Today’s questions are:Question #1: John asks: Can you do TEAM on your own?Question #2: John asks: Can you provide more insights or instructions on how to do …
Transcript
Intro
0:00 · you never know what kind of question is going to lead people to the Insight where you have the aha moment but we’re trying to get to an aha moment and and and and the aha moment is isn’t you know thinking you’re some kind of wonderful person but beginning to see the beauty
0:19 · in your negative self-critical thoughts and your negative feelings because most of the time we feel ashamed of how we feel and the next one of the next questions this woman is constantly struggling to keep herself from uh blushing or you’re trying to control your anxiety or your panic attacks and and that attempt to change and control things often uh just just makes in
0:47 · intensifies them it’s like trying to cheer up someone who’s depressed it it it never works when people are depressed they want you to empathize and understand their pain and accept their how they’re thinking in feeling not when when you try to cheer them up it’s just a patronizing uh insult hello and
1:06 · welcome to the feeling good podcast where you can learn powerful techniques to change the way you feel I am your host Dr Rhonda barovsky and joining me here in the Metta studio is Dr David Burns Dr Burns is a Pioneer in the development of cognitive behavioral therapy and the creator of the new team therapy he is the author of feeling good which has sold over 5 million copies in the United States and has been translated into over 30 languages his
1:26 · latest book feeling great contains powerful new techniques that make rapid recovery possible for many people struggling with depression and anxiety Dr Burns is currently an ameritus Adjunct professor of clinical Psychiatry at Stanford University School of [Music] Medicine
1:49 · hello hi David and Welcome to our listeners throughout the country the universe and the Galaxy this is the feeling good podcast and it’s episode 4:15 and I do have an endorsement to read and afterward we’re going to do another ask David just me and David sadly Matt May can’t join us today but hi David so this
2:13 · is from a really great team therapist Dan Lenahan and he wrote you hi David I was fortunate enough to be one of the original beta testers for the feeling great app and knew the potential it had I admittedly hadn’t tried the app since the artificial intelligence or AI implementation so I was eager for the final release and wow talk about as you
2:38 · would say blowing it out of the water or knocking it out of the park when I saw that externalization of voices was a technique I wondered how could that possibly work but wow even the way it does your whole it’s me your negative
2:55 · thoughts again just want to remind you dot dot dot then shows you the negative thought and it even asks to do role reversals with you the interactions are genius and have your essence ingrained in all of the chatbot responses you have
3:13 · truly found a way to reach even more people than ever before and will continue to as it develops congratulations on this great success Dan Lenahan yeah that’s so neat thanks Dan you really warmed my heart I sent that to all the members of our app team especially Jason Mino who’s done so much
3:34 · uh you know groundbreaking work in developing our our version of AI and training the AI and it’s just so gratifying to to see that it’s uh you know caught caught your fancy and if there’s any U listeners out there who want to support us uh you know go to uh feeling great.com not my website which is feeling good.
4:00 · but go to feeling great.com um and you can check it out there or go to either of the app stores the Apple store or the Google Play Store it’s our app is in there feeling great and you can take a free ride on it and and and see what you think and if you find it helpful and exciting tell tell your friends and colleagues about it too because you’re our marketing team right now and we’re
4:26 · relying on Word of Mouth to to get the word out that there’s something really exciting that can help you change the way you think and feel and can happen very rapidly it’s not just that they want to support you it’s that they want to you know overcome their symptoms of depression and anxiety no that’s not right it’s all about [Laughter] David yes it’s all about trying to
4:55 · help get the word out to more people who are suffering that these are some tools that you can use to actually change the way you think and feel and there’s the the little chatbox which which will talk to you in much the same way I would be talking to you in an actual therapy session it’s not actual therapy it’s a self-help tool we’re not involved in doing therapy but we do want to help you with your negative feelings and do that that rapidly so che check it out the the
5:29 · feeling uh in the in the stores the app stores or just go to feeling great.com and learn all all about it and and let it let me know what you think and you know we’ll read your responses on the show yeah that’s fun okay well let’s this is an ask David meth um episode so let’s dive in and ask David question number one John asks can
Can you do TEAM on your own?
5:55 · you do team on your own and this is a question we’ve answered many times but there’s a Different Twist in this oh John says one other point that occurred to me the people who do personal work on your podcasts are generally team CBT
6:11 · therapists or people familiar with the team model they are obviously very familiar with the steps and the techniques in team and yet they seem to require the insight and guidance from yourself and Jill why do you think that is if they’re so well versed in team already does that mean that a person from The General Public public doing their own work using your books without the guidance of a team therapist is futile or would you always recommend someone using a therapist kind regards John well John
6:41 · has given us many great questions and two questions for today’s podcast and this is the first of the two and I’ll spout out my quick answer and then get your input on that but um when I wrote
6:57 · feeling good and was that was 1978 I started writing it and it was published in 1980 one of the things that I did that was very important was was to say uh a lot of you reading this book if you do the written exercises you’ll probably probably be able to get a real mood boost on your own even without a therapist but at the same time it’s really easy to get stuck and and in that case two heads are
7:28 · often better than one one and there’s no shame in in going to a therapist to help help help you get unstuck and so I feel exactly the same way to today if you can use uh say my book feeling great or our new feeling great app um the odds are
7:48 · high that you’ll be able to get some genuine change in the way you think and feel just by doing the exercises in the book or the exercises in the app but but sometimes it takes two heads to help you figure out why you’re stuck and how to get unstuck and and so uh you know I I
8:09 · strong strongly encourage you to to seek help particularly if you’re having severe symptoms or struggling with suicidal thoughts or fantasies you definitely need to have face-to-face help and you still might love the app or you still might love my books and find them helpful but sometimes a human therapist is absolutely uh necessary for you to be treated safely and effectively my books aren’t therapy and the app is not therapy it’s just just self-help and finally you
8:40 · asked the really cool question well why do therapists why are we therapists screwed up as our own patients that’s the question really that you’re trying to ask be be because when we have therapists on as patients I I I do that
8:56 · because it would it’s not considered therapy and no longer in clinical practice but I do demonstration sessions with real people to show you how the techniques work with real people but it’s always easier to see how someone else’s thoughts are distorted and have a blind spot about where we’re fooling ourselves even if you are a therapist
9:19 · and that’s why even therapists sometimes I would say frequently need need a little bit of TLC and help from a friend in this case David and Jill or sometimes David and Ronda working together to help you change the way you think and feel and now Ronda is going to give another extraordinarily important point
9:40 · about all of it I you know you use the word I was going to use we all are blinded by our own negative thoughts and we don’t see all of our positive traits one one time in the Tuesday group when we were still meeting in person I did a quick I did some work with you and Jill and when when we were in the positive reframing she asked me a couple of questions to get me to think about some of the positive aspects of what I was
10:06 · what I was feeling and and that sparked Insight that I don’t think I could have gotten to by myself yeah and that moves us to John’s second question which is all about positive reframing and we can maybe mention what uh there there’s actually three or four or five questions you can ask yourself when you’re doing positive ref framing but let’s read the question and tell people what positive reframing is and then answer John’s
10:34 · question okay let’s read John’s second question okay can you provide more insights or instructions on how to do personal excuse me how to do positive reframing on your own it seems to be an incredibly important key to team CBT hey there David and Rhonda hope you’re keeping well this is John from Ireland and John wants to know I’m
Can you provide more insights or instructions on how to do Positive Reframing on your own?
10:59 · always grateful for your inspiring work I love your passion and I have a question on positive reframing as someone who is still trying to find my own journey to Enlightenment following many months of anxiety and depression I feel I’m failing at this positive reframing step
11:18 · I still find I am bumping up against resistance and I feel that my positive values and benefits don’t count it’s almost as if there’s some kind of discounting the positive going on like my negative points vastly outweigh my positive points it’s like there’s such a Negative filter there’s no space for recognizing positive qualities should we answer that question first and and before yeah yeah before we go on I think that that can be U answered by doing a paradoxical cost
11:50 · benefit analysis and you can make a list of all the advantages and benefits of U ignoring well F first of all positive reframing isn’t about your your positive points or your positive qualities that’s called cheerleading and everyone resists cheerleading so the reason you’re running into resistance may be that you’re you’re trying to cheer yourself up by listing all the wonderful things about you uh and I hate it when people
12:22 · do do that I’ve never once seen that be helpful although we’re we’re doing some uh research on hypnosis giving people positive suggestions and maybe it will cheer them up we’ll find out tomorrow actually but um at any rate in in
12:40 · positive reframing you ask you you you take your you start with a daily mood log in up a situation where you’re upset and then and you didn’t send that for us so this is all going to be abstract and theoretical rather than a specific example which would have been much more clarifying I think for you and for our audience but it’s still important and then you list all of your negative feelings like uh depressed 80% anxious
13:10 · 100 ashamed or guilty 80 you know inferior 90 what whatever all of these are and and and then your negative thoughts like I’m a loser I should be better than I am and so forth and when
13:28 · you do positive reframing you ask yourself the following questions um number one you can say is there some truth in in these negative thoughts and and feelings uh you know are they appropriate given my my situation like when I’m calling myself a loser or uh
13:50 · what whatever it is what what is the truth in that is there some truth there this is clearly not what you’re doing judging from the paragraph We just read you’re trying to build up your positives and I’m saying let let’s build up your negatives and then the second thing you can do and is say and and what are some values of beating up on myself like this and having these negative thoughts and feelings and do can they be motivating
14:24 · for example could they can anxiety be helpful to you does it protect you from danger does it keep you vigilant for example and then a third question you can ask is what um uh what what do these
14:40 · negative thoughts and feelings show about me and my core values that that’s positive and awesome for example if you’re very self-critical does this show that you’re perfectionistic and have high standards and then finally you can ask yourself the question uh are are there some bad things that would happen if I stopped you know beating up on myself and and making myself feel depressed angry anxious hopeless and and
15:10 · so forth that that’s kind of the essence of positive reframing those are the kinds of questions you you ask yourself um and U if you like Ronda I don’t know if that was helpful so far but we can read the next three paragraphs of his of
15:29 · his question if if you think that might be help it it it is and I love how you you know when I first learned positive reframing you you didn’t include this that last question are there bad things or are there consequences that would happen if you gave up on you know the
15:45 · negative thought or the negative feeling like or like beating up on yourself and I think since you’ve added that and I’ve been talking about that with clients that’s really powerful yeah you never know what kind of question is going to lead people to the end site where you have the aha moment but we’re trying to get to an aha moment and and and and the aha moment is isn’t you know thinking
16:09 · you’re some kind of wonderful person but beginning to see the beauty in your negative self-critical thoughts and your negative feelings because most of the time we feel ashamed of how we feel and the next one of the next questions this woman is const L struggling to keep herself from uh blushing or you’re trying to control your anxiety or your panic attacks and and that attempt to change and control things often uh just
16:41 · just makes in intensifies them it’s like trying to cheer up someone who’s depressed it it it never works when people are depressed they want you to empathize and understand their pain and accept their how they’re thinking and feeling not to when when you try to cheer them up it’s just a p rizing uh
17:00 · insult really okay here’s SEC here’s his second part of his question I was listening to the beginning of episode 310 where a listener had an excellent contribution on positive reframing from your live work with nasle that got me thinking would it be possible to hear more insights and detail on how to perform your own positive reiring work yes John it would that’s why we wish you would have given us an example we’d be doing it right now uhhuh well do you
17:29 · have a guideline or worksheet anywhere it feels like the most powerful of all the steps only the very detailed worksheets in my book feeling great and of course uh we sent you um a free ride on the app and the app does positive reframing both with AI as well as in the classes and lessons so those are some resources that might be helpful to you go ahead Ronda well it you know that
17:57 · there are workshops that workshops there are worksheets that you can copy from your book or you like make a tool on your own computer um copying those but you know even if you don’t want to do that you can just get a piece of paper and write positive reframe on the top and then on the left side of the paper write the feeling like sad depressed down unhappy whatever that feeling is and then to the left of that
18:24 · write down the responses to the right of it I’m sorry yes to the right left edge of the paper then if you go to the left you’ll be writing on your desk and you can do that too if you like right so I just visualized it all completely wrong yeah you just write down the feeling and then you write down the responses is there some truth is it appropriate what are the values you know
18:46 · what’s the beauty in them what are the consequences of not believing them not feeling them any longer so you don’t actually need anything fancy yep right okay so among the many incredible tools that have been created under team it seems the agenda setting piece which is where a positive reframing is included is probably the
19:06 · most powerful and Innovative I have listened to many of your live sessions intensely and it seems that your gift and that of Jill levit is convincing the patient of the beauty of their depression anxiety it feels that they’re almost recovered or very nearly once you go through this step and quick quick comment on that thank you John for that beautiful comment and that is true uh that when you do the postive reframing
19:32 · skillfully uh that and we’ve been checking this out in AI because we can see now exactly where people change and and a lot of improvement not all the Improvement but a lot of improvement and negative feelings does occur during positive reframing that the AI is doing with you and of course if you try the AI that we sent you uh free uh you it’ll do
19:58 · it pretty skillfully with W with you well and one point I wanted to make David that we were talking about before is that you and Jill are not trying to convince the patient of anything that would be like you talked about before that would be cheerleading what you’re doing is you want the patient to do the work for themselves so just like I talked about before with Jill she asked me some poignant questions that because she is really
20:25 · brilliant and that led me to create have my own insight and that that’s a lot more powerful than her tell it was like the questions that I read that we read just a couple minutes ago right well um she I think she wanted me to acknowledge that I was feeling that I valued being
20:43 · humble so so she asked me the opposite and she said well do you think you’re a conceited person yeah and I said no and she said well what do you think about conceited people I said oh yeah I don’t I don’t really like conceited people she said well how would you describe yourself then I they I guess I’m kind of humble yeah you’re right and and so that
21:04 · was helpful yeah yeah that’s she’s such a a gem and a brilliant and kindly person but I wonder if she had said Rhonda do you think this thought or this feeling says that you’re a humble person I probably would have said yeah but I wouldn’t really felt it as much as yeah in the dialogue with her what I love about what you’re saying right now is that there’s a discovery that happens and it’s often an unexpected Discovery
21:32 · when you’re doing positive reframing and if you’re just doing it in a formulaic way it it it doesn’t work it’s it’s like anything else it looks like a simple tool but you know like I guess taking a knife to a piece of wood and is simple
21:49 · but some people can can do that make beautiful carvings and other people just like me I I would just be cutting up the piece of wood wouldn’t look like anything yeah exactly and it’s really more exciting that like you said that aha moment it’s exciting when you have your own aha moment yeah
22:09 · okay on the face of it it looks like what you’re doing is very simple but there is a nuance and complexity to it that is incredible and without sounding too grandstanding over or over dramatic this gift seems to be where the healing power lies if you could bottle that gift you would change the world or be a billionaire or both it is astonishing to
22:31 · listen to I would love to hear more about your insights into this area and how people can unlock this for themselves yeah well I’ll tell you one other thing I I love what you’re saying and I I I I share your your your feelings and your and your convictions and just within the last week Jason uh Mino is our AI guy he’s he’s the one who’s actually doing the programming with the AI but you know we
23:00 · I help them and we work together and provide Fe feedback um and we he he’s created a new form of AI uh which I call multi-level and what what we can now do with our Ai and this is U it’s it’s a
23:22 · new version of positive reframing let me instead of telling you how we do it let me say that when you do and and you might want to test out the new version with with with uh with Jason as as soon as he’s ready for a beta test but but it actually listens uh during positive reframing for the resistance of the user or the patient or you know it’s yeah uhhuh and I and we trained it to to what to to look for to find out if it’s not working for the patient uh like like
23:55 · exactly what your question was what if it it just is not turning you on the POS of reframing um and and and we taught it how to turn that resistance into instant understanding of positive reframing like the very resistance you know you can ask a couple questions about the person who’s resisting and all of a sudden they’re into positive reframing on that deeper level so uh I hope this doesn’t
24:23 · sound too grandstanding or over overly dramatic as as you mentioned in your paragraph in your beautiful note but uh that it it’s trying to make that give that gift to every everyone and because that’s where a lot of the healing power lies for for sure and it’s not what I
24:43 · was TR trained in when I was learning cognitive therapy it it didn’t exist at that time but it exists now and it’s like having supercharged cognitive therapy or what I say uh cognitive therapy on steroids is another way of of putting it and we are trying to bottle that gift as effectively as humanly
25:05 · possible or nonh humanly possible with AI yeah and I do want to reiterate that that is a major portion a major I I don’t know what it’s a major contribution of yours to the field of psychology positive you know the whole agenda setting sequence it’s and you know yeah that’s yeah changes psychology forever I I I think so and my only
25:34 · request to the world is um if you can maybe from time to time you’ve got your own website or your own whatever uh to to acknowledge where some of this came from because I remember when I wrote feeling good I was so grateful for Having learned a lot from Aaron Beck and even though we didn’t have all the answers he sure knew a hell of a lot more than I did and so I I referred to him I think I
26:03 · went through the book and counted 38 references to Aaron Beck and they were all in a flattering U context and uh and and I remember when I sent feeling good to Albert Ellis because I had recent I had
26:19 · just met him and I thought well maybe I could get an endorsement from him and then he wrote back and said well you know I wouldn’t mind giving you an endorsement but you didn’t give me any and uh maybe you you would want to acknowledge that cognitive therapy was actually developed from my work in the
26:39 · 1950s often without acknowledgment and he gave me a lot of references to uh his first book reason and emotion in Psychotherapy and I saw that he was exactly right so then I acknowledged him too at the beginning of feeling good as one of the forerunners one of the incredible incredibly important historic figures
27:02 · and uh I always appreciated him after that and he always appreciated my my uh acknowledging him as so many people stole from him like Wayne Dyer with his book uh your erroneous zones it was a multi-million number one bestseller but it’s just someone went to one of uh the uh Ellis’s Workshop Wayne Dyer did and
27:26 · was turned on I think it was a weekend workshop and then he just wrote it all up as if it was his own and he was a good con man and he uh you know wrote very persuasively and he was very Charming on interviews but uh he he did
27:43 · not uh he did not acknowledge the contributions of uh you know Albert Ellis and I once asked Al Albert Ellis don’t don’t you get mad at people like Wayne Dyer who steal from you without acknowledging he says you know he was a New Yorker so he talked like this he no every I I never get angry and I said well why is that Dr
28:09 · Ellis why why don’t you get angry at the people who are ripping you off and stealing your ideas and pretending like they’re your own and he said I’ll tell you why uh David because those people are and and that’s what are supposed to do they should do that you should expect Asel to to steal and and I thought that was a funny response I never uh believed him 100%
28:37 · that he never got angry because he was actually a pretty angry guy but I but I loved him and he we all owe so much to his fantastic contributions to the field so if you think my contributions have significance uh you know doesn’t hurt to to to to let people know because I I like Albert Ellis appreciate being
29:01 · acknowledged exactly I’m right and as you should be uh okay question number three an asks what can I do when I blush and my face turns bright red hi Dr Burns I hope you
What can I do when I blush and my face turns bright red?
29:16 · are both doing well I wanted to share with you that you have changed my life dramatically I have always thought that everyone else had a problem as far as attitudes and behaviors but you have taught me through all three of your books and podcasts that my thoughts are why I’ve been so anxious and depressed and let’s skip the second paragraph exactly what I was going to do yeah great okay I’m anxious about getting completely off my um Kaza pan
29:47 · because it helps me control my face from turning red my red face makes me so anxious and I start sweating profusely when I’m in a situation that’s embarrassing thank thank God my menopause has helped me with explaining why my face is so red this has been going on since I can remember I think I was 5 years old in school when it first happened most people stare at me because my face gets really red I’ve repeatedly
30:13 · tried looking at people W my face is turning red to see if they’re truly looking at me and sometimes they are and sometimes they’re not the redness lasts for about 2 minutes but it feels like hours what can I do I want to get off all of my meds but my psych psychiatrist says to do it slowly I haven’t listened to all of your podcasts but I don’t think there’s one out there regarding a 49-year-old lady suffering from a red face maybe an ask David question I hope
30:41 · I’ve been specific enough for you I can’t thank you enough for everything you do for people thank you an will I’ll give a quick answer then we’ll get an answer from Ronda and then we’ll do some role playing Tech techniques and demonstrate the the response but let me first say that we have had podcasts on what a 49-year-old lady suffering from a red face can do and their podcast number 88 called roleplay techniques feared fantasy Revisited and and podcast 168
31:15 · the blushing cure and there will be links in the show notes or you can go to my website fing good.com and there’s a list of all of our podcasts with links to them so you can link link to those but to give the answer to to you in a in a nutshell is your your problem and and this is just self-help on this show we can’t treat you or prescribe anything or
31:42 · tell you what to do or what not to do but to my way of thinking your problem results 100% from U non-self acceptance you’re you’re trying to hide or control your your your your your blushing and and your profuse sweating and I’ve treated many people who blush and sweat profusely and uh you know I I I I know
32:07 · how to help people get over it and we we’ll demonstrate it but the key involves accepting the fact that that you’re uh that you blush that this is one of the things that your body does and and none of your anxiety comes from your sweating or from your BL blushing
32:25 · but from distorted thoughts about it and we’ll show you how to crush those thoughts in just a minute but I love your question I’m so glad that you you wrote to us because there’s a lot of people out there right now listening at this very moment who are trying so hard
32:41 · to fix this thing that’s wrong with them or that thing that’s wrong with them and whereas the actual that’s the actual problem that you keep trying to fix yourself thinking that you’re not good enough at where the solution is is self-acceptance and I’ve often said said and no one yet has understood it everyone thinks they understand it self-acceptance is the greatest change a human being can make self acceptance
33:08 · exact exactly accepting yourself exactly as you are with all your sweat and all your bright red face red as a clown’s red lipsticks U accepting that is is is not
33:24 · giving in but it’s transforming your your life because self-acceptance is the greatest change a human being can make and the moment you accept yourself everything will change but back to you Rhonda we give you a chance to respond to this and then we can we can do a little feared fantasy roleplay if you like sure well I
33:48 · I love your your response about self self-acceptance and you know changing her thoughts I mean right now she’s she’s thinking this is awful but she could also be thinking this is endearing and if she thought this is endearing then she would be happy when she blushed cuz she it would allow her to be closer to other people you know I was just thinking that once you go through the whole team model and you get to methods with her then we could do some really fun work by with shaming shame attacking techniques or
34:19 · you know exposure having her blush and then do a survey technique asking people what they think about her when she’s when she’s blushing I don’t recommend that one actually you don’t recommend the the survey to no because you’re forcing people into an awkward position of thinking they have to cheer you up in some lame Manner and insist that they’re not turn turned off there’s techniques a thousand times yeah
34:44 · yeah yeah and and uh but there’s ways to do it that get get around that what do you think of exposure and shame attacking oh great great okay and feared fantasy is a a form of exposure and and shame attacking but um okay let’s do that yeah
35:04 · okay and uh do do you want to be the the blusher or the BL or the blushy one of us can be the stranger from from hell and one will be play the role of an I want to play the role of an okay um and
35:19 · let let’s say I get let’s say we we’ve we’ve just met and uh and I’m I’m going to be the person who says all the things that you believe others are thinking but would never dare to say and and we do it that’s what the feared fantasy technique is this isn’t practice for real life because people don’t say these things to you in real life but we’re we’re we’re helping you get over your fear in in a kind of a fantasy land the allice and Wonderland nightmare world where your worst fears do do come come true and if
35:53 · you like what we’re doing or want to understand it better you can go to those two podcasts and it’ll be explained uh further but uh tell me what what your name is and like we’re we’re just meeting and I I’ll be the stranger from Hell the one that an has always feared I’m Joan Joan oh yeah yeah yeah my name is David uh could I ask you a question Joan sure uh I noticed that when we met your
36:22 · face has just turned bright red and you look as as like a as red faed as a as a clown all covered with red lipstick or something and uh and I can see little beads of perspiration and sweat forming on you is is there something wrong with you you know there’s nothing wrong with me I’m just a person who blushes and when I blush I sweat that’s just part of who I am well I I think that’s disgusting oh wow well okay you don’t
36:49 · have to be run me um okay goodbye good bye okay who who won would you say I won no how big or I’ve never I’d say that was
37:05 · big bigger I say that was huge I’ve never seen you tongue you you’re very rarely Tongue Tied you didn’t have a response to that yeah yeah that was that was pretty pretty cool now one thing is you escaped through avoidance and that’s of course the cause of all anxiety right I escaped through avoidance by when I said you couldn’t you don’t have to be around me yeah you were like telling the person to get get lost and it was kind of cool cuz you were sticking up for yourself but I’ll show you and probably
37:33 · my comment just now wasn’t entirely accurate but I’ll show you a slightly different style okay so you’re Joan and I’m attacking you so Joan I noticed your face is all red and you’re all sweaty e it’s so gross oh really you grossed out
37:50 · I’ve been sweating like this proudly sweating since I was five five years old and blushing and but it seems like it’s uh disgusting to you and I’m I’m I’m sorry because I I didn’t mean to to upset you can you tell me more what’s disgusting about it because once you get to know me better you’ll see that this is one of my lesser flaws actually I have tons of uh short comments but tell me what why is it is
38:17 · it upsetting to you that my face is red and that I’m sweating well that is a perfect example of self-acceptance yeah I love how you said really I’ve had this since I was five yeah why does it upset you like you’re just normalizing it you’re just normalizing the blushing right and um
38:38 · but but the people often resist Enlightenment that’s been the Buddhist problem 2500 years ago and ever since when he’s gotten reincarnated over and over in different individuals he keeps noticing that people don’t want to do the very thing that will give them Enlightenment and and and the Buddha found that frustrating 2500 years ago
39:00 · and still he finds it frustrating in many of his current incarnations but the reason that you know people are afraid is you think that acceptance is the same as giving up or giving in uh and that that something terrible is going to happen and and so you you think you have to change yourself in some way to be special to be lovable to
39:25 · to to be to be worthwhile um and and that that’s the cause of your of your misery and and that that’s the Distortion that that’s that’s causing your pain your pain never came from blushing your pain came from your own lack of self-acceptance your own self-criticism other pe people’s criticisms of you could never upset you
39:52 · unless you buy into them and then it’s your own thoughts that you that you’re believing that that’s upsetting you so let’s let’s do a do a couple more roll reversals to see if we can drive this to dri drive this home could I talk to you for a minute uh Ronda or whatever your name is sure uhhuh you your face just turned bright red are you blushing yeah I am blushing oh that that’s a childish
40:22 · thing to do that that’s that’s rid ridiculous for a grown adult to to be blushing do do you realize how how silly and ridiculous you look right now I mean everybody come and look at this woman her face is as bright as a stoplight it’s red bright red wow you know I
40:41 · you’re right it is kind of childish I love that about myself and I’ve been blushing since I was a little kid probably five years old and um you know it’s a quality that’s that’s a part of me and it makes people really in most people feel like close to me and get really endeared with me and and I love that you know it makes I feel really humble and and um I’m not I don’t feel
41:07 · like I’m I have to be better than everyone else and being blushing kind of keeps that alive for me but you said it was disgusting and you’re calling everybody to look over at me and oh yeah yeah I have a friend a friend who works for the uh paloalto Times newspaper and I’m going to mention
41:25 · to them you know so they can run an art on on you and how ridiculous you are with with with a grown woman blushing and sweating for no reason at all I would be so happy and flattered to be in the newspaper talking about blushing and having my picture in the paper even when I am blushing that would be super fun well you said it was ridiculous I’m curious what’s ridiculous about it you
41:47 · said it was disgusting like what disgusts you about it well it’s just it’s just abnormal you’re abnormal I don’t I don’t blush I don’t associate with people who blush none of my friends blush they’re all very confident and courageous oh gosh I I I admire you for being conscious be being courageous and confident and um you know blushing is a part of me and I I you know I I love the
42:16 · strengths that you’re sharing with me and you know blushing is one of my my qualities just like talking to you is and and responding to you and thinking about it and and you know okay can I give you a corrective feedback right now yeah I’m kind of losing myself you’re getting defensive aren’t you well I’m trying to think one of my qualities just like talking to you see I
42:41 · I would rather go to the direct direction is you know blushing is just one of my many flaws I have tons of flaws and if you get to know me you’ll find out that this is just the tip of the iceberg so you know but what if I said blushing is one of my many strengths I mean to see it as a well
43:00 · because um that that you know you can’t change yourself with that you don’t believe do you think Anne believes that blushing is one of her strengths no not right now that that’s why it’s not going to work okay that makes sense okay so then let me just repeat that and say yeah blushing is one of my many flaws but if you get to know me you’ll find out that I have a lot more than that yeah yeah to me that’s vastly more powerful mhm me too yeah so anyway
43:32 · that’s a little thing on blushy now how are we doing that was a good lesson oh yeah and yeah it was a great yeah I love this you know when you folks send us questions we have to scratch our heads and figure out how we’re going to answer them and it help helps us with our learning and we hope our answers help you with your learning let’s take question number five which is a short one that we won’t get down uh so so Dylan asked you can you
Can you have a delayed reaction to the CBT exercises?
44:03 · have a delayed reaction to the CBT exercises hi David I’m a big fan of your work a quick question do you commonly come across people who do CBT exercises and they don’t get their anxiety or depression levels reduced super low right after doing the exercises but a couple of days later they experience the results I’ll give you first dibs which I should always be doing on these these questions and then I’ll I’ll give you my answer um I think that’s a really interesting question and I would
44:35 · say that I’m kind of guessing that the person who didn’t get their depression or anxiety levels reduced very quickly right after doing the exercise you know is probably spending time thinking about the exercise and and you know incorporating it into them into their daily life and that’s leading them toward a lower
45:00 · level of their feelings a reduction in their feelings so I actually think that’s kind of cool and maybe that would make their reduction stronger because they’re incorporating the lessons I don’t know what do you think yeah well it’s it’s clo close to that when I first
45:17 · was learning cognitive therapy and I developed externalization of voices where you do you know as you’re so familiar the intens of roleplay back and forth hitting each other with with the patient negative thoughts they attack me I attack them in the early days often they they’d have some thought that I couldn’t help them answer within the qu within the session um so they might have the idea I
45:44 · I remember a woman I was working with and she became an appendix in the book intimate connections because she she believed she that she was just average there was nothing special about her and she was a clinical social worker so and she was unmarried and she said I I don’t have a husband I just have an ordinary job I just have an ordinary intelligence so there’s nothing special about me and that’s a fact so so I am in reality not
46:17 · an especially worthwhile H human being sad and and we did role playing back and forth for four full hours not all at once an hour a week for four weeks wow and and neither one of us could could figure the answer to it how how to you know accept this about yourself and still feel happy and then it hit her halfway through the fifth session and she became enlightened and we we saw it suddenly at the same time and uh that
46:48 · happened to me all the time I would leave a session thinking gosh this person thinks they’re worthless and I think they’re worthless so they probably are worthless how how am I going to help them would you really think they were worthless oh yeah I got hypnotized by every patient it still happens at the beginning of their work every depressed person tries to convince me that they’re hopeless and worthless they’re the one who who can’t get better and they’re very good they’re brilliant debaters and they used to persuade me
47:20 · all the time and and it would take a day or two after the session I’d say Ah that’s where they were getting distorted and then i’ see them the next time I say I think I figured it out and then they’d get it and then they’d they’d feel better but cognitive therapy and and the its you know new inheritance team CBT
47:42 · look simple but they’re not they’re very sophisticated these are the most challenging forms of psychotherapy ever created and and they require a certain deep Discovery a certain deep understanding that transforms your life and um and I I used to uh and still do
48:01 · you know I wake up in the middle of the night with answers to questions I didn’t have when I went to sleep and uh often the questions when I was in clinical practice seeing 6 8 10 12 or more people in a single day I I’d have a lot of them that I couldn’t figure out how to talk back to their negative thoughts and then it would occurred I mean in effectively see the positive thought has to be 100% true and it has to Dr drastically reduce
48:28 · your belief in your negative thought that’s the necessary and sufficient condition for uh emotional change the necessary condition is you have to combat your negative thought like I’m a loser with a positive thought that’s 100% true a Hal truth will never work right but in addition the positive thought has to totally crush the negative thought and suddenly see that it’s garbage you see your belief and it goes down to five or or 10% or zero %
48:57 · and that’s the sufficient condition for emotional change and so if you don’t get a mood boost until a couple days after doing say a daily mood log that’s well that happened to me every time when I was inventing uh Team CBT and refining
49:16 · cognitive therapy what in the day was called cognitive the therapy and I had exactly the same experience and then as I got older it got to where I could figure out the effective positive responses just like right right away after doing it for 40 50 years or however many years I’ve been doing it and so that’s that’s my interpretation it it it isn’t quite what you said Ronda
49:40 · which is that you said talked about something kind of wearing off or something like that no that you you’re thinking about it over the over time like you have a therapy session and you think about it the next day and the next day and then the Insight comes yeah you get an insight as to why you’re negative thought is screwed up and the very moment you have that insight and you can actually see it so it’s as obvious as the fact right now I can see that there’s skin on my hands and there’s no doubt about that and the moment you get
50:09 · it with that degree of clarity in that very instant your feelings will change and that could very well happen a couple days after you you’ve been working and that just shows you have a brain just like mine that you have a nice subconscious mind that works overtime for you when you’re not thinking about it mhm well what about that woman that you were talking about who was an average social worker and didn’t have a husband and she thought she wasn’t special yeah took us five five hours to together to figure
50:38 · out when you finally figured it out what was it you have to buy my book intimate connections and read the appendix to find out because I can’t remember right right right now but but again the answer to it is it’s the same as what we’ve been telling people in today’s podcast that she’s the problem is not that she
50:55 · isn’t good enough what is her problem Rhonda that she doesn’t accept herself and she’s self-critical yeah she’s beating up on herself beating up on herself now let me ask you let let let’s say that she’s going to pick up her child at school and uh she finds out her child is
51:12 · out you know playing with other children on the swings and things would would would would she go out into the schoolyard and go up to those children one at a time and say gee the way you’re swinging is just average that’s not Olympic equality there’s nothing special about you absolutely not she would never say that well why not because that would be mean and cruel and unnecessary that
51:37 · that’s the point you know happiness comes from self-love and self-love is a decision you make not something you can earn and that’s a Christian concept I don’t know if it’s also a Jewish concept or or an Islamic concept but but the Christian idea and uh is is that you don’t go get to heaven through your good works but but from from the grace of God
52:04 · and um and the grace of God is is the grace of a colleague who who treats you in a loving way or the grace you give yourself to treat yourself in a in a loving and compassionate way and that’s the meaning of God exactly and what you just described what would what would you say to a seven-year-old that’s that’s a type of
52:28 · paradoxical double standard technique would you say to a seven-year-old the things that you’re saying the critical things that you’re saying to yourself exactly yeah exactly so um why don’t why why don’t I he might not want to do it but our technical producer and incredible colleague and human being Max
52:52 · coso I don’t know if he wants to introduce himself I’ve been saying of these days you’re going to have to get in front of the camera so everyone see what a fantastic person is controlling the show from behind the the curtains but Max was a philosophy major uh just
53:09 · as I was in in in college and always has interesting things to say about the shows and if you want to tell us how we did today we’d love to find out and if you don’t want to that’s we’re cool with that too okay well thanks everyone for listening and we’ll see you next time thank you yeah and keep sending us your great questions because we really love answering your questions yeah exactly [Music]