Deconstructing My Thoughts Ain’t Gonna Do It, Folks.
It's happened once again. Someone has told me about how certain techniques were supposed to be good for them and they just seemed to do the opposite.
I think I've held out on talking about this stuff because I'm not an expert, and because there really does seem to be research that tells an opposite story. But instead of waiting until I've read all the science, let me tell you about my experience, because that's pretty real to me.
Long ago, some therapists taught me some Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Techniques (CBT). I read a book about it even longer ago. What stuck with me as the gist of it, was that as a way of improving mood/outlook/etc, I could analyze my own thoughts and thought patterns, and see where they were bringing me down unnecessarily. I could learn to see, for example, where I was making guesses about the future that may not be true (and so unnecessarily worrying.) I could see where I was thinking about something as all-or-nothing or black-and-white. I could see where my assumptions about what other people thought about me were mind-reading attempts where that wasn't really possible.
And by applying these techniques to take apart my negative and sad-inducing thinking, I could make the power of this thinking diminish, and so I could feel better.
Except that I think faster than that.
I reason really fast. And my reasoning may be pretty decent.
My feelings go by at light speed. I may forget that felt bad a minute ago while I'm trying to take apart the cause. That's just confusing.
Or I might find the "reason," like "mind-reading" or "fortune-telling," but in the meantime have reasoned further so that I've either convinced myself that I'm right and the technique is wrong, or I might have just moved on to thinking about something else, all without realizing it, so that the deconstruction just skims some surface I don't even notice is there.
Or more generally, I may feel like I'm battling a vast flame with a thimble of water. Now realize, the flame may not be made up of all NEGATIVE thoughts; there are just so many of them that honing in on one line of thought just doesn't do much for me.
I'd really like to know about the research. And I will add, that in my own experience, things like effective ADHD medication (NOT mood medication) can slow down the thinking enough that techniques like those from CBT may begin to be relevant. Once I was on meds I could say to myself "oh hey! look at that! I'm feeling kinda bummed out!" and then maybe decide to do something about it. This doesn't work for everyone- but it does seem like that basic stage, the thought slow-down, needs to be in place first, not after. And I just wish that the people trying to help me in the past, and who are trying to help you now, could crawl inside your head and see what they're dealing with. Because if you're standing in front of those rock-and-roll speaker stacks with Guns 'n Roses blaring, a piccolo just isn't going to sound so loud.
You? CBT? Other techniques? Have they worked? Failed you? Let us know in the comments.
Feb 12, 2009 @ 03:59:19
I have adhd and I have been thinking about trying adhd coaching soon, but I have first been trying to get myself out of a funk that I have been in from some big changes in my life including moving away for college. I found that I can always think circles around CBT techniques or any therapy stuff if I am trying to do it in my head, but if I write down the thought error exercises it works really well. I just started trying to apply CBT to self-doubting adhd related chatter that I didn’t even notice was there until I started to really analyze what was keeping me from working on my masters research, and it seems to be helping a lot (this is turning into a whole blog of a response, much more than a comment). For example, I was just trying to read a research paper and I almost gave up in the first page and I noticed chatter in my head saying something like: I can’t focus, I can’t even get through this paper, I’m going to fail as a scientist, it’s a fluke I made it this far. Normally I would put the paper down and go off and get distracted and fulfill the prophecy without even noticing the thoughts or think about them a lot and get all anxious, but instead I wrote down those thoughts, identified the errors, and made rational responses all in my notebook, and then picked the paper back up and got through it without those thoughts really popping up again, and I was able to stick to it even through the really difficult stats parts where I normally give up. I think the trick is really in writing it down though. I have been using the Feeling Good book by David Burns. I haven’t been at it for too long but I am finding that it helps, but only if I write down the exercises.
Anyway, That’s all.