Posted: Sep 29, 2017 2:44 am
Fallible wrote:Putting aside the fact for a moment that OCD doesn't cover every aspect of life equally, because it is a disorder and therefore not logically consistent, CBT is trying to convince yourself that using your salad fork at the wrong time isn't an existential catastrophe.
I think you might not quite understand what I'm saying, or OCD. It affects an individual in a pattern which may be described as peaks and troughs. Sometimes it is severe, sometimes less so, sometimes hardly there at all. It is also something which affects quite specific topics - eg. health, germs, responsibility - not just a general need to keep order everywhere. So for example, you can keep your work place as clean as an operating theatre, but be affected so badly by OCD hoarding at home that you can't get to your own bed. Mine is never severe, but has from time to time led to my hands becoming red raw from too much washing, and many other effects which have never brought my life to a standstill, but have certainly let me know that I'm going through a fairly anxious phase.
I'm quite lucky, because I'm trained to deliver CBT to people, so I can and do use some of those techniques on myself. That doesn't mean that it never bothers me. The thoughts still come. It just means that I can dispel them more easily. That's what CBT does. It doesnt take away the thoughts which lead to the behaviours, it just allows one to 'neutralise' them before they begin to cause problems. So I can feel uncomfortable when someone writes 'complimentary' instead of 'complementary', because it's not correct and incorrect spelling bothers me (one of my issues is about order in specific areas, not all areas), but not feel the need to act on the impulse to run around tearing every sign down.
In a nutshell, just because someone feels the feelings that OCD invokes, that doesn't mean that they are sick and need immediate treatment.
My most extensive exposure to knowledge about OCD was from Robert Sapolsky's Yale lectures, pretty good and frightening. The salad fork thing was just a stupid joke, as in using CBT that way was much harder than whatever, because I find it hilarious that people get bent out of shape over such things, and not in an OCD way. Do people actually get OCD over such things, or is it they can get OCD over pretty much anything?
We've discussed what I am about to ask you before, at least peripherally. I've personally come across a situation recently that has me a bit POed to put it mildly, and it involves someone who has needed CBT to overcome Social Anxiety Disorder [SAD] issues. I'll try not to be too vague while attempting to get the relevant bit in and leaving out the too personal, the too embarrassing, and the too moronic. So someone does something to me that is pretty fucked up and refuses to even discuss the issue. Essentially ignoring attempts to talk with him. A year later, they realize they really did do something pretty awful to me and attempt to apologize, saying that how they ignored my earlier attempts to talk with them about it was due to their anxiety disorder, and that they were doing CBT to help with it and it was working fairly well. What they seemed to not realize is apologizing for not talking to me wasn't really addressing the issue of what they had done that was so awful to begin with. And then, they never bothered to see if I replied to the apology. Which is very convenient if you want to tell yourself you had apologized and could now wash your hands of it all, and since I couldn't object in any way, they can sit back smug and happy without ever managing to apologize in any real sense. And of course, they continue to ignore any attempts to communicate.
I hope that makes some sense, Dr. Fallible, and I must say, your couch is quite comfy, feels just like home. What about CBT? I'm getting to that, please bear with me for a moment. In the wiki on Social Anxiety Disorder, which this person told me to read as it is pretty good, it has this to say:
Major avoidance behaviors could include an almost pathological/compulsive lying behavior in order to preserve self-image and avoid judgement in front of others.
The fact that this mentions 'self-image' means it's talking about denial, or self-delusion. What I think this person is doing is exactly what that quote is talking about. First, he was in denial that he hurt me, then he was in denial that I was trying to talk to him, then the apology really only attempted to apologize for what he was still fucking doing which is avoiding communication with me at all costs because he knows I'm going to want to discuss what he really was supposed to be apologizing for. And he's still in denial because he still ignores my attempts to talk, and it seems he's still in denial about what he did in the first place. Lots of lying to himself, and then insulating himself from anything that could expose these lies.
Now about CBT and a big problem I have with it, and how it relates to this situation. CBT is great for working on not believing that sticking your salad fork in your steak is an existential catastrophe. But what about situations that you need to take seriously and aren't doing so adequately? Can't you, essentially, misuse CBT to help yourself believe something you did that was pretty awful wasn't so awful after all? I think of this as him using his anxieties as a shield to excuse inexcusable behavior and using CBT as an aid in this. In this case, his SAD is leading to him ignoring me, he's insulating himself from any contrary evidence, and to the fact of the original wrong done, and he's likely using CBT to help minimize any cognitive dissonance [guilt] that he really should be feeling. He appears totally unaware that his 'apology' for not talking to me was done with the same behavior pattern of avoiding discussing the real issue since he didn't bother to see if I replied. And this was a close, if distant geographically, friend who simply resorted to totally cutting off our friendship over the issue. What do you think of this behavior, and do you think he is possibly misusing CBT, using it to enable him to deny a lot of shit he really ought to be confronting?
So that's a big reason why I view CBT with a bit of suspicion, even though I've used it to some, limited, success myself in the past. Oh yeah, do you validate for parking? Thanks so much for your time, and any light you bring to my problem.