@[email protected] @wendynather Jungian psychotherapy, as interesting as it is, doesn't (AFAIK) have any serious evidence for effectiveness; I didn't study at a school focused on Freud or post-Freudian theories, so it's not my area.

CBT definitely (often) goes in the "you are not your thoughts" direction. Its core operating model, however, is a relatively direct relationship:

Stimuli (external or internal) --> Thoughts --> Feelings --> Behavior

With the possibility of some feedback loops, etc. A lot of the initial work is in identifying "automatic thoughts" triggered quickly and (at first) without the client's conscious action by stimuli (e.g., an event in the client's life, something someone says, etc.).

Example: a client suffers from anxiety and depression. Observation shows that, often, the client's spouse says neutral-sounding things that the client experiences as criticism, like "Is that the shirt you wore yesterday?" or "I finished the dishes."

There is work on identifying the problematic links between stimuli and those automatic thoughts, which lead to feelings (focusing on the negative feelings, which brought the client to therapy). Later, there is exploration of the more global, generalized beliefs that give rise to the automatic thoughts.

In the example above, perhaps a few weeks of work would lead to understanding that the client has a generalized view of themselves as worthless, leading to an automatic thought that many possibly-innocent comments are criticisms (i.e., observations of their general worthlessness), which leads to feelings of depression and anxiety.

The CBT process is more involved than I've explained here, though I think that's a good basic intro. It provides significant relief for many people with certain kinds of difficulties. However, the underlying theory is very much in conflict with what cognitive science has shown about thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Off the top of my head, we have significant research findings suggesting:

• Thoughts often come after feelings
• Behavioral intention (or even the behaviors themselves) frequently happen before thoughts, with the thoughts we think motivated the behavior being tacked on by our brains as something like a soothing explanation for the behavior
• Behaviors change thoughts and feelings, often more powerfully and lastingly than thoughts and feelings change behaviors (I think this is allowed in the CBT model, but is usually framed as a minor effect)

There are few more, I think, if I can remember them. Fundamentally, what we ask clients to do in CBT makes sense to clients and maybe to us--it is our "layperson's theory" of how thoughts, feelings, and behavior work--but it is not how they actually work. Nevertheless, the therapy is helpful for many people.