# CBT plateau, specific question on negative beliefs



## elasere (May 5, 2007)

I have been doing CBT for a few months and I am not improving as fast as I hoped, although it is helping little by little. Right now I'm stuck in a plateau because of one specific issue: I can't challenge my negative thoughts!

It goes somewhat like this: I am talking to this girl and the conversation starts going downhill as I start to freeze up and nothing comes to mind about how to continue. At the time and later I keep thing that I am just boring and do not have anything interesting to say. When I am doing the exercise of challenging this negative thought&#8230; I can't!! I can come up with a million reasons of why this is not true or why this is not the reason the conversation dried up, but I don't believe any of them. I do believe to some level that I am boring and have not much of value to offer in a social interaction. So I am stuck here, how to face this problem.

I have been going over this problem with my therapist for a few weeks and I am just stuck. I mean, I am moving forward but sooo sloooow. It seems to be a (if not _the_) core issue with my SA. My therapists has me trying to think of times when I have felt great and connected in a social interaction. What have I been doing then, or what have I been talking about? First, I can't think of many situations when this is the case. And second, even when this is the case I can't think of what exactly I'm doing well. I can't explain it. It just happens sometimes. So yeah, I'm kinda stuck here.

For the people practicing CBT successfully (or not). Have you come across this problem? Do you face this problem at all (maybe you're doing CBT slightly differently)? What do you do about it? I mean, if I totally believe I'm boring, how do I challenge this belief?

Cheers,
Ian

PS. Man I love this forum. I come here only from time to time when I'm stuck and it's always so refreshing. Lots of people I can relate to.


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## yeah_yeah_yeah (Mar 27, 2007)

Hello Elasere

I've generally not been posting here lately but as you PM'd me I thought I'd reply. I can relate to what you've written and in many ways I'm not sure that what I have to tell you will be an immediate relief.

An aspect of CBT that I missed when I started is that sometimes, bad stuff DOES happen. I grabbed hold of CBT and thought it would transform me into a world beating super stud that could make EVERYONE love me. When it worked for me, what I in fact found was that the people I did get on with I felt comfortable enough to nurture the relationship, and the ones I didnt click with I wasnt upset about.

In the time when the CBT didnt work, I was hugely upset by any interaction that wasnt fantastic, and this carried over into any interaction that went well - my fears and anxiety in that moment meant it was hard to take the relationship anywhere meaningful. 

I found it helpful to see that some folks I wont get on with, no matter how much I want to, but that it doesnt mean I have failed. It just means I have faced a universal human tryth - not everyone can get on all the time. A lot of it comes from valuing yourself too, so self acceptance (or self esteem if you want to call it that) is a good thing to work on too, in a way, working on bits of yourself through therapy that isnt DIRECTLY to do with your worries about being boring. Feeling dull is very typical of SA and the anxiety itself limits your social creativity. 

Re: Lack of progress - have you considered that maybe your therapist isnt up to scratch? I have just changed therapists after realising that my last one never DID anything. My new one is very pro-active and we are going extensively into experiments and cognitive work. If you are with a therapist that cannot help you to find the right way to challenge your thoughts, think about finding a new one.

Do you do experiments to test beliefs? If you are not doing the experiments it will be very hard to improve. Maybe if you like, PM me and give me a general outline or example of how your interactions go, the thoughts you have and how you feel. Maybe I can help you come up with some ideas 

Speak to you soon,

Ross


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## elasere (May 5, 2007)

yeah_yeah_yeah said:


> Hello Elasere


Oops. That's funny. My nick translates to "the dude" in spanish. You can call me Ian.


> I've generally not been posting here lately but as you PM'd me I thought I'd reply. I can relate to what you've written and in many ways I'm not sure that what I have to tell you will be an immediate relief.


How come? Well thanks, I thought you could relate.


> I found it helpful to see that some folks I wont get on with, no matter how much I want to, but that it doesnt mean I have failed. It just means I have faced a universal human tryth - not everyone can get on all the time. A lot of it comes from valuing yourself too, so self acceptance (or self esteem if you want to call it that) is a good thing to work on too, in a way, working on bits of yourself through therapy that isnt DIRECTLY to do with your worries about being boring. Feeling dull is very typical of SA and the anxiety itself limits your social creativity.


This is true. It became clear when I started doing CBT. There's a part in Butler's book that suggests working on self esteem by other means, and my therapists suggests this as well. Because of this I started to spend some of my time say, doing other things, instead of only focusing on SA. But, is this the solution? It may be part of it.



> Re: Lack of progress - have you considered that maybe your therapist isnt up to scratch? I have just changed therapists after realising that my last one never DID anything. My new one is very pro-active and we are going extensively into experiments and cognitive work. If you are with a therapist that cannot help you to find the right way to challenge your thoughts, think about finding a new one.
> 
> Do you do experiments to test beliefs? If you are not doing the experiments it will be very hard to improve. Maybe if you like, PM me and give me a general outline or example of how your interactions go, the thoughts you have and how you feel. Maybe I can help you come up with some ideas


Well it's a long story. I like my therapist. I think he knows what he is doing and knows CBT well. He understands well my situation and articulates well what he thinks are the reasons for the issues I have and what to do about them. I am very skeptical and he does a good job at convincing me. I am just a bit frustrated that I am stuck now and even with his help there hasn't been like an aha moment. I think I am moving forward, just slowly, so I am hesitant to change therapist yet.

Let me describe my progress in some more detail. My SA is not too bad and I can go to social gatherings with friends, parties, clubs etc, as long as I don't go alone and I don't initiate any conversations with people I don't know. On the other hand I am very self concious of how is the interaction going, tend to be pessimistic about it, and I am afraid of starting a conversation with somebody I don't know (anybody but in practice is mostly girls). So my friends would describe me as introverted and shy (sounds familiar?) but don't believe me when I tell them I have social anxiety and that it's a big deal for me.

So anyway, when I started CBT the therapist and I agreed that I would start doing exposures at parties versus, say, bars, because I knew already some people there and it's not loud and in general people are more friendly. It was a good start. Meanwhile he also gave some tips on how to structure the interactions, and gave me a book to read so that I could keep going even if I got nervous and self-concious. What started happening as I started doing exposures was that I started getting lots of rejections! You know, I start a conversation with somebody I just met and it would start fine but it would go down pretty fast. I just got self-concious and blanked or noticed that the other person was getting bored etc. Typical. This happened pretty frequently.

Then I started analyzing the interactions with the therapist (and also by myself, following Butler's book) and all of them came down to me *thinking* that I didn't have much value to offer to the conversation, or was boring, or didn't know what to talk about. I mean, with my friends I am fine, but not with people I just met or don't know very well. So I start working on challenging this, with my therapists help and by myself, and lo, I can't believe my explanations or the therapist! Also, it seems that I am very biased to notice things that are negative, say, when somebody else doesn't like me, and tend to be objective, but not with positive things which I don't notice or tend to dismiss (what they call "discounting the positive"). So this is where I am right now. I have reduced temporarily doing exposures with people I don't know, which is what really makes me uncomfortable, and have been focusing on spending time with good friends, to try to convince myself that yeah there's people who like me and they have reasons etc. I am having trouble with it though. Maybe I am looking at it from the wrong point, I have no idea.

I could go on but this is the outline. Any comments?

Ian


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## yeah_yeah_yeah (Mar 27, 2007)

I'm not sure what to say, apart from stick with it. With CBT you need to try lots of things from lots of angles until you find the thing that works for you. When i first started CBT, I tended to use the phrases right out of the books, like "I am a worthless human being" or "my worth is not based on the opinions of others". Then i realised that the actual words I used were important, and finding ones that meant something to me had more emotional impact. With my current therapist, "I am a worthless human being" became "I feel like I have a horrible, black rotten core that others sense and react to". This is what Im challenging now and because it really gets to the core of how I feel, in my own words, to challenge it feels more powerful. You might want to sit and think EXACTLY how you would phrase your own beliefs in a way that really gets to the core of how you feel.

Still though, it can take a long time to really crack long standing problems. I have been told that I am dysthymic, which is long term, intractable or chronic lifelong depression and anxiety. Apparently the way to treat this is meds and CBT together, so I am back on the meds - this certainly worked in the past for me. In addition my therapist has suggested an assessment for Aspergers syndrome. With issues like ours, it can take a lot of digging and patience. You may like to ask yourself what is so bad about being boring, and what is different about people you DO get on with. Do you tend to devalue people who like you? I certainly do - its a form of disqualifying the positive. If you do not click with someone, why is that so bad? Is there a way you can have a person not like you, or not make someone laugh, or have someone seem bored (and they may only seem that way to you because you are looking out for it in the first place), and still respect yourself? Thats the new belief I am curretly looking for evidence of:

"I am likeable by some people, but I can still respect myself if someone doesnt like me or if I do not get on with someone". Maybe this will help you - but it sounds like you have a good therapist and I'm really pleased about that. Good therapists almost seem like having a really clever and good friend 

Any more thoughts feel free to post.

Ross


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## elasere (May 5, 2007)

I want to sit and respond but I have a quick quick question. In this particular topic of challenging your thoughts, is there anything you've read that you have found particularly useful? I'm going to be on vacation next week and will have plenty of time to read. The ones I like the most are Butler's book (thanks for recommending this book in the forum btw) and Dying of Embarrassment, but as usual I'm always hoping there's something else out there that I'm missing.


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## foggydays (Aug 23, 2007)

i'm not sure how this fits in with cbt, but have you tried visualization? i find it helpful to close my eyes and see myself in certain situations, like the one you mentioned about talking to the girl, and try to feel all the emotions so it feels real. then try to see yourself in that situation being and feeling more at ease or enjoying yourself. this works for me as long as i am being realistic of my expectations.


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## yeah_yeah_yeah (Mar 27, 2007)

Ian

"When Panic Attacks" by David D Burns is a good one. Over 40 methods for fighting back against negative thoughts.

You have a good sense of humour so I think you will like the humour based approaches. I would write them up but I dont have time to copy out the tens of pages - get the book and you'll love it.

Ross


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## ardrum (May 13, 2007)

Yeah, I actually was surprised that I sort of already used the humor techniques before reading about them. I can second that book.


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## tomcoldaba (Jul 1, 2007)

When Panic Attacks by David Burns is a must have book. It helped me immensely.


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