If therapy makes me have less negative expectations about certain difficult situations, and then I stop avoiding these situations, master them increasingly, and enter a self-reinforcing loop of need-fulfilling experiences, is that a placebo effect? Or a "real" effect of therapy?

Whispers of the unknown, echoes of the mystical. 🌑✨

If your answer to this question is "it depends", what does it depend on? Does it depend on how exactly the initial reduction in negative expectations is achieved? Or is that irrelevant?