Today in my CBT session the therapist talked me through the 'vicious flower'. She said that suicidal thoughts are not instinct - they are intrusive thoughts, not instinct.

She meant that the way that they talk about it in CBT is that they call them intrusive thoughts. However, this differs from my personal experience - suicidal urges to me have been self destructive instincts. They come from seemingly nowhere. I have to fight against this instinct. (I am successfully fighting against it by the way.)

When we had this conversation about semantics I felt disengaged. I had to just accept that my personal experience is different from how CBT is theorised. It suddenly felt less relevant to me.

There's also a bit where she was expecting me to say I isolate myself and go out less to see friends because I am depressed. But this isn't the case. I felt like I wasn't fitting into the normal boxes. I felt like I didn't know what to say in response to her questions; they didn't seem relevant to me. I don't think the whole world is terrible, I don't think everyone is horrible, I don't think very badly of myself, I don't isolate myself. These are the responses she was expecting and I didn't give them to her. So now what?

Also she brought up sore points that I had managed to avoid thinking about since the last session, so that was a bit hard for me.

And we discussed me believing that being depressed is part of who I am. It is - this is who I am right now. She said it's not. I thought that accepting that I am depressed, that this is where I am right now, would be part of me getting better. I believe that I will get depressed again even if I recover now. I believe that one day when I die it's pretty likely it will be by my own hand, even if that day is 60 years from now. Believing that isn't nice. It's actually quite painful. And painful to talk about.

I left the session crying. I felt like I couldn't really make the most of the process she was taking me through - I found it so hard to think about, and come up with the answers for. I don't seem to fit.

Has anyone else had that sort of experience?