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Comment by narwally | Hacker News Reader

> CBT can be helpful, but it 'intellectualizes' problems too much. How about teaching these kids how to increase their self-confidence? How to identify their emotional needs? How to build their social skills, resolve conflicts in relationships, and assert their personal boundaries? Most sure aren't learning that from their parents.

All the things you listed are already directly addressed within CBT.

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I received CBT, and that's not my experience. Learning the thought patterns involved in these behaviors is different from learning the underlying skills needed to improve those behaviors. Just like reflecting on the thought patterns behind piano-playing won't help me play the piano. It might help me improve the way I practice, but it doesn't teach me what to do with the keys. And CBT frames emotions as being caused by thought-patterns, when the causality is not quite that "clean".

I'm not rejecting CBT's usefulness. It's a good tool. But I found it better at improving symptom management than at addressing underlying problems.

Interesting. I've been doing psychoanalysis for over a year now, and I have similar complaints: I know exactly what went wrong with my life but I have no idea WTF to do with it. It's like I'm just picking the wounds

Aside from the dollars spent on therapy, is that outcome worse than being confused about why you are suffering? Or thinking that god or society just hates you? At least in some cases, it could lead to positive change, at least as a warning to others.

Other than incredibly vague non-existent definition of what Mindfulness is, it attempts to frame the thought patterns that lead to emotional distress as inherently being the problem themselves.

Most of us have thought patterns because we experience the world around us. Our actual experience of the world might as well just be our thought patterns. If those thought patterns lead to negative thoughts, that doesn't imply I am inherently the problem.

Mindfulness chooses a line and tells the patient it's their problem to deal with. It's merely convenient (and profitable) that we are as individuals able to affect our own thoughts to a significant degree. It is a course in training you to deal with the pain of your own self-awareness without requiring an actual change to those conditions.

If mindfulness told us our job was to affect actual change in our world, it'd be nothing more than a completely irrelevant set of practices.

They use CBT for anger management classes, so I think you are right about this. It doesn't stop you from lashing out. It gives you resources that might help you head off that process that usually results in you lashing out.

It doesn't cover underlying causes there. CBT doesn't work by alone. It needs other therapies to complete the cycle.

CBT isn't really appropriate for a big chunk of people with serious anger management issues... that was one of the motivators for the development of DBT.

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