Kevin,
Thanks for your interesting comments. Sorry you had such poor therapeutic experiences with your daughter. Glad you’re having success with your own clients!

Judith Beck

When I found that one of my daughters had ADHD I decided to look for a local therapist. There were two in my area who seemed to take a cognitive approach to treatment and were covered by my HMO: I chose the first one on the list and made an appointment.

My family and I are all atheists. Upon entrance into the clinic I noticed that the therapist was wearing a large cross. Not wanting to have a bad experience for my little girl, I raised this issue immediately. The therapist told me that “my beliefs would not be a problem.” She then proceeded to share a Bible story with my daughter as a part of treatment. I asked her if religion was going to be a regular component of treatment and she told me that “most children know this Bible story.” Needless to say we did not return.

Later we went to another therapist in town who advertises very loudly that he has a Ph. D. My wife accompanied us, and he only allowed my daughter in the room for about 5 minutes. He then asked her to wait outside while he gave us “advice.” At one point he told us to “throw a glass of water on her when she acts up.” I informed him that if I did that things would get worse. His response? “Hold her under the shower.” I’m not kidding nor exaggerating.

The disturbing thing is that these folks hold themselves out as using cognitive methods. As an atheist, I have routinely referred my clients to see priests and pastors for spiritual concerns and because I used to be a devout Christian myself (I have an undergrad degree in pastoral studies) I have a wealth of Bible passages that I can use with my deeply religious clients. My past experience allows me to understand where they are coming from without demeaning them. To me, this is the spirit of collaboration that should characterize CT: Albert Ellis calls it “being an authentic chameleon.”

As for the Ph. D. who likes to throw water on kids. . . . .he has been on probation twice with our state board.

Moral of the story? My hope is that the academy will play a role in weeding these people out who are engaged in false advertising. I’m only about 3 months from independent licensure and hope to start a formal CT training program soon. In the meantime I’m seeing great results using straightforward CT as shown in Dr. J. Beck’s books (Basics and beyond and challenging problems).

I know this is long, but I feel compelled to share one more thing: I opted to break cognitive restructuring into a series of steps that can be taught to a group. I am just finishing with my first group and all participants (except one) who have been regular attenders are showing differing degrees of improvement with their depressive symptoms. I’m excited as this week I will administer the BDI to see where they are. My assistant and I are already thinking of ways to improve the delivery of this material.

It’s a great era in which to be a counselor!!

For more information, you may also want to see the post on the difference between Cognitive Therapy and Cognitive Behavior Therapy. In any case, it’s wonderful that you and your friend were both able to teach yourself CBT techniques.

Thanks again for your great comments…

I was having misgivings about my career choice.I was 22 at the time, just out of college, having majored in something my parents choose (My parents threatened to stop helping me financially if I majored in a topic I was fascinated by and was good at which was geology) . I was in a lousy job with an abusive boss. The shrink kept saying, “You can be anything you want to be.” When I said that this statement makes logical sense whatsoever (for example, I am a slow runner and would not pass a PT exam for the police academy), he kept repeating this as if it was a mantra. He refused to help me develop strategies for leaving the particular job and perhaps going back to school and doing graduate level work. That shrink had his rose colored glasses bolted onto his head. I canceled my second appointment and found someone else. (By the way, I use the techniques and lessons taught in CBT routinely. They’re now habits of mind. I had to discover them for myself.)

I have a friend who saw a CBT therapist through a nationally renowned psychiatric hospital for OCD. My friend had been in college during the late 1960s, when there were a lot of religious cults on campus. The therapist tried to teach her mindfulness meditation, which, to her, felt way too much like the sort of thing the Buddhist and Hindu religious cults on her campus taught. The therapist was not willing to change his approach, to introduce her to the Stoic philosphers and other Western thinkers whose practices are similar to mindfulness. My friend found that the program felt too much like cult indoctrination and left. He is now doing a do-it-yourself form of CBT, relying on CBT books and workbooks purchased over the internet.

I wish cognitive-behavioral therapy as described on this site was available. Too many CBT therapists are not well-trained and refuse to think!

I’ve found that there are several things therapists can do when they find out that a patient’s automatic thought is true or that his/her prediction is likely to come true; I’ve described this in Cognitive Therapy for Challenging Problems — The first is to see whether the patient has drawn an inaccurate or dysfunctional conclusion.

For example, accurate automatic thought: My husband is an alcoholic.
Dysfunctional assumption: Everyone will think I’m inferior.

The second is to do some problem-solving. For example, perhaps this patient might join Al Anon, ask family members or friends for help, etc.

The third is to come to a level of acceptance about problems that can’t be solved and work to enrich other aspects of the patient’s life.

Just my $0.02.