Is CBT really productive for a person with Aspergers?

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....especially the part where you're supposed to come up with alternate explanations for a negative social event occurring.

i.e.:

"It is not that people necessarily dislike you but they may be busy."
"Maybe he didn't return your call because he was tired."
"Maybe the person didn't mean to insult you but just had a bad day."

Anyone familiar with this kind of "cognitive restructuring" that therapists and other mental health professionals try to enforce to give life a slightly rosier picture? (Or maybe you've had a different experience..... )

Do you find CBT helpful or do you find it does not help?

PS. Even if you've never had Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), have you ever experienced this line of reasoning by counselors or anyone else.............that maybe your social failures are a figment of your imagination? Uggggh, I just wish to be validated sometimes and not told it's all in my head

I've had CBT before and didn't like it. To me it was just learning how to try and fool myself into thinking differently about things that I thought were obvious. It didn't really teach me how to deal with anything, just different ways to think about it. It also didn't teach me how to change the original situation, just to try and convince myself it was something else.

CBT works for depression because depression has a way of distorting our thoughts into the most negative thing possible. if you're not depressed or a worrier and are fairly realistic, CBT wouldn't be very helpful. I briefly looked into CBT for myself. I couldn't identify with any of the cognitive distortions, so opted not to use CBT.

I've done CBT a few times, never successfully. It felt so forced and fake, I always hated it. I had a counter for everything, or simply didn't see how changing my language would change my feelings. In regards to distorted thoughts; I know that I have many, having a counselor point them out was about as helpful as telling me what color my hair is.

I did CBT for a while and I found it helped me because I think of all the forms of therapy that you can do with a therapist, this is one of the most logic driven. I liked it because it was very evidence-based, and challenged me to either support my assumptions with hard evidence or to acknowledge that what I'm assuming is only one of many possible explanations.

It beats the hell out of laying on a couch, whining about things.

I had CBT for a while in the run up to being diagnosed with Asperger's. It was difficult to get used to and upset me a lot, but I think I probably unknowingly learnt a lot about myself from it. There are also ways by which CBT can be adapted for people with Asperger's (such as those that Tony Attwood describes) and I think it can be a useful tool for coming to terms with how Asperger's affects cognitive behaviour, and how you can cope with it in every day life

Unless the CBT is of a form specifically tailored to an ASD, and is being performed by someone who understands ASDs, it's likely to be a complete waste of time, and may actually be harmful.

Fact: people with ASDs think differently from those without. As a result of thinking differently, they behave differently. That different behaviour causes other people to in turn respond to the person with an ASD differently.

The problem with regular CBT is that it doesn't take into account the fundamental, immutable difference of a person with an ASD, because it was developed for people without ASDs. Regular CBT is probably going to be an actual harm to them, in that it encourages them to delude themselves about this simple reality.

CBT could help someone with an ASD better understand how others respond to their behaviour, but it can not ignore the fact that their behaviour is different, and that it is due to differences in the way that they think that cannot in any way be changed, bucause they are due to the physical structure of the brain being different.

CBT cannot turn an autistic person into a non-autistic person, but that is what is being attempted, if the fundamental differences of being autistic are not taken into account, and the approach to the CBT modified appropriately.

That's how I felt about it.

CBT can work for people on the spectrum, but the person receiving the therapy has to be receptive to it and willing to actually try the things being suggested, rather than rejecting them out of hand; kind like most forms of therapy. I do think CBT is often helpful for Aspies in particular because of the way it challenges the black and white way some people on the spectrum view the world, and attempts to get them to see the world in a more potentially positive light.

I hear ya!


Have you received CBT for depression? It didn't work for me at all . . . just made me feel like the depression was my fault. I've had much better results with anti-depressants. Depression is a chemical problem, not a problem of attitude.

I haven't found it helpful.

I don't know if they ever tried that on me but from what I've read about it I don't think it would be very helpful to me.

It seems to have worked for me. Meltdowns and panic attacks have been way down since "graduating".

That is EXACTLY how I felt about CBT too. It does try to fool you into thinking differently about something that your gut, and even the partial evidence at hand, is telling you is true. For example, i often feel that someone dislikes me and the evidence is pretty obvious, like ignoring or dismissing, etc. But CBT will force you to challenge those beliefs and come up with alternate explanations. As if our brains are useless and can't come up with a reasonable hypothesis based on about 75% information.

It does not help with changing the original situation. I've hit a stonewall with therapists so many times because even I'm willing to accept that a certain person and I have no chemistry or don't see eye to eye, and the grief I go through when human relationships disintegrate. I'm willing to move onto acceptance mode, which is one of the stages of grief, and cope with it that way, not perpetuate the 1st stage of denial.

I don't think the "think more positive" thing can work for me. The problem is most of the time I'm not even certain what I really believe. I also feel depressed for no particular reason all to often. I do get negative but the feeling seems to precede the thoughts. The thoughts are just expressing the feeling that comes from a much deeper place. The behavioral part is probably more useful than the cognitive part. I have a lot more control over what I do than how I think.

I have had two separate blocks of CBT, a couple of years apart. I never suspected back then that I was an aspie, so I was there for depression and anxiety, and I didn't bring up any sensory problems because I wasn't aware there was a diagnosis for them then, I just thought that I was crazy. I thought it was a ridiculous waste of time. It was like they were trying to encourage me to lie to myself. When I said that I didn't socialise and that I preferred to be on my own she told me that I was isolating myself and that wad the cause of my other problems. She tried getting me to write a list of social situations that scared me, and then over the weeks I would have to do those things and cross them off, sort of like a terrifying bucket list. I never went back. I tried explaining that I am just not interested in socialising, that I thrive in my own company and I enjoy being alone and working on a project or a hobby, but she saw that as a terrible thing and tried to force me out of my comfort zone. I'm worried because after my evaluation I think I have been put back onto CBT. It will probably be different when I have mu diagnosis but maybe not.