... I'm perplexed by the point you made that I highlighted and other posts above regarding CBT. I've seen CBT work for people and the fact that it is now on offer via a referral from your doctor is a million times better than him writing you a prescription and sending you on your way.
I'd be interested in why neither you or Pen felt it worked and why you thought it didn't work as a lot of people have benefited from it.
As to your question about CBT, you first need to know a little about my background with respect to doctors. I have not seen a doctor for approaching 20 years (I am in my mid-60s). Before I stopped seeking medical advice, my health, both physical and mental, was getting gradually worse. On one particularly memorable occasion when I was in my late 20s, I did not merely ignore medical advice (for a bad back that was threatening to become chronic), but I went
against that advice. Having previously had 6 weeks off work (while receiving various treatments and drugs) without my condition improving, my back then healed very quickly and I have not had a problem with it since. In the end, in fact, I actually advised my doctor how to cure his own bad back, not vice versa.
In addition, I have not taken prescription or over-the-counter drugs for over 15 years. The only drug I consume, not for insomnia, is alcohol. It helps me to relax. As I said, my physical and mental health have only improved since last seeing a doctor and giving up drugs. No more bad backs, no more asthma, no more bronchitis, no more headaches, no more anger problem. (The anger problem is particularly relevant to what follows.)
My sister has taken a similar path. She has cured e.g. her PTSD, on her own without any medical/psychiatric etc., intervention.
As to CBT: I have not received any CBT. However, my sister received CBT many years ago, just before she gave up doctors and drugs (except alcohol) for good. Further, it is important to know here that science does not know what a human being is. It does not know what a mind is. Therefore, it is administering treatments such as CBT without the least idea of whether or not they work. CBT does not work. Further, it is extremely harmful.
In CBT, bad thoughts and feelings are replaced by positive thoughts and feelings. I will use an incident that happened to me to illustrate my point about the harmful effects of CBT.
I was formerly a teacher. I used to live in a very small community. I knew, or knew by sight, the parents of most of my pupils. They knew me. Out and about in the village, when I met them, we would often have a friendly chat in passing. One day, a parent who normally would have stopped for a chat, as she had done many times before, walked straight past, totally ignoring me. I felt as if I had been snubbed. I felt angry.
Had I been receiving CBT at that time, I would have recorded the above incident for discussion during a therapy session. The therapist would have suggested some explanations for her behaviour, these always with a positive spin. He might have suggested that she simply hadn’t seen me because she had something on her mind that was distracting her. I would then have been told to work on replacing feelings of being snubbed with a positive explanation such as the aforementioned suggestion.
Now, as it happened, a few years later I discovered why this parent, and others as it turned out, were snubbing me where previously they had seemed friendly. The reason for this snubbing was that I was no longer the teacher of their child. Their child might have left school, might have discontinued my subject etc., but whatever the reason, I was no longer that child’s teacher. Thus, I realized that when these parents were being “friendly” toward me, they were actually brown-nosing me, keeping me “sweet” (because I was their child’s teacher.) And as soon as they no longer needed to keep me sweet, then they simply dropped their pretence and snubbed me.
It follows, therefore, that my original feelings of having been snubbed and of anger at that treatment, were authentic. They revealed the truth. Yet CBT would have sought to replace that truth with a lie. How on earth can CBT be said to work when it replaces truth with lies?
Further, my feelings were communicating something to me. The parent snubbing me was also a form of communication. My feelings/emotions were doing their job, they were telling me that something was going on, and that I really was being snubbed. If CBT gets me to ignore my feelings, it is actually preventing me communicating with my environment and with other people. It is disabling the use of my senses. It is isolating me from other people. That, to put it bluntly, is extremely harmful and cruel.
Another example from this same time in my life. As I said, people in the village knew I was a teacher. As the end of the summer holiday approached, they would ask questions such as: “When does school start, again?”, or say something like “I bet you’re looking forward to going back to work, then”. (Of course, I was not looking forward to going back to work.) Sometimes these people’s comments made me furious and I would stew over them for days, yet sometimes they did not. And this was all down to intention. When the person’s intention was to tease me, to taunt me about going back to work (knowing perfectly well that I was not looking forward to the start of term), those were the times I got angry. In other words, my feelings were authentic, were revealing the truth about the other person’s intentions. On the other hand, when the remark or question did not anger me, then the person’s remark or question was genuine i.e. they were not playing games. Again, CBT therapy would have had me replacing truth with lies with appalling consequences for me.
As to my anger problem, it has vanished. I have never had anger management treatment. The biggest release for me was when my sister justified my anger. She told me that it is perfectly natural in this world to get angry because this is a world which generates vast amounts of anger (e.g. those people teasing me about going back to work). Her justification was the way forward for me and now, although I know that this world is even worse than I had thought back then, I am no longer angered by it or by anyone. My anger has vanished.
(As an aside, one of my pupils had an “anger management problem”. He received treatment for it at school. When he left my class to attend a session, he usually left in a good enough mood. On his return, however, he was generally absolutely furious, and spent the rest of the lesson fighting down his anger. I assume that anger management sessions, like CBT, were replacing his authentic feelings with lies. That would have made me angry.)
So, CBT replaces truth with lies. It disables people’s ability to communicate. In fact, what CBT reminds me of is those inspirational speakers so common in the US.
