I have been seeing a client for 8 sessions now and I thought we were working quite successfully on her depression and thoughts of being a failure. I believe I presented the cognitive model in a sensitive and non-blaming way, talking about how depression causes people to have unhelpful thoughts that are then taken to be true. However, in our last session my client spoke about how friends of hers had been making comments such as:

"It's a question of mind over matter"
"You can pull yourself out of the depression if you really want to"

This has further fed into her ideas around being a failure - "why can't I pull myself out of it? If it's mind over matter then it's my fault for not having a strong enough mind" etc.

I responded to these concerns as if they were another thought we could challenge and we discussed depression as an illness rather than some sort of personal failure. But she's been thinking this way for a while and I am concerned that I fed into this belief by continuing with CBT and not picking up on these underlying concerns.

How would other people respond to the idea that "even my thoughts are wrong"? (I have observed CBT being badly explained in ways that would fit with the idea that it's all down to the client's choice about the way they think and therefore possibly leaving clients with further guilt and a sense of failure...)

Any advice or thoughts would be appreciated!

Julia