this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2024
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Neurodivergence
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And (edit: traditional) CBT is widely known to not be effective (and in fact often harmful) for autistic individuals. There is no "winning" over autism, you can only learn to live with it, and its limitations.
I used to have the mindset of "not letting autism restrict me". It led to two rounds of severe burnout, depression, cPTSD, and anxiety, lasting multiple years, as well as severe skill loss.
Uhm I don't know your cultural background but at least around where I am the "own limitations" part is a crucial element of the therapy aspect. Accept your own limits to and work with your strengths.
Managing and accepting restrictions is what is thought here for therapists (at least the fields I'm in closer contact with.
This "widely knowing" people are at least not scientists as the last meta study I am aware of basically says "not enough data": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7265021/
That said: there is a high risk of discussing local variations on various therapy approaches and it's even highly likely I'd guess that you're absolutely correct for your medical cultural background and my lense is highly dissorted (from your pov) by my own.
There are newer types of CBT that are autism friendly/aware, but it's unlikely for your average therapist to 1; be trained in them and 2; be aware of, and able to spot autism in a patient.
I've had multiple therapists and psychiatrists where, despite them having many years experience I was their first autistic patient.
Perhaps it is different elsewhere in the world, but that's how it is in Denmark.
A skilled therapist will be able to assist anyone to use CBT or other modality as a tool, even if they don't have training or experience specific to that person's needs.
Nobody here needs to be told that finding such a therapist is far from a given, and engaging one who is not helpful (or worse) tends to make it hard to convince oneself to try with a new therapist. Run through a few, and the reluctance compounds into aversion.
That said, I do feel that CBT attracts therapists who have a strong preference for an unreflective practise, and who are more comfortable with very straightforward & commonplace anxieties.
It doesn't help that many health services, whether publicly or privately funded, push short courses of CBT as the predominant or sole psychological therapy. Even a highly skilled therapist will struggle to arrive at the point of being of assistance to those whose difficulties don't map so closely to those most commonly found in the general population, if they have just six 45 minute sessions to work with, and even more so if the person comes to them undiagnosed.