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DanArmak comments on Does cognitive therapy encourage bias? - Less Wrong Discussion

11 Post author: fortyeridania 22 November 2010 11:31AM

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Tags: cognitive therapy bias motivated cognition cbt

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Comment author: DanArmak 22 November 2010 09:54:27PM 3 points [-]

This is completely right.

I've done CBT to fight depression. There was an assumption - explicitly discussed between me and my therapist - that:

  1. My beliefs about myself affect my feelings and behavior (and vice versa)
  2. The problem being treated, depression, manifests entirely in that part of my feelings and behavior which is tied up with my beliefs
  3. Therefore I should modify my beliefs to achieve the desired changes in feelings & behavior
  4. To a first approximation, I should modify my beliefs without regard to their truth-value. Even with beliefs that refer to real things, like "I am attractive to women". The negative value of having wrong beliefs is expected to be outweighed by the effect of "positive thinking".
Comment author: David_Gerard 22 November 2010 10:04:43PM 1 point [-]

Would you feel sufficiently comfortable to detail how well you think it worked for you?

Comment author: DanArmak 22 November 2010 11:15:17PM *  1 point [-]

I'm not uncomfortable, but I can't give a useful report, for two reasons.

Firstly, there have been many confounding factors from elsewhere. In particular, I also participated in group seminars that had some methods in common with the CBT sessions.

Secondly, there was a period in which I deliberately avoided evaluating the efficacy of the method, reasoning that just as I should believe that "I'm a good and capable guy" regardless of evidence, so I should believe that "my way of fighting depression through CBT is a good and capable way". I did this for a predetermined length of time. Then I decided that 1) there was improvement but 2) it could not be linked to the CBT, so I stopped seeing the therapist.

I can definitely report there's a strong correlation between thinking positive, evidence-ignoring thoughts and general well-being, over both small and large time-scales. But you already know that :-) I have no data as to causation.

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