What to expect when your brain wants to kill you excerpt from chapter: CBT

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is the darling of mental health treatments. Nearly every therapist I have had has in some way promoted CBT. They tout that study after study has scientifically proven its effectiveness. It’s as if they expect skepticism on the patient’s part, and they are desperate you understand that it is not some wibbly wobbly, cat poster, pseudoscience; that it’s a legitimate treatment. They want you to buy in immediately. 

At its core, it is really just thinking about your thinking, about stepping back and observing your own assumptions and reactions to them, separating fact from your “cognitive distortions.” They use bigger words to make it seem more impressive.  

The therapy is based on paper worksheets, some of which were photocopied and recopied so many times the hand-out was faded and flawed. As I mention in my therapist chapter, a course of therapy typically lasts 4 to 6 weeks. Some therapists’ whole spiel was just working through CBT questionnaires. They would give me homework to read and thought charts to fill in. It was not very helpful. In the end, I was left with pages and pages of proof that I had been therapized, but I still didn’t feel any better. I was told to review the worksheets again on my own and to keep working on them. I was left feeling that it was my fault it didn’t work. 

I never really understood CBT until I was put into a 14-week group therapy series, where each session lasted two hours. It was part of the outpatient services offered by the Psych Hospital, where I was an inpatient for six weeks.

Instead of worksheets, we were given a comprehensive workbook that provided a detailed overview as well as deep insights into CBT. It highlighted the interconnectivity between your thoughts, behaviour, mood, and physical sensations. In other words, if your mood is severely depressed, your behaviour, thoughts, and body will follow that lead. The darkness would then take hold, and your inner critic would have free reign to berate and destroy your self-esteem. The theory goes that if you can improve one of the four, you can lift all four. It encourages you to become your own therapist and use self-talk to calm your own thoughts. The idea is to rewrite your brain, which they confidently declare can be done. Again, they demonstrate more scientific proof that it works. Brain scans have shown changes in brain function before and after treatment.