Can't get into CBT. :(

There's far too much red tape for me to get into CBT! I've been trying for two months because I need help coping and I don't have enough mental power to do it on my own. First the only CBT therapist that can help me requires a GP referral, second my GP wont give the referral unless his staff sends my records that he has from my appointments and from my audiologist to the therapist and his admins still haven't called or faxed the CBT therapist! I'm at my wits end I just want to get help! I've lost my patience with this broken medical system! It's costing me my sanity and my daily mood!

 

Why don't you try Dr Hubbard, skype sessions?

Or maybe he can recommend someone in your area!

Keep us posted!

 

Good idea. Dr. Hubbard will understand your T challenge a lot more than any other therapist as he suffered from T himself. With all the red tape on getting CBT help, you may want to try having him guide you instead. I also think you can give self-help CBT a shot. I did that myself and it greatly changes the way I approach my mental process. Knowing how cognitive distortions can create havoc in my mental health has been so instrumental to my habituation. A big part of this approach involves us writing down each fear or distorted thought and challenge that with a more realistic or positive thought. As Dr. Nagler suggests in his Letter to a Tinnitus Sufferer, write down and challenge these fears.

I bought a cheap paper copy of a CBT book 'Feeling Good' by Dr. Burns. Read it many times to understand the concept. Then I wrote down every distorted fear or thought and challenge or replace them with a realistic & positive thought. I have these in WORD documents on my desktop on every computer I used daily, the PC at work, the laptop, and you can even put this now on smart phones. I would constantly read this up many, many times during the day. You can say I was playing a smart, self-hypnotizing, or deprogramming game with my brain. It has been fooled by the traumatic shock of T. Now it is time to deprogram it, and to hypnotize or reinforce it with more positivity and reality. We can say this is positivity mental exercise. Like all exercises, they don't produce effect right away. In my case, my brain lags behind my will power. But eventually it caught up with me over time and now it doesn't give a dime to T high or low. So we need to do this often. Mental exercise like reading up things written on desktop is so easy to do day and night. Give self-help approach a try if you really can't get CBT therapy any other way.

 

I went through CBT but not because of tinnitus it was because of anxiety (agoraphobia) and a fear of flying I developed because of it. Ive never heard of needing a referral from your GP to see a therapist.