Ask HN: Depth Psychotherapy and Behavior Therapy | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Depth Psychotherapy and Behavior Therapy

5 pointsWHA8m3 comments

What is your experience with one or the other approach of therapy? Thoughts, observations, information, anecdotes?

---

In Germany, therapists are differentiated between 'depth psychotherapy' and 'behavior therapy' (there are more, but those are the most common ones). I don't know if that's a distinction made everywhere in the world, but here you go. If you wonder what the difference is - in my own words and simple terms:

depth psychotherapy: more of an analytical approach to find the underlying root cause and take care of it (bottom to top)

behavior therapy: improve your life by fighting the symptoms and let your restored mental health sink in and resolve the cause (top to bottom)

---

Disclaimer: I'm not asking about the 'better' way of doing therapy. The best way is the one that works for YOU. The decision about one of those approaches might not even be the critical point to make therapy work for you. Stay safe!

Bottom to top, having done top to bottom for literally 10 years. At some level treating symptoms can be helpful to stabilize someone, but if left unaddressed deep wounds will continue to fester. Many people live their entire lives with a huge hole in their soul. Society straight up doesn't know about trauma or dissociation, and medical based psychiatry gave us several decades of languishing not being able to solve core problems

If you had cancer you might try both surgery and chemotherapy.

If I had mental health issues I would try drugs AND exercise AND depth psychotherapy AND cognitive-behavioral interventions.

I would point to

https://www.amazon.com/Characterological-Transformation-Hard...

as an approach that has the 'requisite variety' to attack the problem.

Year of CBT, but idk if my therapist used other techniques as well. Fixed few subconscious pathological anxieties, e.g. of being late, of excessive not-mine responsibility, of pushing into production. I find it pretty useful and even one hour may calm my issues down, because you get a fresh view if you’re open to yourself. Also, I never truly self-reflected, and it opened up a whole new level of control over my thinking process. I’ve discovered it all accidentally when I realized that me literally dying in 2020 were just panic attacks and then the first therapist I visited turned out to be a real pro from the local CBT association. Another observation that it takes few hours to “get” the method and stop fighting against it and/or overthinking it. The hardest question was “tell me what you’re thinking about right now”.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com