If I walked into a room full of therapists today and told them that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) wasn't all it's cracked up to be I'm sure I'd get some dirty looks. Yet, it is true. CBT isn't always effective. I think as a consumer it is important that you understand the good and bad sides of therapy. So today I want to share with you what can make CBT ineffective. Before I do that though I want to make it clear that CBT does help many people. In fact, the reason it is so widely used is because, unlike so many other of forms of therapy,
The Problem With Modern Psychotherapy
Over the past 100 years clinicians and researchers have worked hard to improve what we call psychotherapy. Many of those improvements have led to standardization and improved outcomes. Nowadays, everything is "evidenced based" which is, of course, a good thing. Yet there remains a huge problem in mental health, and it isn't the hundreds of models of therapy that are now available. Rather, it's the large proportion of people delivering these interventions that suck at their job. Now, to be fair, there are many talented people providing mental
How to Get the Most Out of Therapy
What's so special about therapy anyway? Isn't it just a super long conversation with a stranger? No, it's not. It's much more. It can feel like the millions of conversations you've had in the past but with one major twist. When done right therapy elicits the truth; you know that thing you hide from everybody. Most people aren't totally honest about their inner world because humans are damn good liars, which isn't all bad. Lying serves an important function in that it helps us to keep on a pretty mask so the "ugly" doesn't scare away
Speaking of Anxiety
What's the secret recipe to curing abnormal anxiety? Well. If you've spent anytime on this site than you probably already have a good idea. But given that its taken me almost three years to amass that information, it could take you awhile to dig into it all. So today I got a time saver for you. On December 7, 2010 I gave my first interview. In it, I talk about what I think are the most effective ways to overcome abnormal anxiety. I did the interview for a Canadian organization called Shepell fgi. It was the biggest conference call
My Experience In Therapy
Before I dive into this topic I just wanted to point out that I decided to write this post because a reader asked me to (which is great). His basic question was: Is therapy worth it? And what was your experience? Pretty basic on the face of it, but actually the events leading up to this and the subsequent therapy I underwent were rather profound, at least for me. I first want to talk about what happened to me before I went into therapy because I want those of you that see yourselves in me to consider therapy if you haven't before. Like