Why Can't Some Of Us Talk On The Forum?

[anthony]

... and very small children are being told that their very rational thoughts are cognitive distortions that need correcting.

Yey for an abuser, but the abuser cannot use CBT to correct what you state. Unless the distortion falls into one of the CBT principles, then CBT isn't being used... instead, you're trying to fit an abusers abusive methods into a therapeutic technique to try and claim that it can be used for abuse. You cannot use CBT to abuse... it is impossible. You would have to makeup your own kind of cognitive distortions not contained in CBT and tell a child they're wrong, THUS, the abuser isn't using CBT or anything like it, they're just being an abuser and manipulating a child psychologically.

CBT does not manipulate, it is a technique to guide the person towards their own truth. Children do not have complex emotional frame sets that adults do, and I'm a little insulted to hear such a thing from you @Lucycat as though they do, linking such complex emotional states to abuse and a child, as though factual.

People need to stop trying to FIT things into their arguments for self-justification purposes. This is where political correctness is turning the world stupid and self-defeating under many circumstances, trying to make something into an issue, that just never was.

 

[Lucycat]

the abuser isn't using CBT or anything like it, they're just being an abuser and manipulating a child psychologically.

I did not for one minute suggest the abuser is using CBT. I was suggesting that the abuser is manipulating a child's thoughts. I said;

They are not receiving CBT, they are not in therapy they are being abused and their thinking is changed to make them believe that every thing is OK and perfectly normal.

I was simply trying to say that I understand how some people make that connection and it makes them very uncomfortable.
This is not about political correctness, it is about how, for some people, a particular therapy is not a good fit - for what I see as a very good reason.

I certainly did not mean to insult you.

 

[moonbeam]

It was on fire by the way.

How do I edit posts? That should read as not on fire. NOT.
<your editing window for the post was closed. Fixed it for you -JL>

 

[StellaBlue]

How do I edit posts? That should read as not on fire. NOT.

OK - this one made me laugh out loud. How awesome would that have been if it had been on fire? Your brain would have exploded! (and your inner child would have been going - "see, I told you so").

 

[StellaBlue]

With CBT a good practitioner shouldn't be telling you what to think. They should be asking you to question your thought process...It doesn't involve the practitioner telling you what to think or trying to brainwash you, and if they do than it isn't being done properly and isn't CBT.

ETA: I agree 100% with this. Like anything else, there are good practitioners, mediocre practitioners and out right bad practitioners.

 

[Deleted member 28740]

What a merry go round. facts, and feelings, and treatments working, Oh and some cures thrown in posts and, why can't I talk here like someone stopped poster being able to talk.

Family dinner gone amok.

 

[Valentino]

This CBT talk is starting to feel like fundamentalist religious zeal.

I'm reminded of the 'law of the instrument' concept:

"I call it the law of the instrument, and it may be formulated as follows: Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding." - Abraham Kaplan 1964
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_instrument

Or the more popular version:

"If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" -- Abraham Maslow 1966
-- http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/if_all_you_have_is_a_hammer,_everything_looks_like_a_nail

And a nice short funny video to better illustrate the concept:

 

[anthony]

This CBT talk is starting to feel like fundamentalist religious zeal.

If you mean that you want to discard what the experts in PTSD and CPTSD state, explicitly--and agree upon, that CBT is the core foundation to healing and managing PTSD... then I guess you could say that if it makes you feel better. Personally, if you suffer depression, anxiety, panic and other such symptoms, all of which are attributable to cognitive bias, then maybe, just maybe, people should take note of the experts and seek the right basic treatment foundation before wandering off into trauma and relaxation therapies that aren't fixing the problem.

So sure... if you want to call the experts in this issue religious zealots and such... then sign me up to what the experts cite.

There is a right way, and process, to heal trauma and manage PTSD... and then there are a whole bunch of wrong ways which have little success for people overall.

 

[sun seeker]

How do I edit posts? That should read as not on fire. NOT.

Glad you clarified, I admit I was a little confused!

 

[wyrd_dragon]

@anthony

I think you need to take a step back from the CBT discussion. It's clearly a big issue for you, and that's understandable.

However:

There is a right way, and process, to heal trauma and manage PTSD... and then there are a whole bunch of wrong ways

if you suffer depression, anxiety, panic and other such symptoms, all of which are attributable to cognitive bias

Utilising evidence based approaches and arguing a scientific and rational stance requires you also do the same. Rational, evidence based approaches necessarily do not make absolute statements. Asserting things like 'every single person with PTSD should x' and 'there is a right way, and process, to heal trauma' = irrational, bad science. Similarly, you should be able to acknowledge that there is a difference between 'can be attributed to' and IS.

There is a temptation to assume that people just are misunderstanding.do not know the evidence/are being irrational when you see what you beleive is right and had good evidenciary backing being rejected. The problem with letting yourself do so is you ignore people who have done research, who have evidence, and you can also hold yourself and others back as science marches on, discovering new modalities and new research. Things change. Science changes, always, or it ceases to BE science.

Scientific inquiry does not deal with absolutes. Rational argument and discussion does not either. You may assert that there is a lot of evidence, or a preponderance of evidence, or that 'most' or 'many' people have been found to benefit from certain principals.

By instead making absolute statements and implying anyone who disagrees must not be familiar with the evidence, you are coming across as emotionally attached to this treatment. You appear beyond rational ability to step back even when many people express that they have found other options for themselves. People are likening your stance to that of a zealot because, despite claiming to come from a rational point, you are behaving irrationally and aggressively toward any point of view other than yours. You have an attachment to this idea, that's understandable. But seeking to discredit anyone who disagrees and implying they just don't get it/haven't researched is not good debate or rational discussion.

You also appear to be ignoring the preponderance of evidence around other modalities - and around alternate understandings of trauma and how it functions. For instance, asserting that all symptoms should rightly be attributed to cognitive bias ignores much of the strong emerging evidence around the physiology of trauma, like the effects of long term stress on the body or allostatic load. The neuroscience (I have been following for the last 15 years as it emerges into the mainstream) around changes in the brain of PTSD survivors, changes in the endocrine system, changes on a genetic level (telomere length) and co-morbidity with other chronic illness.

There are approaches that treat trauma as injury. They also have a lot of good backing. It's also the case that, for CPTSD, there is a standard set for NOT starting CBT until a patient has been stabilised and gone through a long process of developing relationship with the therapist. This also has very good grounding in psychiatric research.

Essentially -- others have been suggesting that CBT is not for everyone. No one has suggested it's not useful or can't be used in trauma. In fact, I and others have been careful to state it works for 'many' PTSD sufferers. We are merely, on good evidence and with good reason, asserting that it's important to remember the complex, inter-connected nature of trauma and reminding people that we exist. That what you might term as 'edge cases' are a large population of complex and complicated trauma sufferers, and that treatment is not one-size-fits-all. That asserting a 'one true way' to treat trauma is neither rational nor good science and that it may be irresponsible to place the blame on survivors who aren't cookie-cutter PTSD sufferers.

Now, I feel this thread has been majorly derailed from its original purpose at this point with all this CBT wrangling. I don't want to start a new thread just to argue with you or others about weather any one treatment or modality can or should be used on 'all' PTSD and CPTS cases, or if it's safe to use it right out of the box, etc. That's not my deal, but it does seem to be very important to you. Maybe, if you want to discuss this further, start a thread about 'I feel everyone should utilise CBT no matter what' and people can talk there.

 

[anthony]

I'm not talking irrational in relation to CBT fundamentals... irrational stems to the underlying principles only for cognitive bias. It is an absolute in PTSD that cognitive bias is present. Cognitive bias is the underlying, absolute, fundamentals of anxiety and depression. Hence, absolute terminology.

I'm also trying to get people away from citing CBT with trauma, they are different things. CBT has nothing to do with trauma, it has to do with cognitive biases.

Here is the simplest statement I can make: if you have PTSD, you absolutely have cognitive biases. Fact: the only treatment for cognitive biases is basic CBT fundamentals. Those fundamentals can be wrapped up in numerous little packages, however; they are still CBT fundamental principles applied.

Again, if you have PTSD, you have cognitive biases. You actually have them without PTSD, though the difference is that they're normally not a negative in your life. When you have PTSD, they become negative attributions. This is basic factual information of PTSD.

I will reiterate though... please stop assimilating CBT with trauma, as I am not talking about the trauma therapy types.

 

[wyrd_dragon]

I apologise for any way I have contributed to derailing this thread into discussions of modalities. My intention was not do so, my intention was to address the OP and to support them and others being told that there was one 'way and one way alone to treat their symptoms. I did not expect this to become a 'let's talk about the veracity of differing modalities' thread.

The way this does link back to the OP is that THIS - the kind of behavior we've seen on this thread - is why it's hard for many of us to talk here.

I'm lucky. When I came here first I got scared away from the forums. 3 years of online activism, dealing with the worst that our online communities have to spew up, helps me be able to address things like this. It helps me be able to try my best to step in when I know other, silent folks can't do it. But I can tell you all that there are attitudes here that foster an environment that represses marginal voices. If you assume a level playing field in an unfair world, you will oppress those already given less of a platform for their voice. That's one of the reasons I feel a lack of strong moderation is unwise, but that's the case here and that's how it is.

Anyway -- 'one true way' advocates and people who are very attached to the idea that sufferers are solely and entirely responsible for making their brains work as socio-normatively as possible, the kind of aggressive, victim blaming, insistence that it's our job to be neurotypical - that makes it hard for some of us to speak here unless we feel comfortable drawing aggression from people.

So @Notsowild I hope you're doing okay. None of this is your fault. What you need and how you need to do it are a-okay and I'll always be here to support that.