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To me, CBT has always made it feel like my thoughts and feelings are not valid. As someone who has had invalidation problems with these my whole life it makes it feel really offensive.
I know people get great things out of it, and that's good. But yeah not for everyone and (unfortunately??) it's the "trendy" thing with therapy nowadays. I just wish there was a therapy modality that acknowledges one's thoughts and feelings as valid, even if they aren't perfect, and instead finds ways to work with them instead of against them.
IDK what "invalidation problems" are but hoo boy, when I'm anxious my thoughts are not at all borne of reality.
Honestly, that's tough, but fair. No therapeutic tool is going to be a magic bullet solution for everyone.
My wife struggles with something similar. When we try to walk through an exercise together she thinks it's about saying that her problems are "all in her head." For my own outlook, I liken it to thinking that although my thoughts might be faulty, my feelings are valid. But hey, I'm not an authority, I'm just another struggling human trying to make sense of it all.
For what it's worth, one stranger to another, I think that whatever you're going through you're totally valid. I hope you find or have found some relief - goodness knows we're still looking
It's not that your thoughts aren't valid. Let's look at it differently. You are aware of muscle memory right? The idea you can train your body enough that an action can become easily repeatable.
Your mind is similar, it has a mental muscle memory. If your mind is filled with a reservoir of negative emotions about a particular thought, when your mind reaches for an emotion to react with, there's a high chance you're going to pull a negative emotion out of your emotional tool belt.
CBT is about manually forcing yourself to recognize and reframe those negative thoughts so that you slowly build up that positive reservoir of emotions.
You want the odds you're going to pull a positive emotion out of that tool belt to be more 50-50. It's not about eliminating negative thought or emotion entirely, but rather just giving yourself an even chance at reacting positively. Leveling the odds.
Negative emotion is just as valid as positive emotion and vice versa. And negative emotion isn't inherently negative. It's what you do with the emotions that truly makes them good or bad for us. Rage could inspire someone to murder but it could also inspire someone to act against injustice.
Conversely, there's nothing wrong with recognizing that an overly negative mindset is just bringing unhappiness and forcing yourself to slowly recalibrate that negative baseline.
It takes some serious mental gymnastics to acknowledge you have feelings, and thinking it's ok to suppress those natural feelings because you can't really hope to improve anything ever.
No therapy has ever been about suppressing your feelings.
Some therapy is about not suppressing them because that is natural defense mechanism for trauma.
You can acknowledge feelings while also managing them.
If you're in a bad situation and you could do something about it, you should of course, but that often requires you to manage your feelings.
Even suppressing your feelings might be ok for a bit, if it's what you need to fix the problem causing those feelings
CBT is categorically not about suppressing feelings. That's a reductionist view of the approach. It is about analyzing why are you having those feelings and what, in you life's history and everyday habits, has made them the prevalent feeling, behavior or thought on certain given circumstances so you can get back into control of what you do with those. This is from an acknowledgement that your conscious self might not always align with your emotional self. It is perfectly fine to feel sad when sad things happen. But some people find it troubling that they always react with sadness or anger whenever anything happens, even happy and positive things. Well, searching why that is and what can be done to change it is a positive thing. Specially if this sadness and anger are causing trouble in your everyday life (lashing out at close persons or engaging in self-destructive behavior). You can't get rid of the emotions, but you can acknowledge them and alter what you do with those emotions and eventually change how you spontaneously react to events in a more adaptive way.
I understand that, I've tried CBT and it's impossible for it to help me because it fundamentally depends on accepting you are helpless and doesn't properly get people in the mindset required to change their lives and society for the better.
If I actually want to give a shit about myself then that's not something I can DELUDE myself into accepting.
The delusion I'd rather hold onto is that my life will get better, becauase in that delusion there's at least a happy ending. I have a hard time believing that though.
I wouldn't call it a delusion. But I understand where you're coming from. Certainly if someone doesn't want to change anything about themselves then therapy won't change them by force, it's just not something an ethical practice would ever do. However, on psychology we start from the premise that changing oneself is the first step at changing one's circumstances. Things don't get better by wishful thinking or spontaneously, change requires actions, and thoughts precede actions. Expecting different results from the same behaviors and thought patterns is, itself, a delusion.
CBT can definitely feel that way but maybe if you view it as a way to explore the feelings and thoughts you have an examine if you really believe they're true, that might help? Like... Not everything you think is true. But it makes you feel some kinda way. So sometimes pulling it out and examining in and looking for a new direction to take some thoughts can be really helpful.
Similar experience for me. It wasn't that I felt my thoughts were invalid, but I didn't feel like it was impacting me in the moment, and then every session was like "sure, that was illogical, but I still felt that at the time".
I've been trying ACT, and while I don't know if it's been effective yet, at least it's helping me process and understand my thoughts better.
I'm feeling exactly the same, I'm in a CBT Therapy group rn which feels double invalidating because everyone else seems to have the exact opposite problems.
I'm currently working through a book on Inter Familial Systems Therapy and it's a much better fit - it works by assigning personas to specific problematic thought patterns and talking the issues out with those personas. Way more validating in my opinion, as it's focused on being empathetic towards them and guiding them in a better direction.
Therapy in general is about accepting problems instead of solving them. This is because therapists are not real doctors and cannot actually cure anything. Psychology is a scam.
Psychology has come a long way in the last 50 years. I used to think like you, and even now maintain a healthy dose of skepticism, but therapy absolutely can improve your life. It's not much of a scam if it's working for most people. It's just not going to solve all you problems. If anything it just makes you more aware and better equipped to deal with your emotions.