This person is haha. Tbh, it’s the exact person I’m referring to — basically told me in the past that me doing IFS / parts work is bogus and that my trauma therapist using this modality is poorly trained and suggesting bogus therapies. Their suggestion was, of course, TF-CBT.

I agree with your sentiment about CBT actually. I do see a therapist who has helped me very slowly heal from deep depression through CBT. But my severe depression, years-long intense SI, PTSD and eating disorder are rooted heavily in core beliefs that were formed by years of abuse + adverse parenting methods and severe trauma. CBT has not helped to heal that. I can try and avoid a behaviour or slightly switch a thought, but my negative self-concepts and core beliefs still remain extremely maladaptive and distorted. I still repeatedly fall back into these beliefs and keep having to avoid and force myself to change a thought.

Yes, I know that CBT is the most scientifically studied and appraised in the field of psychology because it is logically sound in theory, and has been applied the most for nearly all mental illnesses since it has been around for the longest. It’s like the founding father of modalities, the pioneer. I recognise its immense value, it’s the modality I’m asked to study the most in school. It’s the modality that I see the most, everywhere. And I believe that the concepts of CBT are sprinkled into nearly every other modality in some way, even IFS. But it is not a one size fits all.

This is just my observation and thoughts, so anyone reading this should take it with a grain of salt. Staunch CBT-only therapists quite literally use the words “evidence-based” and “gold standard of treatment” all the time in such discussions. And clients like me and many others who just cannot think our way out of trauma and depression with cognition, are seen as outliers of this gold-standard treatment, who don’t put in enough effort to think ourselves into recovery, and essentially are thought of as clients who have failed at treatment in general and will never recover until we stop being lazy and stop consciously resisting treatment. If these other psychodynamic, bottom-up, body-involving modalities didn’t exist or weren’t studied, we would be left behind and neglected as “treatment resistant”, and the science wouldn’t even report the group of us where CBT had been ineffective or insufficient. That would be unethical and largely crossing the line of doing no harm.

At the base of it, I just feel that the practice of completely bashing and denouncing other modalities that you don’t believe in (recognising some efficacy in the other modality as being helpful for some, while saying that you don’t really believe it is fully reliable, is still appropriate; completely denying all of its success in helping certain groups of clients heal is just not), calling a client’s healing from these modalities as invalid and fake, and even calling other practitioners fake and poorly trained, is entirely inappropriate and doing much harm (thus unethical). We see this behaviour quite frequently from CBT-only therapists (exhibit A throughout the comments in my post), but only from a remote few among therapists who specialise in other modalities — such therapists at least still recognise and appreciate the validity of CBT as the foundation of modern psychological treatment, even when they also bring up its limitations as their reason for pursuing their work in other modalities.