If CBT performed as well as David Burns suggests, we’d really have no need for therapists. Alas, it turns out that cognitive problems aren’t a factor in a lot of mental health. I state this as someone who’s read all the literature and spent 8 years floundering in CBT oriented therapy without much changing but the practitioner. It’s not a cure-all or even a cure-most, but it’s treated as such because it has properties that match well to medical insurance billing practices.

> And of people I know who see a therapist, practically none can tell me what exactly they are doing or what methods they are doing or how anything is structured.

I could tell you that as a client, but that’s because I’ve read into it. This is sort of like asking an ER patient to describe the shift management system of the clinic they went into.