I also saw, however, that sometimes the cognitive change that CBT argued was critical actually came after changes in mood or behavior, not before. How we felt and what we did, it seemed, might sometimes drive maladaptive thinking rather than the other way around, which CBT could not readily explain. It was when it came to the “why” questions that Second Wave CBT really began to falter, which most researchers in CBT nowadays concede at least to a degree.
