# cbt vs psychodynamic therapy



## LostPancake (Apr 8, 2009)

this is pretty long - it might just be of interest to people who have done cbt. or maybe they've all graduated from this site? 

i did cbt when i was younger. it was really helpful - i took tiny steps and managed to get a job and a relationship, and then moved across the country to escape my family, which i felt was contributing to my problems. 

it worked, but even though some other people seemed to like me, i still didn't really like myself. when i tried to meet new people, i wanted them to know the inner me, not this sort of artificially confident construct. but they didn't want to. except for one suicidal heroin addict, which i suppose says something about my state of mind. 

i think i had quit therapy too early - i did it for a year. we didn't really get into emotional issues. it was all focused on external goal setting. which worked for its purpose. 

but i was left with an emptiness, which made me feel self-destructive. what was the point of all of this external success if i still wasn't happy? and i had a really hard time getting close to people. i think my inner feelings of worthlessness kept them away, and made me wary of opening up to them. women would be attracted to me, but it was the confident facade that they liked, they didn't want anything to do with my insecurity. 

so... when i decided to go back to therapy this year, i wanted someone who would go beyond cbt. i love jung, but the jungians have a reputation of being expensive. i wound up picking someone who looked really nice, knew cbt, and focused on resolving conflicting feelings towards family members. 

as i understand it, dealing with my family in childhood caused all kinds of unacceptable feelings. i had to bury my feelings and be more concerned about my mom's feelings. my dad apparently had no feelings, but was a jerk to my mom, which made me hate him. so there was all this resentment and anger towards them that i had to bury. 

i think social anxiety was something that was kind of layered on top of all of this. just from the feeling of not fitting in anywhere, not relating to anyone, wondering what was wrong with me, and trying to make myself be like other people, and failing. 

my anxiety is fairly low nowadays, especially since quitting caffeine. i have more problems with dealing with people because i seem to keep projecting my parents onto them. with women, i'm always ultra-concerned with their feelings, worried about hurting their feelings inadvertently, am overly-solicitous, worried that i'll come off as a jerk, go overboard on being nice, and so they (of course), lose interest. with men or female teachers, i have a hostile attitude towards them, think they're *******s, don't want to have anything to do with them. when it's actually me that's being the *******. 

so, the approach my therapist is taking is to get me to feel all these repressed emotions. i guess because i've denied them so long, and my identity is all out of whack as a result. i am pretty good at avoiding feeling the emotions though. it's the least pleasant aspect of the whole experience of therapy. i'd rather just talk her head off for an hour than feel anything. i'm sure i'm dragging it out longer than necessary. but i dread feeling this stuff. 

anyway, cbt is good for interrupting the cycle where feelings generate thoughts, and thoughts generate feelings. but i guess in my case, repression was preventing the feelings from being resolved. maybe because i avoided dealing with these particular issues in cbt, due to the repression. but they keep coming up, because i still have to deal with my family so much, and the projections are everywhere. so those feelings and the associated cognitions have never been dealt with. 

so, at the moment, i'm able to feel these things, though it just feels hopeless, like they remind me of being a kid and never feeling like i would be understood. i was incredibly frustrated with my family. i guess the point is to try to own these feelings, and not just push them away.


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## Lovesick Loner (Oct 19, 2009)

I think it's just as important to talk about your repressed emotions as it is to set tangible social goals and take baby steps. Those core emotions are what really makes up your identity as a person, and everything else is really an elaborate facade, like you said.


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## kc1895 (Sep 4, 2009)

Thanks for your post. I can definitely relate to what you mean by repressed feelings, and not having an accomplished CBT therapy as a result of it. I'm currently getting psychodynamic therapy and going to a CBT based support group for SA. 

I think its truly important to understand the cause of our emotions instead of trying to rationalize it all the time, and to not focus on achieving external goals as much as discovering who we are on the inside.


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## delirium (Jun 24, 2009)

Doesn't this show how culturally constructed our identities are? We talk about "repressed emotions", and use all this psychodynamic jargon. Would an uneducated child in the third world have any use for "repressed emotions"?

What if therapy didn't exist? Would we try to "discover the inner me" by unlocking our "repressed emotions". All this talk about "finding out who I really am" is a never ending chasing after windmills. There is no "true self". Isn't this what postmodernism has taught us? There is no center to the structure. Who you are is not some fixed and stable identity, but a fragmented consciousness that changes like a chameleon from context to context? And we only think we have a fixed and stable identity because we tend to live in the same context (same house, same friends, same family) habitually? 

Anyway, it's good that you're on your way to becoming less troubled by your past. That's always good. But, as for identity. Who are you, really? Who is anyone, really? No answer is forthcoming.


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