For @Om_Sadasiva
Please show it to your psychiatrist. I know many people who have gotten more benefit from CBT than meds. They still need the meds, but the CBT is a potent power-up for them. It has restored my quality of life.
My own psychiatrist says that CBT generally works well for intelligent individuals and that’s you OM.
Interesting.
So if sz is a combination of both psychiatric and psychological issues, every szich should do both
You have nothing to lose by trying to push your way out Om. I hope you continue to try
Just be aware that CBT doesn’t directly lower your level of positive symptoms, it helps you change how you react to them. In my case learning to treat my symptoms as annoying, but humorous and not at all real or threatening helped cut my stress level in half. As my stress level drops so does the intensity of my positive symptoms.
My positive symptoms were always terrifying before CBT. Now I laugh at them and keep going.
Can all cognitive therapists
treat a sz
I couldn’t find any in the rural area I lived in back when I started. I bought books and followed the principles on my own. I believe @LevelJ1 did the same. It is more common now, but my psychiatrist says there’s no point in me doing more CBT with a therapist given how advanced I am. There also aren’t enough therapists versed in CBT so those who have no training need them more than me.
When I was in semi psychosis not all that long ago for a few months…I was noticing discrepencies in my beliefs. For example…I was thinking that sirens and train whistles were responding to my thoughts…but then I started to not think about things so much and focused on other things. I started to notice that these same noises and vehicles were present making the same level of appearances regardless of my thoughts.
Maybe look for things like that as well.
Another example: When I had my “incident” and hacking of my cloud account, I thought there was someone out to get me…either powerful people poisoning me or God punishing me or whatever…but then I started thinking logically and that there is a more mundane explanation. That something physically happened to me without outside interference.
There are many instances where I noticed that there were more reasonable logical explanations for my issues.
Things that just didnt make sense when you looked at them logically.
Try Cbt…try using logic…try anything you can get your hands on in combination with meds and hope you can make some progress
I think the things I learned in CBT went out the window when I was paranoid and in psychosis you couldn’t tell me nothing.
I tend to agree that its very difficult with no insight. But trying doesnt hurt. He wants to be better , I think, and thats a start
CBT only works while your insight is working. I had to go back on APs during a recent bout of illness as there are limits to how much I can do through willpower alone. CBT on its own can’t preserve insight in a lot of cases. I am doing better and tapering off APs again, but it helped that I know my limits better these days.
I found one challenging thing to come to terms with is when you have done cbt or logic to distance your self from the magical thinking or delusions is that life felt a bit boring for a while. Even though some of it was scary it also had exciting and special components.
So getting use to regular living took a bit to accept.
Like when i went from hearing voices all the time to not hearing them much anymore id keep checking to see if they were there for a few years. I dont check anymore. I still get them ocasionally but quite rare these days
Did you find that the voices ramped down as your stress level decreased?
Honestly i have no idea why they stopped happening so much. 2 years ago i had a bad mixed episode where i was hearing them a lot for 5 months. But then it ended and havent heard much at all since then, and it isnt really anything i did to end it.
Brain chemicals are a mystery.
But stress levels for sure can bring symptoms back. I work hard to keep my stressors low or do activitys to lower overall stress.
I know that feeling I still check myself often. I turn off everything to see if any voices are there.
closing this thread now that we have all had our say. seems to be upsetting Om