I won’t bore you with the why’s and wherefores, i’m just curious if anyone else has partaken and if so, did they find Cognitive Behavioral Therapy a positive experience

CBT is hard work but worth while. It’s more about training to change your mindset than “classical therapy” and as such requires hard work from the patient to keep up the practice and to work with the therapist.

That said, it does work and does get results, it just takes time beyond your therapy sessions.

I didn’t know anything about it until a friend went through some of it and I discovered it was something I’d trained myself to do without ever having been taught it.

Yes and yes it’s useful. A good friend is leading expert in it fyi.

It’ll depend on the issue(s) you are trying to work on.

It worked for me. Got me out of a very dark hole.

Depends on where you are mentally and how you engage with it. There’s no universal solution but if you’re ready for it then cbt can help tackle some of the default negative thought patterns and behaviours that sit behind some issues.

Best thing I ever did, BUT you need to be in a place to accept constructive help and to put the strategies into practice to get the best out of it. Ultimately though, its essentially rationalising thoughts, feelings and behaviours and their interdependencies.

did they find Cognitive Behavioural Therapy a positive experience

Incredibly – I suspect I was in as deep a hole as Ben, and I don’t like to think how things might have turned out if it wasn’t for CBT.

Several years later I still practice a lot of the techniques I learned (along with Mindfulness) and I know damn’ well that I’d be entirely broken without it.

But as others have suggested, you need to be in the right place mentally and emotionally, to “let it in”: a friend of mine recently engaged with CBT on my recommendation, and it was like water off a duck’s back.

Mrs Ampthill used this to get out of a hole. As above hard work. Sort of like physio. The pro gives the advice but what matters is you doing the exercise. But spectacular results for her

Did it 3 years ago. Made a massive difference. Not straight away though, took another year to really see the benefits.

Might not work for you but worth a try. I had to try twice before it worked, didn’t click with the first ‘coach’ but the second psychologist I used tailored it to my issue and it’s worked ever since. I go back once a year to refresh and get a mental check-up and it’s kept all my issues in check.

For the sake of what you can gain vs losing an hour or two it’s worth exploring IMO.

Certainly recommend it. As others have said you need to put work in to get the most out of it.

My therapist gave me the following link to exercises: https://psychologytools.com/cbt.html

All the best.

I had a course of group CBT last year to help me deal with some issues. Suspect that I wasn’t in the best place for it, and I suspect I wasn’t the only one. Some people didn’t speak until the last of our 7 sessions. I didn’t really engage and do the homework.

It did help me get a bit of perspective, and it did set the base for some better 1-2-1 counselling afterwards

It worked and still works very well for me. You need to be ready to embrace it though!

Dependends on your situation, but it really helped me. As somebody else mentioned, it was a bit like mental Physio in that you had to do the work to get the results and, like Physio, it’s all too easy to stop when things are going ok again. You need to get on well with your therapist / practitioner though, first round of 10 sessions I had weren’t as helpful as they could of been as I didn’t like the guy I was doing it with, so worth having a taster / assessment session

No experience as a participant, but yes it’s close to home in terms of what I do for a living -I share an office with 2 cb therapists amongst other flavours of therapy.
Definitely worth a go but also remember that if you have a choice, in terms of deciding between one form of therapy and another the relationship/rapport with the therapist makes almost as much difference as the choice of therapy! (A few of us got a bit flustered by that a few years ago!) So if you don’t get in with it at first don’t just write it off, and don’t just tell the therapist what you think they want to hear.
In my chair it’s better to be told up front you are getting it wrong in week three than to find out it’s not going anywhere in week seven.
Oh and when they give you homework bloody well do it!
Also there is a lot of online stuff to give you a better idea of the process. Because we are all about the mountains and hip north shore (and in case you are considering cbt for anxiety) I give you the Anxiety BC (British Colombia, eh?) website: [/url]

It helped me a lot initially but caused me problems further down the line. Have you identified the source / cause of your depression / anxiety?

I hadn’t at the time but have now (emotionally abusive relationship) so what happened was that as I recovered due to the CBT the emotional abuse ramped up to overcome the positive effects of the CBT putting me back down where I was but without the hope that CBT was helping / could help.

Ultimately I believe that you can’t recover until you’ve removed / dealt with the cause which may require actions / therapies other than CBT.

I didn’t get anywhere with it, but as above, I probably didn’t put the effort in, and the practitioner wasn’t the best either.

I did better with Mindfulness. Different time, different practitioner, and I tried harder.

FWIW, Mindfulness also helped my brother overcome some addiction issues (alcohol & emotional).

Not me but my wife whilst in the depths of some serious depression. It really helped her a lot, had a hugely positive impact.

As above, but found this site useful CCI

I didn’t get anywhere with it, but as above, I probably didn’t put the effort in, and the practitioner wasn’t the best either.

Me too. I found it a bit ‘tick-boxy’ and felt that my therapist was just going through the motions. My depression and anxiety ebbs and flows in fairly short cycles and she told me I had ‘recovered’ during a better spell and wrapped things up. When things were bad again I went back to the GP and then through work got more general therapy/counselling which I found really helpful.

Having said that, the CBT idea doing something enjoyable everyday I found very useful and I’ve stuck with that aspect.