Why CBT is Falling Out of Favour
Mar 29, 2018

Gilbert Hodges
Core Spirit member since Dec 24, 2020
Reading time 2 min.

Everybody loves cognitive behavioural therapy. It’s the no-nonsense, quick and relatively cheap approach to mental suffering – with none of that Freudian bollocks, and plenty of scientific backing. So it was unsettling to learn, from a paper in the journal Psychological Bulletin, that it seems to be getting less effective over time. After analysing 70 studies conducted between 1977 and 2014, researchers Tom Johnsen and Oddgeir Friborg concluded that CBT is roughly half as effective in treating depression as it used to be.

What’s going on? One theory is that, as any therapy grows more popular, the proportion of inexperienced or incompetent therapists grows bigger. But the paper raises a more intriguing idea: the placebo effect. The early publicity around CBT made it seem a miracle cure, so maybe it functioned like one for a while. These days, by contrast, the chances are you know someone who’s tried CBT and didn’t miraculously become perfectly happy for ever. Our expectations have become more realistic, so effectiveness has fallen, too. Johnsen and Friborg worry that their own paper will make matters worse by further lowering people’s expectations.

All this highlights something even stranger, though: when it comes to talk therapy, what does it even mean to speak of the placebo effect? With pills, it’s straightforward: if I swallow a sugar tablet, believing it to be an antidepressant, and my depression lifts, then there’s a good chance the placebo effect is at work. But if I believe that CBT, or any therapy, is likely to work, and it does, who’s to say if my beliefs were really the cause, rather than the therapy? Beliefs are an integral part of the process, not a rival explanation. The line between what I think is going on and what is going on starts to blur. Truly convince yourself that a psychological intervention is working and by definition it’s working.

Perhaps every era needs a practice it can believe in as a miracle cure – Freudian psychoanalysis in the 1930s, CBT in the 1990s, mindfulness meditation today – until research gradually reveals it to be as flawed as everything else.

Or it could be that we’re changing as people. In 1958, a US psychoanalyst, Allen Wheelis, published a book arguing that Freudian analysis had stopped working because the American character had altered. In Freud’s day, Wheelis argued, people didn’t understand why they felt sad; psychoanalysis gave them explanations, whereupon they found it easy to transform their lives. Modern people were better at self-understanding, but they lacked the gumption to do anything about it. “Lacking the sturdy character of the Victorians,” as Roy F Baumeister and John Tierney put it in their book Willpower‚ “people didn’t have the strength to follow up on the insight and change their lives.”

The old techniques weren’t completely wrong; they’d just outlived their usefulness. If the secret of happiness is hard to find, maybe that’s because the answer keeps changing.

Oliver Burkeman/The Guardian


Leave your comments / questions for this practitioner

To write a comment please
or
Services
Category filter
Concern filter
Type filter
Sort
 

All categories

Cognitive-behavioral therapy
$99 USD
consultation
Alchemy Life Therapy CBT

Alchemy Life Therapy CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy)
According to your needs and wishes, we offer an integrative programme of

  • Clinical Psychotherapy
  • SFBT (Solution Focused Brief Therapy)
  • CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
  • Advanced Medical Hypnotherapy
  • NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming)
  • Forensic Mental Health Support
  • Solution Focused Mindfulness
  • Mentoring & Life Coaching
  • Brain Training for Sport & Performance
  • The latest research-based and clinically-proven Neuroscience

THINGS PEOPLE SAY
“Intelligent Optimist of The Year” (Ode Magazine)
“Trailblazing Pioneer” (Hypnotherapy Today)
“Among the World’s Top Performers” (Newsquest)
“Best Community Outreach” (Zokit Business Awards)
“Outstanding Contribution to The Community” (Cancer Research Wales)
“Best Online Wellbeing Clinic - Wales” (SME News UK Enterprise Awards)

Gareth Strangemore-Jones
Cognitive-behavioral therapy
$100 USD
healing session
Subliminal therapy

In this service we will use Subliminal therapy and Sound healing as alternative to tradition cognitive behavioral therapy.

We are born with our thoughts. Do not be surprised, as thoughts precede us even before our senses work.

Human behavior consists of 3 major components associated with each other:

Acts: It is what is observed in humans with the naked eye, or by physical sensors.

Cognition: It is what is not observed with the human eye unless the person speaks to it in the event of verbal perception, which is the thoughts and perceptions that one carries with him in his mind.

Emotions: It is a short -term human feeling accompanied by an intense mental activity, and it cannot be described as logic or knowledge.

If your neighbor or colleague passes through you, and he didn't say hi to you, What will be your reaction towards it?

It depends on your awareness and not what his behavior is. If the thoughts you have at this moment are "he is an arrogant person, or, he looks at me with contempt", you will feel bad feelings towards him and the least that you will do is that you will intentionally ignore him all the next time.

But if the thoughts generated are "maybe he is preoccupied, or is going through difficult times", then your feelings will be changed towards him to attention and pity, and then your behavior will be changed.

While psychotherapy is concerned with chemical intervention to change feelings, the laws and regulations set by societies aim to control behavior. But behavioral cognitive therapy cares about changing awareness or thoughts, and here lies the problem.

Thoughts are old and rooted in the unconscious mind. They are the production of heredity, education and frequent experiences that make them like the inscriptions of the ancient people on stones, as they are our principles that we carry from one place to another and from time to time and from one state to another.

Subliminal therapy or Subliminal stimulation is how to transfer desired thoughts to the unconscious mind without passing through the natural senses of the human, so that these thoughts are not subject to rejection from the conscious mind.

Using subliminal therapy, we plant thoughts like "others love me for myself" or "I trust in those around me" into your subconscious mind directly, and with their repetition many times, these positive thoughts will remove negative thoughts about yourself or about others.

Day after day, you will find that your view about others has changed and that your feelings and your behavior towards them become better.

This was an example of the ability of subliminal therapy.

I helped many people who were able to make a change to their lives easily.

Some of them have improved their relationships with their families, others of them got rid of their fears, others overcame depression, and others have improved their mental, psychological and physical abilities as well.

Nothing is difficult to treat with subliminal therapy, especially if it is with the help of an expert.

In order for subliminal therapy to succeed, a plan must be set by the practitioner.

For example, how can an alcoholic be a lover of exercise and practice it?

Before planting loving cardio, he must have the desire to live a better life and to be in good health.

But this thought will not succeed without love for himself and trust in his abilities. 

And before this also, he needs to be a hater for everything that harms him.

And this needs to be tolerant with himself and accepting his past and previous mistakes, 

And so on.

Some offer what are called Subliminal bundles, How can I erase thoughts which are rooted in our conscience and minds and replace them with one in two weeks or two days? !!, something ridiculous.

They can make a change. I do not deny that, but it will be temporary and not permanent, such as using cosmetics. They will be removed in some time.

Likewise, the subliminal messages must be using your voice, your language, dialect, and using your own  vocabulary, otherwise your subconscious mind will not accept it.

Ahmed Amin Youssef
Cognitive-behavioral therapy
$80 USD
therapy session
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy 1 on 1 sessions

My specific approach is grounded in CBT and NLP, by using tools and techniques that are easy, relatable and real-life applicable. Also, I will hold you accountable for completing the commonly agreed tasks, all meant to get you closer to your goal.

We are going to discover together which tools are suitable for you, and we are going to use techiques such as: Cognitive restructuring, Guided Discovery, Journaling, Role Playing, Relaxation, Future Time Pacing, Activity Scheduling, and many more, following what works best for you and focussing on getting measurable and sustainable positive results.

Piporan Robert
Cognitive-behavioral therapy
$45 USD
coaching session
Couple Therapy

Marriage counselling, also called couples therapy, is a type of psychotherapy. Marriage counselling helps couples of all types recognize and resolve conflicts and improve their relationships. Through marriage counselling, you can make thoughtful decisions about rebuilding and strengthening your relationship or going your separate ways.

Tanaya Vaidya

Related Articles

View All
Registered individuals enjoy all the possibilities of Core Spirit.