I wonder whether therapists would agree with that. I don't think CBT can cure everything but I'm curious how much it can do and whether it can help people in your situation who think it can't help.
I don't think therapists tend to like acknowledging where talk therapy can't help, as it undermines the authority of the field, implies that changes to some frameworks might be necessary, and sometimes gives the therapist no alternative place to send the patient for help. It's easier and more convenient to try and make the patient fit into the model, even if they don't.
My determination that CBT and talk therapy are unhelpful for my issues is not something that I've arrived at lightly. There are several reasons for this.
I don't follow the Thought → Feeling → Behaviour structure that CBT assumes. I'm more like Reality → Structure → Meaning → Emotion → Action.
I don't start with feelings or even isolated thoughts. I start with structural evaluation of reality. I don’t act because I feel. I feel because something either fits or breaks my internal model.
CBT assumes: Changing thoughts = emotions change, but for me, changing thoughts doesn’t work unless the system becomes coherent.
I don’t believe things just because they are helpful or convenient. They have to make structural sense. If anything, therapists experience my thoughts as too coherent to be able to challenge as opposed to disorganised or distorted. I remember making one therapist visibly lose their composure in an instance when my chain of logic made their framework and apparent preconceived notions irreconcilable with each other.
I've had about 7 or 8 therapists in my life, and while a couple of them occasionally made good suggestions, I never experienced any change in my mental or emotional well-being with any of them. A couple of them even suggested or outright told me that therapy is not the appropriate intervention given my particular difficulties and the way I operate.
Like I said before, my understanding of the intricacies of my difficulties has come infinitely further through solitary introspection and analysis (and more recently, the assistance of ChatGPT) than it ever did with the help of any therapist, and better-understanding my situation has had a grounding effect, making old harmful but understandable beliefs untenable with the emergence of contradictory evidence.
My problems are not relatable to the majority of the population, so therapists in the past have often misunderstood or misclassified them, which has had a negative impact rather than a positive one. I don't think I've ever seen somebody with issues like mine say that they've benefitted from talk therapy, but I've seen many who have said it hasn't helped them.
I think the mental health industry as a whole is largely underserving and getting it wrong as it relates to people with issues like mine, so much so that I'm in the process of creating a theoretical framework that makes novel claims and predictions that aren't currently accounted for in the field of psychology. Elements of this theory have been discussed in posts I've made in other threads.
