CBT worked for anyone?

[amielou]

This week I had my first counseling/CBT session, in the first step of making this year the year I work on dealing with my problems. It was daunting sitting in a room telling someone I had never met how I was feeling. When you say the words 'I feel like my friends like each other more than they like me' out loud it makes you feel a bit silly! We talked about how you should only believe reality and not the situations that your mind tells you is true, we also talked about what's the worst that could happen which really struck a chord with me. It made me realise that the thing I am most fearful of (two of my closest friends meeting up without me) isn't actually that bad and that if it happened it wouldn't change my relationship with either of them. I'm starting to understand that the problem isn't my friends and it's nothing their doing the problem is me, the problem is I don't like myself and that's what I need to work on. I guess if I don't like myself it's easy to think that other people wouldn't and would find someone else they like more and ditch me. Just wondered what everybody else's experience with CBT or counseling was like?

[Anxious Abi]

Hey amielou, it is always daunting opening yourself up to someone, although I find it much easier to talk to a stranger than somebody close to me, I can imagine why it can also be harder for others. It sounds like you discussed some of your thoughts and feelings, and you realized your fear was much worse than the reality would be, that is a brilliant start.
I have done CBT twice now, and for me personally it always helps, as you can imagine everybody is different and it helps in varying degrees. Looking at my thought patterns, how it affects my behavior, even going through all the symptoms of anxiety. When we map it all out and have the help of a logical mind it all doesn't seem so scary, we can start to affect change within ourselves.
I also think you're right in working on how you see yourself, that is one of my major problems too, you will most probably work on that with your Therapist.
Hope you get the help you need, from CBT and the forum.
Best wishes.
Abi

[Cullingford]

I went to my first session of CBT yesterday, it was really more of a chat to decide if CBT would be appropriate. I had to fill in a form with questions about my feelings over the last two weeks and my answers were given a score, by the end of the therapy hopefully the score when filling the form in will be alot lower.
The therapist,( I suppose that is what he is ) has put me up for a series of six lectures on CBT he said there could be up to seventy people there! not exactly very personal. But he also said that if this did'nt work they would try something else.
One of the questions was had I felt like killing or hurting myself in the last two weeks ! I wished I had said no because he went on and on about it. He kept asking me how I had planned to kill myself! I mean there must be loads of depressed people here that think these things, they do'nt want to do it really they just want a life without all this crap.
He only shut up when I gave him a long list of reasons why I would'nt kill myself family etc, I got a bit edgy with him in the end if I really wanted to do It I bloody well would have by now. I just want to get some help and hopefully get off the Sertraline and learn to deal with this anxiety appropriately and not blow everything completely out of proportion.