[all_usernames]

Just an anecdote:

I did a course of CBT therapy as part of a university research study comparing the outcomes of CBT with mindfulness meditation for symptoms of social anxiety. It was 6- or 8-weeks long, and each week I went in to have a session with a therapist and do the workbooks etc.

It was a profoundly memorable experience and I did, in fact, face a number of my fears and essentially solve them through in-person 'confrontations' designed to mimic the social anxiety triggers I had. It was fun, too; for example one of the confrontations involved me messily eating a huge fast-food hamburger inside a phone booth with one of the psych lab's grad students. Those poor grad students.

Anyway, looking back on this experience 15 years later what really stands out are two things: those in-person experiential confrontations, and finally the tears I saw in my therapist's eyes during our final session as she congratulated me on my progress.

I really think apps like this can help tremendously for self-motivated "normals" -- and I wonder how voice/video/VR will expand their effectiveness in years to come.

[phowson83]

Great to hear about your positive experience with CBT. I think there's a lot of innovation that's possible in this sector. If we look at CBT, a lot of the core concepts and exercises haven't changed all that much (from the perspective of the average spectator) in the last 20 or so years, which leaves a lot of potential research opportunity that can be explored using new technologies which weren't available when CBT emerged.