I just did some quick, short reading on CBT and it sounds a lot like positive self talk. I have a bias against what I perceive as touchy, feely self-help methods. They seem corny to me.
It's not so much "positive self-talk" as challenging patterns of thinking to see if they are really true or if they are distortions, and for the analytical and rational among us it is often a successful form of therapy, precisely because it relies on cognitive evaluation of data and conducting behavioral self-experiments to challenge previously drawn conclusions.
E.g., if I went into a therapy session and I was upset because I felt that people didn't like me and I was lonely, my conversation with my therapist might go something like this:
Me: I'm lonely. I don't have any friends. I don't know what's wrong with me.
Therapist: How do you know there's something wrong with you?
Me: Well, there must be, because no one likes me.
T: How do you know that no one likes you?
Me: Well, I just don't feel like anyone does.
T: Really? Anyone? In the whole world?
Me: Well, I guess not "anyone" -- I guess I'm saying that people at work don't like me.
T: How do you know that? Is that absolutely true?
Me: Well, I just feel it. I feel like they don't like me.
T: But do you know it for sure? Have they said, "Vox, I really don't like you"?
Me: No.
T: Have they tripped you in the hallways or put a flaming bag of dog poop in front of your office door?
Me: No.
T: So there's no real
evidence that they don't like you. There's your feeling that they don't like you, but feelings aren't evidence.
Me: (dubiously) Okay...
T: So it's at least possible that they might like you, and that your assessment of the situation, based on your emotional reasoning, might be wrong.
Me: Okay...
T: So what kind of experiment do you think we could do to find out? What evidence would convince you that they do or do not like you?
etc. I won't go on because it will last for 50 minutes and then I'll have to send you a bill. ;)
At various points in this conversation, there might have been side conversations to point out what kinds of distorted thinking I was using (emotional reasoning, personalization, overgeneralization, catastrophizing, etc. -- we could spend a whole session unpacking and challenging the first three or four sentences alone). We would come up with various kinds of thought/behavioral experiments -- for example, if I say that I'm afraid to make social overtures to my colleagues at work because I'm convinced they don't like me and they'll reject my social overtures and then laugh at me behind my back, my therapist might set me the experiment of asking three colleagues to have lunch or coffee and seeing what happens. Even one acceptance disproves my theory, which is based on my emotions and assumptions. And even if no one accepts my lunch invitation, it is highly unlikely that they would actually laugh at me behind my back about it, so even if I get no acceptances, the theory is still disproved.
CBT works by making us become aware of, evaluate, and challenge the filters by which we interpret the things that we experience.
There are some of us for whom CBT is not the most effective approach to therapy, though -- everyone is different.
VP
