Conitive therapy - is it woo?

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Conitive therapy - is it woo?

Post by Animavore » Fri May 13, 2011 10:00 am

I was looking at a link which shows a list of cognitive therapists in Ireland (for a friend :shifty: ) and seeings things offered alongside cognitive therapy in many of these centres like "Angel Healing" and "rebirthing" does not give me confidence.
http://www.holisto.com/holistic.php?sea ... %20Therapy

Anyone have or know anyone who has had experience with this? Is it woo or does it have a basis in reality?
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Re: Conitive therapy - is it woo?

Post by normal » Fri May 13, 2011 10:03 am

This guy had conitive therapy:
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Re: Conitive therapy - is it woo?

Post by JimC » Fri May 13, 2011 10:04 am

Yes it is...

But cognitive therapy may work for some...
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Re: Conitive therapy - is it woo?

Post by Animavore » Fri May 13, 2011 10:08 am

Is psychotherapy as a whole woo? Something that only works if you believe it will?
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Re: Conitive therapy - is it woo?

Post by JimC » Fri May 13, 2011 10:12 am

Animavore wrote:Is psychotherapy as a whole woo? Something that only works if you believe it will?
Well, we are funny little bunnies, us hominids...

Even ordinary medical treatments are more effective in many cases if accompanied by positive feelings...

Not woo, but some mind-body interaction...
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Re: Conitive therapy - is it woo?

Post by Millefleur » Fri May 13, 2011 10:36 am

I had Cognitive Behavourial Therapy for a few months when I had post-natal depression, I'll see if I can find what I wrote about it later.
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Re: Conitive therapy - is it woo?

Post by Tero » Fri May 13, 2011 10:53 am

It's kind of mind over matter stuff. The chemicals is messed up and you try to convince yourself otherwise.

There are sort of stepwise programs for specifics fears, like flying. I guess it works for some. You just first sit in an airplane many times. Eventually you take a short flight.

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Re: Conitive therapy - is it woo?

Post by .Morticia. » Fri May 13, 2011 4:21 pm

It's talk therapy .

Not woo. It does have some research to back it up.

Unlike most other therapies they actually teach patients what are healthy and unhealthy behaviours and beliefs and will advise on life choices.

It's mostly about reframing events and teaching new contructive ways of thinking.

The thing about all psychotherapy, very few patients actually ever do what their doctor recommends or even finish therapy, hence they never get better.

Unfortunately, in the States there isn't very good regulation of psychotherapy and psychotherapists.

Freud's theories, they are woo.
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Re: Conitive therapy - is it woo?

Post by .Morticia. » Fri May 13, 2011 4:22 pm

Tero wrote:It's kind of mind over matter stuff. The chemicals is messed up and you try to convince yourself otherwise.

There are sort of stepwise programs for specifics fears, like flying. I guess it works for some. You just first sit in an airplane many times. Eventually you take a short flight.

That's called Flooding.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flooding_(psychology)
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Re: Conitive therapy - is it woo?

Post by Millefleur » Fri May 13, 2011 4:28 pm

An old thread on Ratskep 'CBT is it brainwashing?' My post is on page 2.

http://www.rationalskepticism.org/psych ... ?hilit=CBT
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Re: Conitive therapy - is it woo?

Post by Seth » Fri May 13, 2011 4:39 pm

No, it's not woo at all. The greatest value I found in it was the training in recognizing distorted thinking and how to short-circuit the cycles of distorted thinking that exacerbate depression and chemical imbalance.

I've been using the techniques I learned back 30 years ago when I was in clinical depression due to a chronic back injury ever since, and I'm pretty good at being able to recognize when I'm spinning off into distorted thinking, which allows me to take positive steps to change the though patterns. Doesn't fix a chemical imbalance, but it makes it far easier to avoid that black hole of distorted thinking that can lead to suicide.

Nor is biofeedback "woo." I used medication (amytriptaline), biofeeback and CT combined to overcome serious depression and chronic muscle spasms associated with a bulged disk. The biofeedback help me to learn mental imaging techniques that allow me to release spasmed muscles in my back through meditation and concentration alone, the anti-depression meds not only corrected the chemical imbalance but also seriously mitigated the nerve pain that was triggering the muscle spasms, and the CT helped me incalculably in not descending into a spiral of black thinking and suicidal ideation.

It's NOT woo, if you approach it with an open mind and apply the techniques properly.
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Re: Conitive therapy - is it woo?

Post by Tigger » Fri May 13, 2011 4:46 pm

:this: Really, it can and does work, but avoid the woo-oriented stuff and get your, er, friend to go via his doctor.
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Re: Conitive therapy - is it woo?

Post by Seth » Fri May 13, 2011 4:50 pm

Tigger wrote::this: Really, it can and does work, but avoid the woo-oriented stuff and get your, er, friend to go via his doctor.
Indeed. It's not a pancea, it's a medical tool and when used properly and assiduously (which most people can't manage to do) it does have beneficial effects, as I can testify to personally. But don't take it beyond its intended sphere, which is dealing with distorted thinking associated with depression.

It only helps you to break negative habitual or cyclical thought patterns by training you to recognize them and short-circuit them, it doesn't have magical powers to make you smarter or wiser.
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Re: Conitive therapy - is it woo?

Post by Ronja » Fri May 13, 2011 5:04 pm

Seth wrote:... don't take it beyond its intended sphere, which is dealing with distorted thinking associated with depression.

It only helps you to break negative habitual or cyclical thought patterns by training you to recognize them and short-circuit them, it doesn't have magical powers to make you smarter or wiser.
My experience is that it also helps with generalized / persistent anxiety and also specific fears, even when they are not combined with suicidal ideation. But that is of course anecdotal.

The awareness that one can grow through CBT is at times almost unnerving: a bit like standing beside oneself, calmly observing an emotional storm from the outside - even though the emotional storm is one's own. Weird - but IME it can work quite well.
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Re: Conitive therapy - is it woo?

Post by Mr.Samsa » Sat May 14, 2011 7:22 am

There's some good replies here (and over at RatSkep), but just as a quick note: CBT (as opposed to cognitive therapy) is not "talk therapy", and it does not work through the mechanism of 'mind over matter'. CBT is essentially just behavioral therapy but due to the misunderstanding of behaviorism at the time, the psychologists didn't realise that thoughts and beliefs were behaviors too, so they added the "cognitive" label even though there is no difference between CBT and behavioral therapy. Behavioral therapy works by utilising the science of behavior - we've uncovered a number of behavioral laws and we have a decent understanding of how and why organisms behave in the ways they do, at the very least, we know more than enough to be able to manipulate behaviors and thoughts with great success (even if we generally use a Newton-like simplified bastardisation of the behavioral laws in therapies).

In a nutshell, there are universal laws which govern the behavior of living things, and thoughts and beliefs etc are behaviors too (they are "things that an organism does"). So to eliminate negative thinking, bad self esteem, and so on, all we have to do is apply the same principles we use to train dogs to jump through hoops, to the thoughts you're having. Extremely simply, this means identifying a problem, and rewarding yourself when you avoid engaging in this kind of problem thinking, and "punishing" yourself when you engage in this kind of thinking (not "punish" as in feel guilty, or self-flagellate, but in the technical sense of 'punish' which means 'to decrease the likelihood of the behavior occurring again in the future' using a variety of different tools).

Importantly, CBT not only has a massive amount of research supporting its overwhelming success, but it's also founded on a coherent framework of knowledge which, in itself, provides a sound foundation for the mechanisms proposed in CBT. Put another way, there is far more evidence to suggest that CBT is successful at reducing depression than there is to suggest that anti-depressants are successful at reducing depression (and of course CBT is applicable to other cognitive issues).
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