Your experiences of CBT?

[mumofjust1]

I'm having CBT at the moment. I was referred for anxiety and emetophobia, and am seeing a CBT psychotherapist once a week.

I have had 3 sessions and we have discussed quite a lot, my anxiety and phobia of course, but also events I experienced as a child, relationships with family, teachers etc and how I see myself.

I have learned that I'm a very sensitive person and that I am lacking in self confidence. I don't communicate well with others - not because I don't want to, but because I assume that people won't like me or be interested in me or anything I have to say.

I try to be a nice person - I try to be kind to other people. I am a loyal and honest person too, and would do pretty much anything for anyone. These are positive things, so why do I feel so negative about myself?

I didn't expect to learn so much about myself so quickly. Has anyone had any similar experiences with CBT?

Thanks :)

I'm waiting on CBT sessions so this is interesting. Annoyingly I have been waiting for over a month and still heard nothing...in the mean time I'm slowly falling apart.
Have posted here to no avail apart from one lovely person who replied. I hope the CBT works for us both

CBT worked for me, but it worked more effectively because I was on the antidepressants. When I had it first time around I was too depressed and negative to get much out of it.

I think you will feel more positive by the end of your course of treatment. It's perfectly natural to have some lows along the way, so don't worry

I found CBT was excellent. I had a course of it when I was well settled on ADs (possibly starting to cut down then although I cut down very slowly). Having CBT when I was in the depths of depression would have been useless for me.

Part of it for me was being able to take control - my CBT counsellor helped me work out that my depression was my body's way to reacting to anxiety - I could take so much and then fell apart. It sounds slightly daft but realising this and then working in strategies to manage the anxiety meant that I was able to stop the anxiety before it ever got near the depression line. I had the CBT course nearly 4 years ago and since then have successfully come off ADs, moved houses, discovered XHs affair, managed fine when he moved out, and am very happy in myself. I wouldn't have been surprised if I had needed ADs but although I've been sad it has been being sad rather than depression. I have times when I remind myself to CBTise myself and it generally works. I have gone from being a glass at least half empty person to a glass half full and even if it's not I can pour myself another glass person.

Feel I am gushing there a bit but really CBT has helped me a lot.

CBT was great, although it didn't sort out any of my issues it did make me realise I needed intensive 1:1 talk therapy to get better. I know lots of people for whom it really did work tho

I found that CBT helped, despite not wanting to do it initially, and I did learn a lot about myself (was only 8 sessions) and I have found that it is helpful if you are in the situation where you want to apply what they 'teach' you basically the tips and the stuff you discuss in sessions, and that works fine but if you get to the point where you are too far 'down' to be bothered to do that then it doesn't work so well.
Also, I wouldn't recommend it for people with a high intelligence (just what I have been told by my previous counsellor) because it can then go from being something used to help to something used in a destructive way, and also because after a while the person begins to counter what the counsellor is trying to do. (It really can be destructive, I learnt that the hard way, my own fault!) But I would say stick with it for a few weeks and see where it leads, you never know what will and won't help :)