-
Feeling isolated? You're not alone.
Join 20,000+ people who understand exactly how your day went. Whether you're newly diagnosed, self-identified, or supporting someone you love – this is a space where you don't have to explain yourself.
Join the Conversation → It's free, anonymous, and supportive.
As a member, you'll get:
- A community that actually gets it – no judgment, no explanations needed
- Private forums for sensitive topics (hidden from search engines)
- Real-time chat with others who share your experiences
- Your own blog to document your journey
You've found your people. Create your free account
CBT experiences
- Thread starter Hapless
- Start date
Hapless
New Member
Thanks for sharing, I appreciate your response, but I’m really looking for more recent experiences with CBT as an autistic person.
I use CBT, DBT, and ACT together. Very helpful and I credit them with helping me handle stress better and increasing my level of function overall. I tend to do workbooks, own over 100 now. I photograph (or screenshot) the exercises and keep them in a binder so I can do them over and over. I do not write in my books (the paper ones).
Speaking as someone with Asperger's (grudgingly relabeled as ASD1), paranoid schizophrenia, chronic depression, and alcoholism (sober 34 years). So that's what I'm using that blue plate combo to manage in addition to the perfunctory meds.
i think it probably works for people with straight forward problems. has never helped me but that was all pre-diagnosis of ASD so maybe there are adaptations.
whatever you decide it needs to be delivered by someone with proper understanding of you neurodivetsity profile
whatever you decide it needs to be delivered by someone with proper understanding of you neurodivetsity profile
Good luck findng that in a rural area. That's why I have all the books instead.
I prefer being functional. I'm not fussy about what road gets me there. The books have been faster than working with people so far. It helps when you're not limited to an hour or two a month.
Hapless
New Member
Thank you for sharing your experience, Are these books available to purchase online?
It also helps that you can buy 10+ books for the price of 1 hour of therapy, with those books providing the equivalent of 100+ hours of therapy. I chose self-help books because therapy was too expensive.
If someone can only afford to see a therapist 1 or 2 times a month, I don't think a therapist can do much, other than help them cope with and manage their symptoms. I'd estimate 2-3 times a week is necessary to actually recover from a mental health condition.
You can buy them on Amazon, eBay, or any store that sells books. If you go to a local bookstore, they're usually in the self-help section. You can also read them for free at a library. If you sort prices on Amazon from low to high, they sometimes have electronic versions of books on sale at a 100% discount, meaning they're free. If you're using CBT for depression, I recommend Feeling Good by David Burns. Used copies on eBay are very inexpensive.
Most of mine thru Amazon, a few at thrift sales, found a couple in Little Libraries for free.
Wizardry
Deep in Thought
If you don't mind sharing, what specific problems are you having that you hope CBT can address?
CBT assumes that an individual's thoughts influence their feelings, and then their feelings influence their behaviour. Not everybody strictly operates that way, but many people do.
CBT tries to change one's thinking with the goal of ultimately changing how they feel, and thus, how they behave. CBT doesn't focus much on the past or why things are the way they are. It generally focuses more on adopting thought patterns that serve the individual in the present and neutralising cognitive distortions and faulty thinking.
Personally, I've found CBT to be a very poor fit for the issues I experience and the way I operate. I've tended to feel misunderstood or like my valid, understandable reaction to adverse circumstances was being pathologised when I've tried CBT. CBT therapists very rarely have grounding in the form of an experiential reference point to understand and empathise with my difficulties, so they tend to try to reframe them away and focus on other things rather than addressing them directly, which I find worse than not engaging with therapy at all.
Then again, I'm not affected by clinical depression, cognitive distortions or diagnosable mental health conditions (unless you count autism), but rather understandable low life satisfaction based on undesirable circumstances. In my case, certain circumstances improving could do infinitely more good for my mental health than any treatment a therapist could hope to provide.
Over the years, I have had much more success gaining insight into the intricacies of my own life and circumstances through solitary introspection, analysis and pattern recognition than I ever have with the help of any therapist. Generally, therapists don't properly grasp tje nature or gravity of what I'm dealing with, so I'm put in the position where I have to defend the existence and validity of my own issues (so I've gotten good at it). I've even left therapists speechless on multiple occasions where my logic has been too coherent for them to be able to engage with in good faith without conceding what I've said, which would often involve tacitly conceding that their tools are mostly ineffective for my issues.
CBT does work for some people. If you experience cognitive distortions, confusion or lack of clarity about your mental and emotional state, or diagnosable mental health conditions like clinical depression or anxiety, there's a higher chance that CBT could be a good fit for you.
If you do pursue CBT, I'd recommend considering what success would specifically look like if the therapy is working, so you can more easily determine whether or not the therapy is actually helping. Therapists are generally quite happy to take your money even if therapy isn't actually benefiting you, so it's on you to determine whether you think it's helping or not.
Personally, I would never try CBT again. Probably not any other kind of talk therapy either, unless I could see very specific potential benefits.
CBT assumes that an individual's thoughts influence their feelings, and then their feelings influence their behaviour. Not everybody strictly operates that way, but many people do.
CBT tries to change one's thinking with the goal of ultimately changing how they feel, and thus, how they behave. CBT doesn't focus much on the past or why things are the way they are. It generally focuses more on adopting thought patterns that serve the individual in the present and neutralising cognitive distortions and faulty thinking.
Personally, I've found CBT to be a very poor fit for the issues I experience and the way I operate. I've tended to feel misunderstood or like my valid, understandable reaction to adverse circumstances was being pathologised when I've tried CBT. CBT therapists very rarely have grounding in the form of an experiential reference point to understand and empathise with my difficulties, so they tend to try to reframe them away and focus on other things rather than addressing them directly, which I find worse than not engaging with therapy at all.
Then again, I'm not affected by clinical depression, cognitive distortions or diagnosable mental health conditions (unless you count autism), but rather understandable low life satisfaction based on undesirable circumstances. In my case, certain circumstances improving could do infinitely more good for my mental health than any treatment a therapist could hope to provide.
Over the years, I have had much more success gaining insight into the intricacies of my own life and circumstances through solitary introspection, analysis and pattern recognition than I ever have with the help of any therapist. Generally, therapists don't properly grasp tje nature or gravity of what I'm dealing with, so I'm put in the position where I have to defend the existence and validity of my own issues (so I've gotten good at it). I've even left therapists speechless on multiple occasions where my logic has been too coherent for them to be able to engage with in good faith without conceding what I've said, which would often involve tacitly conceding that their tools are mostly ineffective for my issues.
CBT does work for some people. If you experience cognitive distortions, confusion or lack of clarity about your mental and emotional state, or diagnosable mental health conditions like clinical depression or anxiety, there's a higher chance that CBT could be a good fit for you.
If you do pursue CBT, I'd recommend considering what success would specifically look like if the therapy is working, so you can more easily determine whether or not the therapy is actually helping. Therapists are generally quite happy to take your money even if therapy isn't actually benefiting you, so it's on you to determine whether you think it's helping or not.
Personally, I would never try CBT again. Probably not any other kind of talk therapy either, unless I could see very specific potential benefits.
Last edited:
That's because in a lot of cases you can't change the past, just how you react to it. I can't go around abusing everyone in the present because adults abused me as a kid. I can't undo that. I just know if I feel this way now or am acting this way now I have options to modify my behaviour. When I behave better I feel better as well.
Wizardry
Deep in Thought
Other types of therapy do focus more on making sense of the past, like psychodynamic therapy, for instance.
I think most patients blame their abnormal feelings and other problems on their circumstances while the mental health industry tries to convince patients that their thoughts are the problem.
I see it all the time:
Patients: External circumstances -> feelings -> behavior
Therapists say NO:
Distorted or irrational thoughts about external circumstances -> feelings -> behavior
arithmetic
Active Member
Hi 
I tried CBT over a 2 year period 30 years ago. I learned lots but the shrink didn't diagnose autism at the time - autism was a recent discovery, back then... and the shrink was a daily stoner.
Meh!
CBT didn't help me with loneliness and my health didn't improve as I'd hoped - health got much worse!
CBT is good in its place.
Habitual destructive thoughts, whether about oneself or others, are unhelpful and tax the spirit.
More encouraging, happier thoughts do not cost a person their health, and make life enjoyable.
Autists can benefit through being honest clients of CBT group.
.............
I must add this afterthought. I am very interested in my spiritual relationship with an "Upper World" person, who might be called Kindness. I have been interested in this relationship all my life. Therefore CBT helped me towards a goal I already had in my sights. I almost wonder any therapy could fail for me with such a goal in my life
I tried CBT over a 2 year period 30 years ago. I learned lots but the shrink didn't diagnose autism at the time - autism was a recent discovery, back then... and the shrink was a daily stoner.
Meh!
CBT didn't help me with loneliness and my health didn't improve as I'd hoped - health got much worse!
CBT is good in its place.
Habitual destructive thoughts, whether about oneself or others, are unhelpful and tax the spirit.
More encouraging, happier thoughts do not cost a person their health, and make life enjoyable.
Autists can benefit through being honest clients of CBT group.
.............
I must add this afterthought. I am very interested in my spiritual relationship with an "Upper World" person, who might be called Kindness. I have been interested in this relationship all my life. Therefore CBT helped me towards a goal I already had in my sights. I almost wonder any therapy could fail for me with such a goal in my life
Last edited:
Wizardry
Deep in Thought
A lot of people with clinical depression don't know why they feel the way they feel, and turn to therapy to understand themselves better.
A limitation on CBT's effectiveness for certain individuals is that sometimes, it isn't actually faulty thinking that is the problem, but rather the adverse circumstances themselves. Not every problem can be reframed away or accepted and incorporated into a fulfilling life. CBT continues to exist because it works for many people who are confused or whose cognition is actually distorted, it's institutionally "safe", and it doesn't make promises that therapy can't deliver. It is not, however, a universal solution for all individuals and all problems.
New Threads
-
-
-
Trying to find potential dates on dating apps and the internet only.
- Started by BrianWV39
- Replies: 7
-
-
It’s over I’m d I f f e r e n T and so r u
- Started by AutismSupremacist
- Replies: 21
-
-
-
-
Autism & ADHD de-diagnosis- Started by cooljethro
- Replies: 20
-