Letters to the Editor
Tacroy80
Published Letters: 41 Editor's Choice: 3
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Enough.
[Read the article: My sister is a famous designer -- and I'm not!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Okay, good response, yadda yadda ... but PLEASE -- enough with the cognitive therapy worship already!!!!!!!
Not every therapeutic modality works for all people. Telling somebody that it should work for them when it doesn't is incredbly damaging -- sort of like how practitioners of "The Secret" tell people who have been trying to follow it and who are still miserable and shit on by life that it's *their* fault and they're just not working hard enough. Cognitive therapy seems to have a similarly bizarre cult following. But the research is there, and it says that a) it's not ANY more effective than any other therapeutic modality, and b) the effects of psychodynamic therapy tend to be much longer-lasting. CBT is a bit of a quick, easy, cheap high. You feel better faster, but it wears off quickly -- particularly for people with alot of sensitivity, depth, and a tendency to question. They are painfully aware that they are not just machines who can be repaired by an influx of the "correct" thoughts and behaviors. They are also aware that alot of the "adaptive" thoughts they are telling themselves are bullshit (or at least have the possibility of being bullshit). Repeating these thoughts to oneself can feel cheap, hokey and intellectually dishonest.
The BIG problem with cognitive therapy, though, is that it's a slapdash effort to fix much bigger, deeper problems. Real, lifelong, persistent psychological pain often originates in childhood, the time when the structure of our being is being built. CBT can make some superficial cosmetic changes, maybe slap a new coat of paint on that leaky ceiling, make everything look prettier on a superficial level, but if there's underlying structural damage you're just gonna need to go in and do some heavy fucking remodeling. If you have a deeply-rooted sense of worthlessness, it's gonna take more than a few platitudes to change that. You need a structural overhaul.
Another analogy, in case the above doesn't fit thi particular situation: awhile ago, I got a very nasty post-surgical infection. The doctors put me on the go-to antibiotic for the type of infection I had. The one that killed the greatest range of bugs that tended to manifest where my pus happened to be oozing out.
Didn't work. Worked for a majority of people against a majority of infections, yes, but not for the little buggers that had crawled their way into *my* system. Those other infections looked similar to mine. Same symptoms. Nonetheless, I needed a different treatment, a different approach. You telling the LW to just "work harder" at her CBT when it's not working for her is akin to the doctors telling me that I just wasn't working hard enough at recovering from my infection with the tools I'd been given. My body needed different tools. And perhaps, so does she. CBT is not God.
Plus, the vast majority of CBT practitioners (at least, every single one of the many I've met) are condescending, mechanistic jerks who look down on their patients as "dysfunctional" and "maladaptive." Many have never been in therapy themselves (Frightening story: I once asked a professor at a major CBT-oriented Clinical Psych PhD program how much importance his program placed on students doing their own therapy. He looked at me in astonishment. "None!" he said. "If I was training to be a neurosurgeon, you wouldn't expect me to have neurosurgery, would you?." Many treat their patients using manuals that literally say "If client says 'X,' your response is 'Y.'" Psychodynamic therapists on the whole tend to be much more compassionate, empathic, aware of the complexities of human beings as individuals ... and to have done their own fucking therapy!
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ironically enough, things are much easier for people wth credit card debt
[Read the article: My big, fat, unpaid credit card bill]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As somebody who got decked with the double-whammy of no-fault debt (job loss AND medical crisis), I can only say that I wish I had the luxury of solving things the way Sarah did (not to downplay Sarah's situation - I'm not going to invalidate what she's gone through, which is considerable - I can identify with the fear and reluctance to grow up! The fear of looking into the future is what led me to recklessly take out private student loans from multiple lenders, which I can't consolidate.)
I've spent countless hours calling and recalling various debt relief agencies and counselors, all of whom referred me back to the people I'd been referred by. All of them said that they could help me if my debt was brought on by overspending, rather than by medical debt. Upshot: according to the experts, I don't have any choice but to declare bankruptcy. However, I can't declare bankruptcy on my $75,000 of student loans from four different lenders ... nor can I afford the exorbitant, painfully ironic cost of being bankrupt (evidently, bankruptcy only for rich people). Furthermore, I can't even figure out how much I owe. With hospitals, pretty much every person who looks at you or even reads your name on a chart bills separately, with the result being that I have mountains of bills that all look like they're from the same place, but have different numbers on them. Many of these bills haven't even shown up on my credit report yet. It's a big, scary, confusing mess.
So, I'm getting calls from creditors an average of three times a day. I've been insulted, yelled at, told to get a job (after seven months of frenzied, painful, degrading,and demoralizing searching, I can't tell you how helpful that suggestion was), and told that I never should have accepted medical treatment in the first place if I knew I couldn't pay for it (yes, really).
I know I need to get this under control, but most days I just want to hide in a dark hole and pray that a Democrat gets elected next fall, so there's at least a slight chance that things might get better - if not for me, than for all the people who are lined up to get their godsmack and don't know it yet.