Re:The Psychotherapy Myth
by wruza on Monday July 31, 2023 @03:29AM
(#36939702)
I don’t remember everything from my sessions, but in case of my severe anxiety we used text logs of (date, emotion, situation, initial thought) and my “I/they must” attitudes. Eventually we found a set of automatic (unconscious) thoughts that led to the symptoms. Once I started to root them out, anxiety reduced and panic attacks stopped completely.
Collecting this info was a homework because you can’t do it right in a session. The final homework was to consciously break “I/they must” attitudes. Specifically, I intendedly was several times (1) late for something, (2) went somewhere completely unprepared. As you may have guessed, I had two separate anxieties of being late or unprepared (among others). Ofc it’s not that I’m always late or unprepared now. But my own pathological anxiety feedback loop is no more in these cases.
These methods aren’t secret and every <insert type of psychotherapy here> book describes them in detail. You don’t even need to go to a therapist to use them, like you don’t need a programmer to use scandisk or memtest. But detecting inconsistencies in yourself is much easier when you talk to a different person.
Collecting this info was a homework because you can’t do it right in a session. The final homework was to consciously break “I/they must” attitudes. Specifically, I intendedly was several times (1) late for something, (2) went somewhere completely unprepared. As you may have guessed, I had two separate anxieties of being late or unprepared (among others). Ofc it’s not that I’m always late or unprepared now. But my own pathological anxiety feedback loop is no more in these cases.
These methods aren’t secret and every <insert type of psychotherapy here> book describes them in detail. You don’t even need to go to a therapist to use them, like you don’t need a programmer to use scandisk or memtest. But detecting inconsistencies in yourself is much easier when you talk to a different person.