919275]

>>15917255
This shit works senpai https://maps.org/research/mdma

[Anonymous No.15919281]

>>15919261
Millon*

[Anonymous No.15919294]

>>15919261
Unironically trolling.

[Anonymous No.15919314]

>>15917255
Psychology bachelor degree and first year into cognitive neuroscience master. Pls anon let go this joke called cognitive behavioral therapy. Does it work? Yea like niggers work
CBT is a capitalism slave, it sells and let's you conduct research in the psychology field. It's all a fraud, read Freud firstly, don't start with this capitalism crap. And if you want something that 'works' then buy a deck of cards learn magic faggot

[Anonymous No.15919328]

>>15919314
Read >>15919127

You're a retard

[Anonymous No.15919339]

>>15919328
>it's effective because i said so

How do you explain this?
http://www.coherencetherapy.org/files/dodo-bibliography.pdf

[Anonymous No.15919374]

>>15919339
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303383381_The_empirical_status_of_cognitive-behavioral_therapy_A_review_of_meta-analyses

Any form of order is better than none, but Freud is literally useless. For someone with a bachelor degree in psychology you literally don't know shit lmao

[Anonymous No.15919404]

>>15919374
Not as good as this m8
https://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2020/02/10/mdma-assisted-psychotherapy-to-treat-ptsdmaps/

[Anonymous No.15919408]

>>15919374
Read the actual paper. It clearly shows that CBT has the equivalent effect size to several other "evidence-based" psychotherapies including: systematic desensitization, cognitive, behavioral, interpersonal, psychodynamic, client centered, nondirective/supportive, focusing, process experiential, gestalt, supportive, and cathartic-emotive.

That's the Dodo bird verdict and it's widely accepted. Now consider the other points and their implications, especially the no difference in efficacy between skilled and new therapists, no significant difference between current efficacy and placebo treatments, no significant difference between therapy and pills or therapy + pills etc.

People like you like to parrot the popular opinion. The only reason CBT is so popular is because it's cheap and you can train a monkey to fill out CBT forms. The reality is that you would get the same benefit from a voodoo doctor or an energy therapist or an NLP trainer.

[Anonymous No.15919436]

>>15917255
No. Humans are psychologically static. You are born mad or sane, it's never made. All the supposed causation are simply mistaken - it's the exact opposite. Crazy people should be turned into thralls and be sacrificed during pagan rituals.

[Anonymous No.15919438]

>>15919408
Not the same anon but Jordan Peterson literally explains why this happens

[Anonymous No.15919441]

>>15919436
This

[Anonymous No.15919449]

>>15919438
Care to elaborate? He seems Jungian but mostly recommends anti-depressants and other questionable pharma.

[Anonymous No.15919450]

ACT and DBT were better for me, but it depends on what you have and what you respond best to. CBT is particularly good for worried well anxiety ridden housewives and for creating lower scores on anxiety inventories, which is why it’s the most common form of therapy and the most often covered by insurance companies and national health agencies.

[Anonymous No.15919493]

We have no unified theory of mental health, especially when it comes to practice. CBT is appealing because it's the cheapest and quickest compared to other types of therapy, and I'm pretty sure all the therapies perform as well as a placebo. There may be elements of truth to the Carl Rogers approach, or the CBT method of challenging your worldview, but we really don't have a silver bullet for most mental disorder (yes I'm looking at you, psychiatry). I'd say anxiety is probably the easiest to resolve with a majority of other cases depending on individual factors.

I used to work in a mental health clinic and the thing that did it for me was when all the therapists had different approaches and opinions on clients and all thought they were equally correct and everyone just seemed to have their own opinion on what worked and what didn't. I think there can be legitimacy to the field but I think it will have to wait for everyone to stop milking the cash cow and to stop thinking they're the next human mental wizard.

Right now there are so many different schools of thought that everyone thinks are some kind of window into the mind.

[Anonymous No.15919501]

>>15919339
>How do you explain this?
>http://www.coherencetherapy.org/files/dodo-bibliography.pdf
another anon here, this is a bunch of old cherrypicked studies selected by disciples of some niche psychotherapy that have an agenda, their conclusions go against mainstream science, including absolute horseshit like "The major classes of psychiatric drugs do not outperform properly designed placebos.".

[Anonymous No.15919509]

>>15919374
>Any form of order is better than none, but Freud is literally useless.
Isn't that something that was postulated around 1950's already?

[Anonymous No.15919514]

>>15917255
It’s my only hope because talk therapy doesn’t

[Anonymous No.15919561]

>>15919501
Yes, they have an agenda, meanwhile the people that actually want to sell you these drugs and keep over-diagnosing them have no real reason to fudge the numbers, especially when the efficacy of ADs is clearly so overwhelming. It's pretty established that pills are equal in efficacy to therapy, but the Dodo bird verdict proclaims that "all have won" when they're actually just comparing duds against each other and actually "all have lost".

The point is to realize that none of these perspectives have the right answer instead of blindly recommending "CBT as the best therapy out there" or whatever system you bought into.

[Anonymous No.15919600]

>>15919561
I didn't buy into any system, I'm just poking holes at your dumb pdf. No refined methodologist would ever use a retarded phrase like "properly designed placebos". The way you write also shows you're not any deeper into the topic than taking the opinion of conspiratorial retards, because you clearly have no idea how evidence works in medicine. Go over-diagnose some drugs and fudge the numbers.

[Anonymous No.15919607]

Its worked great for me, wish I had it sooner rather than have PTSD for 25 years...

[Anonymous No.15919670]

>>15919600
You didn't actually mention any flaws with the studies, you just assumed it was cherry-picked because any evidence that goes against the status quo is just "conspiratory garbage". You can just as easily assume that the people that have a vested interest in the current system won't publish studies that undermine it.

>you clearly have no idea how evidence works in medicine

Is there medical evidence that ADs do what they're supposed to do? The "overwhelming" evidence for these drugs is just convenient statistical studies that show a certain amount of people "get better", the equivalent to most evidence-based psychotherapies, which is enough justification for them to be prescribed to anyone without any actual medical examination.

[Anonymous No.15919733]

>>15919670
>Is there medical evidence that ADs do what they're supposed to do?
Yes, there is, you can exert some effort and find it yourself. I'm not going to copypaste studies I've never read at you, because that doesn't constitute a learned argument, despite your sophomoric conviction. Also, way to completely miss the point again mr. "mainstream science is wrong as this link I never properly examined purports to prove and don't call me a conspiratory theorist, this link is more trustworthy than a gazillion better sources because big pharma and an army of corrupt mental health are behind fudging the data".

[Anonymous No.15919783]

>>15919733
>i'm too lazy to find studies that support my naive world view but here's a convenient strawman that i can bash ooga booga it's a conspiritard looool

I understand using the whole "conspiracy tard" heuristic to dismiss obvious bullshit but now you're just being lazy and arguing about something you clearly have no clue about. There's literally no /medical/ evidence to corroborate the chemical imbalance meme, it's all just statistical studies based on self-report.

There doesn't have to be a conspiracy, people rarely publish findings that contradict established "science" because that's not how you get a job and keep it. It could also just be a methodological error and the way we test efficacy is flawed or maybe it's all about common factors like the therapeutic relationship that's present in all forms of therapies.

[Anonymous No.15919787]

>>15919011
>definitely better copying the syllabus of some random uni psychology course.
doubt

[Anonymous No.15919800]

>>15919787
Yes, graduate in 4chan charts, anon. /lit/ psychology course is definitely prestigious and its graduates achieved plenty of great deeds. You won't get a diploma but the knowledge is priceless. Most of billionaires did that, they dropped college and got into 4chan charts.

[Anonymous No.15919821]

>>15917255
> Does cognitive behavioural therapy work
YES.

[Anonymous No.15919828]

>>15919800
Most people know fuckall about psychology or mental health, and many live their lives being toxic emotional vampires in spite of their success. Can you blame anybody for wanting to have a palace of the mind instead of a material palace after looking at the rewards offered by society and being disgusted by it?

A typical course in psychology is not going to compare to the works of Freud, Jung, Rogers, Jaynes, etc., nor is it going to compare to the breadth and depth of what that chart anon was trying to accomplish by compiling those works together. Maybe it was an amateurish attempt, but how would you do better? By copying the curriculum of a field rocked by replication issues, political biases, and an overall lack of direction and systematization? Don't make me laugh, anon.

[Anonymous No.15919832]

>>15918282
>You cannot convince yourself out of a panic attack with rationalization, no matter how good the argument, because the part of you that is having the panic attack doesn't respond to verbal and abstract reasoning.
this, when I've had panic attacks I can rationally think to myself: I'm fine, this will pass, it's just a panic attack
but it doesn't make it go away, definitely helps a little bit because I know I'm not having a heart attack or something, but there's no way to just think yourself out of that moment

[Anonymous No.15919833]

>>15917255

Yes, CBT does work.

Too bad you can't do talk therapy by yourself

[Anonymous No.15919840]

>>15919828
This, kids. This is what you get from a 4chan education. Take a good look at it. Is this what you want to be? You, underage anon, I'm unironically talking to you. Quit reading this bs website before it is too late and you end up like the quoted anon.

[Anonymous No.15919855]

>>15919080

Frankl? What even is the basis for the hierarchy here? Do you really think Frankl is much more than pop philosophy? Why is he above the DSM-V which is the culmination of psychology research?

[Anonymous No.15919864]

>>15918576
>Direct experience trumps abstract reasoning every time
thats a personal problem; cbt doesnt work specifically on you

[Anonymous No.15919884]

>>15918662
>im depressed and im obviously too good for cbt

[Anonymous No.15919921]

>>15919840
>This is what you get from a 4chan education.

And it's glorious. This place was always about being a free thinker and making your own conclusions instead of sucking institutionalized cock. Go work off your student load at Walmart. God forbid someone trails of the accepted path of your university professor's world view.

>>15919855
Frankl founded logotherapy. It's worth a read as it offers an interesting and unique perspective. There is no hierarchy, it's just different approaches with different perspectives on the issue of mental disorders. Each perspective is pretty limited on its own but each offers a unique piece of the puzzle. The point of the chart is to offer variety so that you don't get stuck into a single myopic perspective like behaviorism or psychoanalysis or Rogerian feel good crap.

>Why is he above the DSM-V which is the culmination of psychology research?

The DSM is just a tool for diagnosis. It's not exactly going to give you insight into how to solve these problems. Someone with social anxiety displays certain symptoms but the origin of those symptoms requires more than just a checklist.

[Anonymous No.15919938]

>>15919783
>people rarely publish findings that contradict established "science" because that's not how you get a job and keep it.
lol, stay clueless

[Anonymous No.15919948]

>>15919921
charts, anon. Unironically meme charts.

[Anonymous No.15919988]

>>15919864
Wish I was one of the x% of people that can control their emotions with their thoughts!

[Anonymous No.15920044]

>>15919988
People think their way into depression. It's the quality of thought that counts.

[Anonymous No.15920048]

>>15919840
>Is this what you want to be?

[Anonymous No.15920361]

>>15919840
>>15920048
lol dude you got OWNED

[Anonymous No.15920401]

>>15920361
Implying that most kids aren't retarded.

[Anonymous No.15920449]

>>15920361
Are you over 20 and do you still follow charts?

[Anonymous No.15920502]

>>15917255
Assuming you are trying to solve a problem for yourself or someone you know, I would start by reading reports which match the case as close as possible. If you don't understand the material you go and build up knowledge up from that. Your don't want to waste time solving the generic case, you want to solve the specific and only over time expand to stuff that isn't immediately relevant.

[Anonymous No.15920529]

>>15917255
it doesn’t work more or less than other types of therapy. the main issue with CBT is it encourages arguing with your thoughts which can just contribute to the problem of mind-fucking yourself. It’s kind've like a lite version of Buddhism. You can try it out but you may be better off figuring out how to beat your mind on your own. CBT is a bit too logical to work I believe.

[Anonymous No.15920661]

>>15919988
You’re not supposed to control your emotions with your thoughts, you’re supposed to control your reaction to those emotions that result in maladaptive behavior and a solidification of the false belief you’re in danger in benign situations.

I think you guys are kinda confused how CBT/exposure works. It’s not the end all be all but it’s definitely very helpful when actually understood and used correctly

[Anonymous No.15920841]

>>15920529
CBT actually is supposed to teach you to think differently so that you *don’t* argue with your thoughts. If taught correctly, the main tool you’re supposed to gain from it is an actual understanding of acceptance, which is extremely valuable (mostly for any kind of anxiety disorder). A lot of the criticisms I’ve seen towards it in this thread seem pretty misguided. Granted, a lot of therapists are pretty shit at teaching it to their patients, so I’m not exactly shocked

[Anonymous No.15920867]

>>15920661
>you’re supposed to control your reaction to those emotions that result in maladaptive behavior and a solidification of the false belief you’re in danger in benign situations

Yes, that's great in theory, but what's the actual mechanism of change here? Let's say there's some core emotional part that's outside of your control that gets triggered by whatever context or cue, why do you think that said part will eventually go away if you just carefully suppress your reaction to it? If all you can do is control your observable behavior, you're really just masking the actual problem, living with a straight face while you're suffering distress inside. On the outside, you're getting "better" but really nothing is changing except that you're getting more and more dissociated from your own direct experience. If your problem is anxiety, you're not getting rid of anxiety, you're just learning how to suppress and ignore it, same for depressive symptoms or other problems. Most people lose their gains and eventually relapse into old behavior because it's not possible to do this kind of brute-force in the long-term.

Also, where does the false belief that you are in danger come from? Supposedly, you're just making an error in logic and reasoning! If only you go backwards through your assumptions, you will correct the error and the distress goes away. This doesn't work in practice at all. Cognitive therapists when faced with the client's inability to change these maladaptive beliefs just bullshit their way through by saying you need lots of effort and practice. If I am wrong about what the capital of Russia is, I will correct that error rather quickly. But what about these emotional beliefs? Despite all the evidence and the person acknowledging the rational alternative, the belief remains. This should signal that the belief isn't simply a belief at all but rather how the person actually experiences reality. If a social situation creates a lot of anxiety and panic, it is because the way they experience the situation makes such distressing emotions compelling. The belief is just a verbal expression of how reality "seems" to them, how they perceive it. It's pretty easy to see that most mental disorders aren't simply a problem of rational error, but involve lower level systems of perception and motivation that aren't easily controlled by verbal and abstract reasoning. Before I have a rational judgement about a situation, my system of perception has already made certain elements salient and stand out, what I consider danger is firstly a direct experience and then becomes a verbal, conscious thought (most people don't even have an inner monologue but CBT fags will find a way to shoehorn a thought or a belief in there).

[Anonymous No.15920878]

>meh

[Anonymous No.15920880]

>>15920867
(cont.)

Consider the problem of procrastination. Despite consciously and rationally believing that X is good for you, some people need considerable effort to push themselves through some task or activity. This means that rational judgment and "however you want to call" unconscious part of you can judge differently. This creates conflict and you can certainly push through it with enough effort, but willpower is not an unlimited resource nor is brute-force a good long-term solution. The automatic, unconscious part of you will always be able to eventually overpower you, especially when you are stressed and tired.

The better solution is to actually understand how these lower level systems work and how learning happens on that level. Then you can perhaps synthesize techniques that actually work by targeting the cause of the problem. Social anxiety happens because of a bias in perception, not rational judgment. How a person came to have that bias is a matter of previous experience, call it trauma or just implicit learning.

[Anonymous No.15920929]

>>15920867
You literally do get rid of the anxiety because you retrain your brain to release less adrenaline and cortisol in response to a given stimuli. You get so used to feeling the anxiety that it no longer bothers you.

[Anonymous No.15920942]

My experience? For sure. The cognitive model essentially states that our emotions are a result of our cognitions, i.e., your thoughts and beliefs. The strength of this idea is pretty evident when you consider an emotion like fear. Fear comes from an anticipation that a harm will come to you. If a harm is actually coming, some fear can be desirable. If you see a poisonous snake, fear will motivate you to escape it. If it turns out you mistook a snake for a vine and you realize this, your fear will slowly dissipate. Anxiety is really just a form of fear, and it's usually unwarranted. If you're scared of talking to people, recognize that snake for the vine that it really is. The chances of an interaction being negative are really low, and most of the time, if you take the experience badly, it's on you.

There's divergent strands of cbt btw. The whole disputing the evidence of your beliefs is from the first and second wave. What the third wave has recognized is that disputing your beliefs is actually unnecessary. The important thing it does is make you dissociate yourself from your thoughts and not take them for granted. One playful way they go about this is for you to talk to your negative thoughts as if they were an abstract entity rather than a part of yourself. So you may talk with your fear of talking to other people, for example.

The major thing cbt has going for it over other psychotherapies is the number of sessions required, which reduces cost. People will go years being psychoanalyzed while taking cbt only requires about 8-12 sessions for long lasting results. They even have books that are demonstrated to help compared with wait list control groups.

[Anonymous No.15921042]

>>15920929
So you think you can just reduce the problem to adrenaline and cortisol? Well, what happens when we inject people with these chemicals. Do they always experience anxiety? Nope, their hearts beat faster and they might have some physical characteristics of "anxiety" but the emotion is not there. You can't account for the phenomenological experience of distressing emotions purely through chemicals, purely through the physical part.

>>15920942
>dissociate yourself from your thoughts and not take them for granted

This is indeed the culmination of cognitive therapy. Eventually you are so removed from your own thoughts and direct experience that you can't even tell if you have anxiety anymore.

[Anonymous No.15921096]

>>15921042
With panic attacks or depersonalisation or other physical symptoms you literally can because you habituate to them. Similarly, if you have OCD not doing a compulsion because you know your OCD beliefs are irrational and enduring the resulting anxiety will reduce the anxiety over a period of time. You can’t reason with clinical anxiety at that level.

[Anonymous No.15921141]

>>15918654
Explaining what cunt, I see no other joke.

[Anonymous No.15921176]

>>15918576
>anxiety, depression etc. are all the result of the first system that controls motivation, perception, affect etc.
I feel like this is overly general. A big part of anxiety is ruminating and overthinking, so I'm not sure it can be characterized as automatic or unconscious. Then again I've never bought the whole System 1 v. System 2 stuff, it all just seems so reductive to me.

[Anonymous No.15921262]

>>15921042
Your take on this stuff seems to jive with me. Any recommended reading?

[Anonymous No.15921283]

Didn't work on me. Exposure therapy for social anxiety only makes it worse. I'm a schizotypal.

[Anonymous No.15921351]

>>15921042
>This is indeed the culmination of cognitive therapy. Eventually you are so removed from your own thoughts and direct experience that you can't even tell if you have anxiety anymore.
Actually, no. If we looked at the acceptance and commitment approach, for example, part of it is actually being willing to face the direct causes of your anxiety head on, just not while letting yourself fall in despair in the meanwhile. The commitment part of ACT can go as far as ask you to imagine if you died as you are now, then to deeply consider what values you aren't living up to that might be causing you distress due to not living a life well lived.

[Anonymous No.15921472]

>>15921176
A bias in perception and motivation is likely to affect conscious reasoning as well. For instance, you can conclude that everybody at the party hated you because your perception was primed to pick up on those negative cues and even neutral cues were interpreted negatively, so your experience of that situation ends up a certain way because system 1 has learned to filter information that way. Similarly, you might feel compelled towards certain obsessive thoughts or behavior and while that is conscious to you, the underlying motivational system that creates that compulsion is unconscious and plays by unknown rules. Through biased filtering and compulsion, you can pretty much explain most of the disorders in the DSM. Remove the biased filter and the compulsion and most maladaptive behaviors would likely dissolve because there would be no underlying cause to it anymore.

From what I've read about different approaches, even if the approach acknowledges the role of unconscious, automatic processes, they sort of just assume that you can eventually change it through brute-force. I feel like without understanding how these lower-level systems work, we won't be able to create a truly effective therapy. Currently, following any therapeutic method is no better than random chance because people sometimes do get better but it's never really because of the reported theoretical framework.

>>15921262
Well, there's a chart at the start of the thread. I don't particularly buy into any of the systems there, but going through and understanding all the different approaches is a real education. You come to realize that they all have certain baseless assumptions and that they never work as theorized, but there's perhaps value in trying to piece together an integrated, coherent picture based on small amounts of insight from each approach.

>>15921351
It makes sense that "acceptance" would reduce anxiety to some degree because you reduce internal conflict. Instead of changing system 1, you sort of train yourself to play along with system 1's compulsions and stop fighting it. On the one hand, it acknowledges the futility of trying to change your emotional experience with your thoughts, on the other hand it doesn't do much beyond that. Also, I can't say what the long-term implications of dissociating from your thoughts are.

Theoretical assumptions aside, does it actually work? I'm pretty sure it's about as effective as CBT (and in turn, the rest of the evidence-based therapies).

[Anonymous No.15921497]

>>15921472
>Well, there's a chart at the start of the thread. I don't particularly buy into any of the systems there, but going through and understanding all the different approaches is a real education. You come to realize that they all have certain baseless assumptions and that they never work as theorized, but there's perhaps value in trying to piece together an integrated, coherent picture based on small amounts of insight from each approach.
If you had to make a chart, what would you start with?

[Anonymous No.15921585]

>>15921472
>your experience of that situation ends up a certain way because system 1 has learned to filter information that way.
I see what you're saying. Sometimes I'll have this false perception that everyone is watching me and even though I know consciously it's not true I still act as though it were (looking in one single direction not looking up so as to not meet peoples eyes). That said I don't know that it's all just misperception. In my experience when I was most down in my life I become more not less perceptive. When I felt the most shit I wrote and thought more clearly than I had ever before on a range of topics, and was better at synthesizing different ideas. I don't think I'd characterize this prior state as maladaptive, just different. Being in a depressive state carries certain advantages and insights that you lose once you enter into a state of contentment again, neither is better or worse. This is totally anecdotal though and you clearly know more than me on this topic.

[Anonymous No.15921688]

>>15921497
I actually made that chart. The fact that I don't buy into any of these systems doesn't mean there isn't value in reading them. If you want more related to unconscious, automatic processes, I haven't been able to find any approach that openly deals with that specific problem space and the vast majority of articles on perception and motivation are either too low-level or too high-level, nothing that would acknowledge its direct role in certain mental disorders.

"The case against reality" by Donald Hoffman is really good read about perception and how it evolved.

>>15921585
I think what you're talking about is depressive realism. Supposedly, depressed people see reality much more realistically, but you're right that there isn't a right or wrong way to see the world. We didn't evolve to perceive the "truth" but rather some limited small amount of it that allows us to survive and adapt. All the happy-go-lucky normies that can can't smell their own farts are certainly doing much better in a world that demands confidence instead of humility. Even if the negative view of the world or yourself is "correct", it's still only just a subset of an unknowable reality. You filter information because you can't process everything, you have to be selective and only take in what is deemed important for survival. I can certainly relate to that feeling of being watched and being hyper-vigilant about other people's attention. I don't know what creates that kind of bias, but I'm pretty sure most other people do not experience reality in the same way. With that kind of perceptual bias, it's easy to understand how anxiety would be a compelling emotion.

[Anonymous No.15921815]

>>15921472
The commitment part tackles some of that concern since it actively asks you to take an honest look at your life to see where your needs may not be met or how you're not truly living a life you value. Though, I could see how always being in a detached state isn't good. I would hope people could differentiate when cognitive distancing is and isn't appropriate.

ACT is currently classified as a third wave CBT therapy. But yes, it hasn't been shown to be any more effective than traditional Beckian CBT. I believe the only data point ACT enthusiasts have been able to point to is that traditional cognitive therapy in book form has statistical adverse effects on people who are heavy ruminators. I can easily see how this is the case. If you don't write down your negative thoughts to pin them down, for example, you might just perpetuate a negative thought spiral. So it's been suggested that just accepting the thought process might be a less risky thing to learn for those who can't afford a shrink. Otherwise? The success rates are similar.

[Anonymous No.15922320]

>>15919215
Which country are you in anon. If you have health insurance/live in a civilized country with public healthcare just find a mental health clinic near you and make an appointment or just walk in

[Anonymous No.15922349]

ignore every single retard itt
pic related is the only psychological book you need

[Anonymous No.15922402]

LMAO just do shrooms bro

[Anonymous No.15922502]

>>15917260
>>15918454
I have OCD and I hate exposure therapy but it works. It's literally just forcing yourself to meet your illness eye to eye and tell it to fuck off