My own experience with CBT is that the diagnosis of the correct anxiety is the biggest weakness. Too often we listen to our thoughts in our minds too directly (

My own experience with CBT is that the diagnosis of the correct anxiety is the biggest weakness. Too often we listen to our thoughts in our minds too directly (e.g. "I'm not good enough") instead of understanding that the current anxiety has a function, and that is to protect us from what we are really scared about (it is useful for me to feel like I'm not good enough because it stops me from standing up for myself / risking a conflict with others). When I started to apply standard CBT techniques (face your fear) to the deeper anxiety, I found the surface anxieties vanished (i.e. practiced having and surviving conflicts got rid of "I'm not good enough" feelings). Diagnosis of the deep anxiety is probably the biggest challenge. On a side note I found my dreams were very good at helping me find them by presenting situations which encouraged non anxious behaviour, which contrast to the anxious behaviour I would take in the dream - this disparity between what the situation demanded and how I behaved would highlight the deeper anxiety. I got very into the subject and wrote a paper on it: https://psyarxiv.com/k6trz https://psyarxiv.com/k6trz, which was discussed in some depth on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19143590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19143590