Dr. Matt May
Appearances
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
I love that too, David. Yeah. Just to further the conversation a little bit, I'd be interested in your response. I can't read the mind of the person who posted on Reddit, and I actually haven't gone to track down their actual statements, but imagine that their personal experience was that they were helped significantly.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
Through the their religious beliefs that the idea that they have a soul that's eternal, that they'll have an afterlife, that God loves them, that that has led to a sense of safety and peace and comfort for them and for their and for their community. It makes sense to me that they might feel threatened. Right. Sure.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
Uh, or scared if people are trying to pull the rug out from under their feet on a set of ideas that has been extremely comforting to them. And, and so my guess is that he's trying to be in a protective role. Um, and yeah, I, I can kind of see where that's coming from. Sure. I, I, and I also, also totally as a bit of a hero, right. Sees himself as a bit of a hero protecting folks who might, uh,
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
Straight from the faith.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
Yeah, exactly. And it leads to this in-group, out-group thinking that is so dangerous in humans to think of ourselves as, okay, we're in this group. We identify as Christian or Lutheran or Muslim. And therefore, everyone else is on the outside. Yeah, right. And that creates so much conflict and suffering.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
Yeah, and I guess if we wanted an aggressive response to this individual, we could ask, well, what about all the brainwashing of children at a young age before they can actually think through ideas that are presented to them? It's not a mystery that most people who are Christian were raised in Christian families, and most people who are Jewish were raised in Jewish families. Yeah.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
And those ideas can have a danger in and of themselves, too.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
So I agree with you that it's important to be able to talk about these ideas as adults in a format where we can just be open to talking about it. Yeah.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
Right. That seems like a bad idea to me. And we can attack that idea without attacking the people, whoever has that idea. You know, it's, it's problematic. Yeah. Yeah.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
I mean, I can dive in there with a couple of quick thoughts, one of which would be to respond with a question, which is what would it be worth to him for him to be accountable to doing his homework? How important is that to him? What would he be willing to give in order to be accountable and consistent doing his homework?
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
Zero percent.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
I like that a lot. I think what you were getting at earlier, David, too, is that there's even an upstream question when it comes to procrastination, which is a person willing to pay the price of getting started when they don't feel like it. Exactly. Exactly. Are they wanting to feel like doing the exercises first and then do the exercises?
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
Or are they willing to commit to doing the exercises even when they really, really, really don't want to?
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
Yeah, I'm afraid to let you down there. I've got methods that can just, you know, return the joy to your life and the happiness. But it would be something that you'd have to do all the hard, hard work on. And it's really unfair.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
And that can be a very effective technique to to write down as an exposure exercise. What would I have to do? Yeah, because people can get kind of deer in the headlights and frozen up. And oh, yeah, you helped me when I was stuck doing my laundry. I couldn't do my laundry.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
Yeah, I was stuck in a kind of rebellious phase, and I'd gone to Costco many times just to buy new packages of underwear, 30 pounds.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
I got really into it for a while, and I had a pile of laundry bigger than me.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
I'm pretty well prepared for underwear emergencies.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
I'm ready to go.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
$7.95.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
That's the price. Okay. I think other considerations are things like making very small commitments and giving yourself credit for doing those. To put a star in your calendar every time you do your homework. Because people return to doing things because they get some positive, you know, stroking or experience or something like that as a result of doing it.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
I'm glad that you added that. It actually, it sounds similar to something I was going to add into the conversation too, which is the idea of having a personality or a self implies that it's unchanging, right? And I think that's a problem or can lead to a sense of hopelessness. Yeah, right.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
Like one useful way of defining a personality might be, you know, the habits that we have in our thinking are ways of relating to other people in our behaviors. And those are just habits or behaviors that, in fact, we can change. We can practice a different set of behaviors. If I wanted to be more outgoing, I could just practice being more outgoing.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
Or if I wanted to be more at peace, I could practice being more at peace. And yeah, to not...
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
Good point.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
Yeah, I liked your response. So... My thinking, I'll just re-express, and it hasn't changed much as a result of this question or this conversation. It's simply that I don't, I can't imagine something other than the brain being responsible for our decision-making. And certainly we all make decisions. We can witness that. And the question is, can we control what our brain is doing in the moment?
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
And I don't think that that's possible. I think our brain just has an atomic structure that operates according to the laws of physics and that there's nothing else that could control it outside of... There's nothing else determining our decision-making other than the operation of our brain. And it doesn't make sense to me the hypothesis of a self that's operating the brain or the idea that we...
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
could somewhere from some outside space control the brain isn't a reasonable hypothesis in my opinion. I don't know how to explain it that well. It's hard to explain something you don't believe.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
We'd have just a different universe. I can't even imagine what that might be like.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
Yeah, the reason this topic is interesting to me is that I think it can be useful to rid ourselves of blame, both self-blame and other blame, that if we couldn't have done differently than what our brains chose to do, then we shouldn't have done differently. So if you want forgiveness or if you want to forgive someone else, this is one approach you can take. And I found it useful personally.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
A lot of my patients have found it liberating to let go of some idea of a self that's operating their brain and to realize we're just a product of nature and nurture that we didn't choose.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
Yeah, I can be changed by a cheeseburger. I can go from feeling hungry and angry to very satisfied.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
I guess maybe one thing is like saying that is unlikely to change their opinion. Exactly, exactly. And so I don't think you're in much danger of pulling the rug out from underneath them.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
Yeah, there was one other statement this person brought up in the email exchange that we had, and I really appreciated that email exchange. But it was a concern about viewing people as like a clockworks, that if my view is that they don't have a self or a soul, that they're really just like machines.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
And one thing I wanted to acknowledge there was that we all have feelings, and so we're not machines. And those feelings are very real. And that's why we care about each other. So I think the philosophy that there's no self or free will is actually consistent with caring about people a lot. And I just wanted to bring that out into the conversation.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
Right.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
I have maybe one brief thing to say about that, which is just guilty as charged. I'm often very aggressive when I'm debating an idea. And sometimes that even kind of crosses over a boundary, I think, of attacking the person with the idea. And I feel really sad if I have harmed anyone or disrespected someone based on their belief system. I respect anyone of any belief system.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
And yeah, I have no place to judge others based on their belief system. I do like the freedom that we have to kind of debate ideas. I think that's important and would like to continue to do that. But I don't want to do any harm or cause anyone suffering or to feel judged based on the way I'm approaching this conversation. So, yeah, I'm sad. I'm sad that they experienced that.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
And I'm glad that they brought it up on Reddit for us to talk about here.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
416: Ask David: The "Soul" Revisited; Acountability: Is "personality" another illusion? And more!
So glad to be here with both of you and all of our listening audience.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
And so one of my messages to emergency doctor physicians is don't prescribe a month-long course of benzodiazepines for anxiety. Let psychiatrists handle that because it can actually create a new problem where there was really a solution in the first place called cognitive behavioral therapy. You can learn about that.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
You can read David's books, When Panic Attacks, and you can get excellent treatment for panic and anxiety. without going down the side track of getting onto a medication that is highly addictive and hard to get off of. If you've already gotten onto it, go ahead David.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
I think the question was about, okay, what's the best way to get off of it if you've gotten onto it? The answer to that is complicated because it would depend on the individual. their circumstances, and the medication that they're on. So one answer might be immediately go cold turkey off of benzodiazepines. That's frequently the correct answer. Really? Yeah.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
If you're a young, healthy person who's only taken it for a few days, and you recreationally partied on Xanax, Alprazolam, for a couple of days, and you realized, huh, This has caused me a lot of problems. Like I broke up with my girlfriend, my friends got angry with me, I acted in ways that were irresponsible, I spent too much money. Xanax does all of these things.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
Benzodiazepines, they take the break off of our dopamine receptors and they cause us to do things, it's called disinhibition, where we'll behave in radically bizarre ways. And the best thing to do if you're driving down the road and you've got a bag of pills of Xanax and you've just partied for a couple of days, you're a healthy person, you don't have seizures, just get rid of it immediately.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
Stop cold turkey. That's often the best plan. An extreme alternative version of that is that you've been on a benzodiazepine to stop your seizure disorder. You've got seizures and if you go off of it, you're going to have more seizures.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
And so the plan would be not to go off of your benzodiazepine at all, but to find a new medication that helps you treat your symptoms, prevents you from having seizures, without all of the side effects of a benzodiazepine. So the correct answer actually depends on the individual, the circumstances, and the specific medication involved. And we could write a whole textbook about that.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
But I think we lead back to the team model, which is we want to get more information. Like, what are your circumstances? What are your goals? And how long have you been taking a benzodiazepine? Do you have medical circumstances that might predispose you to having a seizure if you acutely go off of a benzodiazepine? So I can't give a general correct answer to a nonspecific question.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
But there are some key guidelines that help guide us. And one of them is the half-life. David, you referred to that. which is if you are on a short half-life medication like Alprazolam and you're trying to get off of that, that's going to be a lot more challenging than if you're on a long half-life agent like Chlordiase, Epoxide, or Valium.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
You can essentially, for most people, be on a dose of Valium that has a super long half-life and just stop taking it. And it will linger in your bloodstream and in your cerebrospinal fluid for a very long time. And you don't have to worry about crashing or a strong whiplash effect where you get rebound anxiety, etc.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
Yeah, if we can avoid that detour along the route of cure, because it just adds a new problem for most people, that most people then get hooked and they now have anxiety, but they also need to get off of an addictive substance.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
Matt? Yeah, I like the question too. I can't claim to be an expert on it. There was a book, Music and the Mind, that I read some time ago, and it did resonate with me, to use a musical term. I have some guesses about it. I'll maybe identify two things that I think might be going on with music. So one is rhythm. All music has a rhythm.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
And I think human beings are exposed to that early in life, actually while they're in the womb, because sound transmits so clearly through solid matter and liquid, that an unborn child can hear the heartbeat of their mother. And that heartbeat varies according to circumstances that are also related to her neurophysiology. So I think we get an early exposure to music that may be very specific
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
and create profound emotion. And I think as a species, we've evolved to be very social, that the most important cues that we could be picking up on in our surroundings are related to other people, their facial expressions, their voice, their intonations. And we hear that from a young age, too. We hear the voice of our mother before we're born.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
And music has both of those components, both rhythm and melody. And so I think it is easy for us to anthropomorphize or hear another person when we're hearing a frequency. Certain frequencies sound sad, a minor note. Certain sound happy, a major note. And everything in between. And so we pick up on those, we learn those from a very early age.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
And I think that when we hear music, we imagine either that emotion is within us or it's coming from outside of us, that we imagine a person speaking to us, talking to us. And it makes a lot of emotional connection to us because of those experiences and those attachments and connections. Those are just guesses. Those could all be wrong.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
Again, I haven't seen a lot of science on that, but there are some books about it that might be interesting to people.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
But, David, I also like the sentence, I like bullshitting.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
So I'm happy to do that all you'd like and ask all the questions you'd wish for me to answer in a bullshit way.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
It's really not that important, but I do meet every other Monday with Jacob Towery in person at Palo Alto University. It's an awesome group and really love the people who are attending and love teaching with Dr. Jacob Towery.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
You've achieved, achieved enlightenment. I'm very jealous of you.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
Well, sure. Harold, I really appreciate the question. The, if you're upset a lot about, you know, thoughts about the world, um, I would invite you to consider whether there might be should statements attached to those thoughts. You listed a couple of different thoughts. And at times, those will be very just true statements about reality. There's just a lot of suffering in life, for example.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
And the question I have is whether or not you're also telling yourself that it shouldn't be that way, that there shouldn't be so much suffering. If so, then there would probably be some help for you, and we could probably help address those as should statements the way we would any other self-directed should statement.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
Only the path would be a little bit harder, because addressing a self-directed should statement, like I should be better, leads to immediate resolution of guilt, shame, pressure, etc.,
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
However, if it's outwardly directed, if you're saying the world shouldn't be this way, then you're not going to experience an immediate relief from guilt, but you're going to experience something different, which is an acceptance of the world around you, and you won't be as outraged or angry. And a lot of times people want to feel outraged and angry because it gives them a sense of purpose.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
In fact, one of the main things that seems to draw people's attention is outrage. If they're presented with information that causes them to feel very upset, they're more likely to interact with it. They get kind of hooked on ideas that the world shouldn't be this way. And they'll keep clicking and focusing their attention on that.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
It's a very addictive substance is blaming and saying the world shouldn't be this way. So it's actually a little bit more challenging to defeat than an internalized, oh, I'm the problem, I shouldn't be this way kind of thought. But the same methods are effective.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
You could use the semantic technique, the Socratic technique, and talk back to all your reasons to get focused on this idea that the world should not be this way.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
I'd be happy to.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
Yeah, there's a tremendous amount of suffering in life. And I've been thinking about you a lot recently and the suffering that you've been experiencing. And it seems really outrageous to me and preposterous that you'd be experiencing so much of that and so little joy after how much you've put in, how hard you've been trying. I'd be feeling pretty pissed off and angry if I were you. Yeah.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
And I wonder how you're doing. Could you tell me a little bit, a little more? I'm really glad you're talking about this with me.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
Somewhere around, and that's a great question. I don't know. I don't think my grade really matters, just yours.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
That explains a lot for me, David. Thank you. I appreciate that.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
You helped me a lot just to identify my own niceness and to change sort of the way that I approached dating and interacting with other people in general. Just to be a little bit more selfish was okay. And I really appreciated that one of the most important lessons you taught me is it's okay to get rejected. Yeah. And in fact, you prescribed that to me. You said, go get rejected a lot.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
And I did so. And that was the most liberating experience of my life to realize that a single rejection actually doesn't cause any harm in the grand scheme of things. In fact, 10 or 20 rejections doesn't cause any harm in the grand scheme of things. It's perfectly okay to get rejected. And after I did that and experienced that, then I felt much more free and liberated. And my anxiety went away.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
And it just occurred to me, gosh, it's a matter of time until I find someone who's really appropriate for me. And linking that to the hidden emotion, That perhaps the person asking this question is suffering from is maybe they're getting distracted by world events and getting upset with the themes that are in the world rather than acknowledging that they felt a little rejected. Yeah. And angry.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
And angry. And that's a very painful, upsetting set of feelings. And oftentimes nice people don't want to acknowledge that they feel angry or upset. They want to distract themselves with politics or other things. But I love that you were able to delve a little bit deeper with this person and get to where their real suffering is.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
Yeah, there was a little bit of an overcorrection error on my part. You helped me there as well. Thank you.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
Those can be just standalone negative thoughts that would respond to other methods than the hidden emotion. The hidden emotion would be just one of many different methods that could be helpful for someone who's upset about world events. And we could just ask, like, gosh, why wouldn't you want to be upset?
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
There are so many world events right now that are affecting, you know, are just horrifying to consider, right? And it seems very appropriate to be concerned about them. And so to side with, gosh, that seems like an appropriate emotion to be feeling and to look at all the reasons to feel that would be one first step.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
I thought that was a beautiful answer.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
I've almost forgotten the question. Treating schizophrenia.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
So I think it's true that people... All people have multiple problems. So one might be they've got schizophrenia or bipolar, but then they'll also have other problems in their life, just like anyone else. They might have social anxiety. They might be feeling down about themselves, judging themselves, etc.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
So we would treat that in the same way, but we would also want to treat whatever biological problem that was affecting their brain. Schizophrenia and bipolar, there's a lot of evidence-based treatments out there to help folks with the symptoms related to that. There are other biological problems that exist that affect the brain.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
But we would also want to treat – mostly we're treating the person with those problems and trying, as you said, David, to identify what are their goals, what are they hoping for. And then we can come up with a long – list of methods that could be helpful to them and help resolve those problems. It might include medication or other methods that they could engage with.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
But yeah, to have a diverse set of skills and tools to offer somebody to address both the biological, psychological, social components to their suffering would be important.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
I love what you're saying there, David. It reminded me of something that was helpful to one of my patients who had pretty intense feelings of paranoia. And their experience was that they couldn't. explain different coincidences that were occurring to them, that it seemed unlikely that they were just coincidences. And then I recalled a statistics class that I took in medical school
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
where the teacher was looking at a case, an unusual case, where an individual had been struck 17 times by lightning. Wow, that's weird. It was really weird, and the teacher asked, well, why did that happen? Was it something with their physiology? Were they different in some way, etc. ? and the class took all these guesses which were in fact wrong.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
The correct answer is that statistically speaking, if you take the number of human beings on planet Earth and the frequency of human beings being struck by lightning, that there will be a few people who are struck 17 times by lightning. If you just run the math, it would be a more bizarre
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
more weird set of circumstances, more likely to be a conspiracy theory if there was nobody who was struck that many times by lightning. There actually wasn't anything different about this person. They didn't have a different physiology, higher sodium levels in their body, nothing like that.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
They just happened to be that one person who got struck 17 times by lightning, which was predictable according to statistics. And realizing that, the person I was working with, came to terms with the fact that, gosh, there are just a lot of coincidences around us. A lot of things happen.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
And it would be more unusual and more unlikely and less easy to explain if there were just no coincidences at all. So sometimes just explaining things, like you said, in a way that makes sense, whether it's mathematically or at an interpersonal level, can help folks who are struggling with a negative thought, including paranoia.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
Was it temazepam? Restoril?
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
Klonopin or Klonazepam?
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
I was kind of spaced out there for a second.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
Not at all. No, you're describing a very typical experience with benzodiazepines, often prescribed for sleep or for anxiety.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
Pleasure to be here, Rhonda. Thanks for inviting me.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
Yeah, I love what both of you are saying. I really appreciate the personal experiences, David, that you're sharing, that oftentimes people are prescribed a benzodiazepine for sleep or anxiety. Frequently, I see people who have gone to their emergency department, with a panic attack, thinking that they're having a heart attack. They're given some Ativan. They feel better.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
Maybe they're prescribed 30 days of Ativan. And then they leave the hospital feeling temporarily a lot better. But then they get hooked on the benzodiazepine. A lot of people don't know what a benzodiazepine is. And so I think it's helpful to just describe that. What is that?
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
It's a drug that affects the GABA chloride channel ion in the brain, meaning that there's a natural substance in the brain called GABA and that binds to a chloride ion channel and it opens the channel up. Chloride comes into the neuron and it basically depolarizes that neuron and it ceases to function. The result of that is that you can start to feel a number of things.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
You can feel extremely relaxed, calm, and at peace. It can address anxiety symptoms acutely. You can even feel a little bit high because it releases, it takes the break off of the dopamine receptors in the brain. So it's a very addictive drug because it affects dopamine
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
And in the long term, there's a rapid tolerance that develops where you need more and more of the drug to achieve the same amount of reduction of anxiety. So I'm frequently seeing patients who come in after being seen in the emergency department, prescribed a month-long course of benzodiazepine. that works the same way as alcohol. It binds to the same receptor as alcohol, the GABA receptor.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
And now they've gotten a little bit hooked on it. They've still got the same problem that they came to the emergency department with. They've still got their anxiety, but now they've got a new problem. They're hooked on Ativan or Klonopin.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
422: Ask David: Getting off Benzos; Music and Emotions; Negative Thoughts about the World; and more
Or Xanax or some other medication like that. And so they still need the treatment for the initial problem that they presented with, whether it was anxiety or panic attacks. But they also need strategies for how to get off of a medication that they've become addicted to, physiologically addicted to. Yeah.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
Right, yeah. So one thing is that he's not only got intrusive thoughts, but he's also got a should statement that's creating suffering when he has those thoughts. So there would be a number of different ways to help with a should statement. Sure.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
Oh, I shouldn't be having these thoughts anymore. I shouldn't have such intrusive, upsetting thoughts going through my mind.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
Well, he wants to protect his family. His priorities and values are about making sure that nothing happens to his wife and nothing happens to his son. And his thoughts are there to make sure he's on guard and keeping them safe and doing everything in his power to protect them.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
That's always a good one to try when there's an element of OCD, the hidden emotion.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
Nice. That would be fun. Could I share a brief vignette of an experience that I had about 19 years ago? Yeah, that would be awesome. So I had a dear friend who had his first son was born And one of the things he experienced that he shared with me that was very disturbing to him, his job was to take the boy from downstairs upstairs at the end of the day and to tuck him in.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
But every time he was climbing the steps, he would have this intrusive and very disturbing thought of dropping his son over the edge of the balcony. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And he began to think that this meant something terrible about him. that maybe he is a bad father or is a psychopath or something like that.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
And when I suggested to him that sometimes our brain is just trying to warn us about things and to make sure we're being safe and careful, and he's probably just trying to be especially careful not to drop his son in that moment because he loves his son so much and cares about his son so much. that all of his symptoms went away. He was no longer disturbed.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
He realized he should be thinking about that, that his brain is making an effort to protect his baby.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
Exactly. And then the images actually did kind of go away because he was not defending against them. He welcomed them and saw what they were trying to accomplish there for him.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
I'm appreciating Rodolfo for his question. Yeah, thank you, Rodolfo. I loved your answer, David.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
Okay. What do you think, Matt? If it's just a simple survey question, then my answer is it's absolutely fine to enjoy being on your own and doing your own thing.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
I think if other people – we can demonstrate the feared fantasy and prove that if other people are judging us for that, that we don't need to be bothered by their judgment, that the feared critic of our nightmares has no teeth and can't hurt us. Yeah. I think the one caveat I would have is if she has her own personal reason for not wanting to spend as much time on her own.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
So, for example, if it's a goal for her to have a family, but she's not going out to meet anyone or date, then that could be a reason that she might want to be more social or do more dating or something like that. But if it's only the concern that she's letting other people down, and they're judging her, then I think we get back to this probable feeling of hidden anger.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
Like she probably feels a little bit annoyed that she's not allowed to make her own decision and just choose to be on her own. And she could do some methods like survey technique. And she could ask people, is it annoying to you that I kind of prefer my own personal time? As far as I'm concerned, my response would be no. Have the time of your life and enjoy being alone.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
And if you wanted to spend time together, that'd be great too.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
Right on. The water's warm. Jump on in.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
I'm sadly allergic to cats. I love cats, and they love me. But, yeah, I tend to... get all puffy in the face and runny nose, et cetera.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
Rhonda, I also want to say that I'm extremely powerful and judging you, but I'm also exquisitely sensitive and being hurt by you. And you should feel I'm very weak, and you should feel... bad about hurting me and also scared about my, from my judgment, my powerful.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
I agree that I think the most important part of the work is motivational thinking. is to understand how is this thought, this structure of thinking beneficial to you? What would be the problem of letting go of the shoulds? How is it functioning? And what does it say that's great about your value system? And if that's not addressed, if that
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
resistance is still in place, none of the methods will be that effective. If he overcomes that resistance and he decides, I want to let go of those shoulds and I have permission to do that, then we'd have a lot of cool techniques like the semantic technique or the Socratic technique or shades of gray or reattribution, et cetera, et cetera.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
But the first question I have is, why would he let go of his shoulds? It seemed like they're highly... motivational and getting him to live up to his standards. And I can see a lot of other good reasons to shoot himself. And I'm not convinced yet that I'm not convinced yet that he should stop shooting himself.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
I often like having plans on a Saturday. I don't have any plans this Saturday, and that's actually okay with me. Sometimes I think, gosh, I'd prefer to have some plans. Maybe I could do something and make some plans. That's exciting to me.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
Oh, I'd love to avoid that. That'd be great. I'd love to be faster, more efficient, make fewer errors. Maybe you've got some pointers for me on how I could do better in that way.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
Well, if I'm just condemned to slowness and inadequacy, I'll just accept that then. That's okay with me. I guess I would prefer to be better, but you're saying I couldn't be better.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
Oh, gosh, I just plead guilty and admire them for their awesomeness. They're doing such great work, and oh, man, I goofed up. I wish I hadn't messed up in that way, but they did such a great job. Gosh, I feel so fortunate to be a part of such a brilliant team.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
Thank you for the role play too, David.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
Yeah, well, let's say you could eliminate shoulds from your mind. Would there be any danger to doing so? Because a lot of people imagine some slippery slope that if I'm not constantly monitoring and shoulding myself... That I'll just become complacent and lazy, never get anything done. That I need my shoulds to motivate me and keep me on track. And that can be a powerful form of resistance.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
That if someone is there and they're thinking, gosh, yeah, that's just true. I have to should myself or I'm going to be in trouble. Then I wouldn't go on to any methods anymore. there. I would just admire their sense of responsibility and they want to be productive and contribute to society. And that's awesome. So why would we change this? This is a good thing that's working for them. Right.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
I agree wholeheartedly. I think... The metaphor sometimes I've used is that when we're working on the thoughts, if we just work on the thoughts, if all we do is cognitive therapy. And we're not looking at the motivation, the values, the reasons to keep the thoughts. It's sort of like we're trying to defeat this plant.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
But if we go to the roots, if we address the root of the problem, suddenly the whole plant changes and transforms. And it's easy. It's not a constant hacking away at this thing that keeps regrowing. It's an actual fundamental, deeper type of change and cure that's possible.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
Yeah.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
One thing I've seen be quite effective that's also an agenda setting for should statements is a version of the magic dial question, which is something like, how much longer should I continue to should myself? Yeah. Should I be shooting myself at all times from the moment I wake up in the morning? Should I be doing that as intensely as possible?
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
Should I maximize my suffering at all times for the rest of my life in order to get the best results here?
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
David, I think you're not using enough should statements or self-criticism.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
I think that would be an appropriate plan.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
Well, that's very rebellious of you and bad of you.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
OK, well, it's rubbing off. I think it's working.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
I'm so happy that that project is occurring right now. I'm also delighted to be a part of it.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
I have one comment. I love that Rhonda is taking some notes, but I can also hear the note taking a little bit.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
Yeah. That's okay. I wonder, I would love, David, just to hear a brief summary of what you were describing. What is the difference between healthy and unhealthy acceptance? How do I know if I'm accepting myself in a way that's appropriate versus inappropriate?
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
Yeah, it seems a little strange to me that hopelessness and despair would be so close cognitively to enlightenment. That a state of mind that, you know, I'm defective and that's horrible and it means it's hopeless is so close to I'm defective and I embrace that. And I'm delighted to be in good company with all of us.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
Hey, David, I'm your negative thoughts, and I have a really important message for you. I need you to understand that you're really defective.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
Absolutely true, yeah. An excellent example of the acceptance paradox.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
Yeah, I'm happy to speak to Rodolfo's question. It's an excellent one. I'm glad we're revisiting it. So I'll just point out maybe one of the common places where people get stuck or a little bit trapped trying to defeat their negative intrusive thoughts. And that is that they're trying to eliminate them from their mind. They're trying to control their brain.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
And that's simply not a switch that we have. There's no button to unsubscribe from our own minds. Our minds just kind of create thoughts and images and might play annoying jingles that we heard on an advertisement 20 years ago. That's just something that the brain will do. what we're actually offering is to not be disturbed or upset or to get stuck having those thoughts recurrently.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
And that requires an understanding that our efforts to try to control our brain will backfire. It's like a law of physics that if we try to press or force or demand that we not think about something, we will inevitably end up thinking about it. And you can just try and experimentally right now demand loudly in your mind that you do not think about a blue-eyed tiger.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
and see what occurs in your mind. And so you'll probably realize, oh, I'm suddenly thinking about a blue-eyed tiger. And so the first step is to carefully identify your agenda. If you're trying to eliminate the thought from your brain, you'll run into trouble. But if you're trying to develop a sense of comfort with the contents
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
of your consciousness, like whatever thoughts, emotions, et cetera, come up, then you've got a chance at a cure of not being troubled by those thoughts and feelings.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
413: Intrusive Thoughts; Alone and Liking It; Shoulds, and More
Love that answer, Rhonda. I agree wholeheartedly.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
That was really helpful and informative, David. And you shared that with me in the past, and it helped me really understand the dynamic there and how to help people get out of it. A lot of it having to do with talking back to those kinds of thoughts and just becoming aware that those thoughts are in our mind. is the first step, getting them on paper like the Daily Mood Log.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
I wanted to say one other thing about Rhonda's question about learned behavior. I think that's definitely true. There was something I was reading last night in my preparation for today that said that one of the most influential
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
associations around bullying predictors of bullying is whether or not the person believes that the authority figure in their life would approve of it and so if you have a parent who is abusive and bullying and you know subscribes to this idea of you know might is right and you know
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
take advantage of people, bully them, then it's much more likely that as a child you would engage in bullying yourself. And I think that there are positive reinforcements that occur there. You know, if you bully someone and people laugh, that's a type of reinforcement. If you bully someone and you take something from them, Now, that's reinforcement as well.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
And there can be negative types of reinforcement where you get more attention, even if it's negative attention, because kids desire that. And so often it's kids who aren't getting enough attention who will act out in ways that are antisocial.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
Sure. Yeah, yeah. I think it's a good practice to introduce and can be so helpful to anyone who's being abused or bullied or picked on. And do you want me to be the positive thoughts person?
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
I think some of the classics are things like, oh, I'm worthless. Or I'm a loser.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
Yeah.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
Sure, yeah. The email that you sent. We can work through those. I like Manuel's thought, like everyone's looking down on me or everyone's judging me.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
Right there.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
Ready when you are. Bring on the negative thoughts.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
Sure. Are you my negative thoughts?
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
Oh, do you have a hypothesis or a guess?
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
Oh, gosh, worthless, yeah. Yeah. I actually disagree with you on that. I think I'm priceless because I'm not for sale.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
I felt good on that one.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
That was pretty big. Hit me with it again.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
Oh, gosh, worthless. You know, I do have lots of flaws and shortcomings. I could improve in a lot of different dimensions, and I'm actually totally fine with that because I think I'm in good company there.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
Yeah, yeah. So a couple things there. I think it's extremely unlikely that everyone thinks exactly the same way and that everyone is judging me and looking down on me. I think there are lots of really compassionate, thoughtful people out there who would witness bullying and want to come to my aid and care about me a lot.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
And for those people who are enjoying looking down on me or criticizing me, I don't have to care about them. It's not on me to be concerned about their thoughts. That can be something that they take along with them and doesn't belong to me.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
Yeah, I could ask, well, specifically whom? Who thinks that about me, and how do I know?
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
Yeah, go for it. I'm feeling good about my responses right now, and so feel free to pile on. You could add more negative thoughts to try to get me with them.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
Let's do a role reversal manual. So could I play the negative thought? And I'd love to hear what you might say to a patient. If I were a patient and I'm struggling with this negative thought. How would you respond if I'm attacking you with it and saying, hey, you know, everyone is judging you. Everyone's looking down on you and thinking what a loser you are. Nobody likes you.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
What would be a more appropriate way for someone in that age range?
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
Yeah, I know.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
Yeah, Manuel, that was fantastic. There are many different types of bullying is one thing I discovered in my Wikipedia review last night. There's the psychological, there's the physical, and I guess more and more we're seeing cyber bullying of kids online, which is quite problematic. You can make a video of someone doing something ridiculous and
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
I think that's why the practice is important. Exactly. Yeah.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
Matt. Yeah. Rhonda, you know, I, sorry to tell you this, but you're kind of Rhonda too, right? I'm Ron. I'm, uh, yes, I'm, I'm Rhonda. Uh, negative Rhonda.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
Sorry about that. I'm a mess today. I'm a mess. Yeah, Rhonda, I'm your negative thoughts. And I just wanted to let you know that you're not attractive enough for Danny. He's way out of your league and he's not interested in you because you're gawky and awkward.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
Suddenly the whole school knows about it, and kids are quite sensitive to that kind of shaming and emotional abuse.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
Oh, who's that?
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
Was that a big win? I thought so. I thought so, too. I thought that was huge.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
I love that little example of feared fantasy and how, David, you were able to throw in some stroking. Yeah. I think that's one of the features of the feared fantasy. If you're able to get that, work that into the response, I think it is kind of a win. Yeah.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
We could do Rhonda's. I could play, Rhonda, would you like to respond to your bully as if they were a real person, not your negative thought? So in the feared fantasy version.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
Yeah. So what if my name's like Lindsay or something like that? And hey, Rhonda, I saw you kind of making eyes and trying to flirt with Danny earlier. But I wanted to let you know that he's way out of your league. You're just not attractive enough. I'm way more popular and beautiful than you are. And you're just a little toad by comparison.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
Not huge. Yeah. Why not huge? It didn't feel complete.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
Ouch, Lindsay, that kind of hurts to hear, especially coming from you. You've always had such style and grace and you're so beautiful. But I feel a little angry with you for saying that because I really like Danny. And I think I've got a chance with him. But maybe you could give me some pointers. You've got such beautiful hair. How did you accomplish that?
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
Do you have a special product that you use? And your makeup looks so nice today. Yeah. Tell me, what is your secret to looking so beautiful all the time?
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
I felt like I won. I don't know if it was huge or not.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
Okay, yeah.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
And they may be thinking that, and I think this is the exercise to defeat that way of thinking, that they might start there in therapy, but where they would end is through repeated efforts like this, trial and error, to get better and better at a response that feels – I agree that it needs to feel authentic to them. They need to feel like, I could say that.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
But I think sometimes the reason that kids might not want to say something like what I did – is motivational. It goes back to agenda setting is would you be willing to turn this enemy into your friend by, by sincerely complimenting and liking things about them? And so you, you've got real style and grace and I've always been a big fan of yours, but I must've done something to piss you off.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
You're really laying into me here. What did I say to upset you? Cause I really liked Danny and, and, uh,
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
Oh, that's such an ugly shirt. I can't believe you left the house today wearing that old rag.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
I think that was a slam dunk. That was awesome, David.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
There was no defensiveness in it. It was also just you were willing to disagree with me and say, oh, I really like it. And I must have weird taste. I thought that was disarming. And then, you know, as your critic, it's really hard to keep criticizing you when you're complimenting me.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
How would this work with threats? that kids won't talk about the bullying that they're receiving. And I think oftentimes because it's that contract, if you talk about it, I'm going to hurt you worse, that David was mentioning earlier. So I wondered if...
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
I would give that an A+. I mean, I wonder if there's any other type of harassment or bullying that the audience would want to hear our responses to. Other negative thoughts?
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
Good. I thought that was good. How did that feel to you, David? Was that a huge one?
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
That sounds good. I like that element. Yeah. Manuel, do you want to respond to that one?
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
Yikes. I like that. That's fun. I could offer some summarizing.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
Yeah, I love that answer, Manuel, because, I mean, in the very first part of the team model, the T is for testing. How do you get the information that there's something going wrong here that as a parent I would want to be able to help my child with? And if the child is in this contract of abuse, they're not going to want to tell us in a straightforward way.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
And so we have to be looking out for those signs that there might be something going on. I had a wonderful friend who was a pediatrician. And one thing he said to me is to get into the habit of talking to your kids about their emotions and what's going on in their life and their friends and their
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
and talk about things that kids are often kind of afraid to talk about, so that's just sort of a natural repertoire of what happens, and I've tried to do that with my kids.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
We didn't talk a lot about the empathy model, but once someone does start to talk about their experience of abuse, I think we want to reward that and tell them how proud we are of them for talking about it, let them know that we're going to... be there for them just to listen, but also to help. And what do they need right now? And then I thought we did a good job.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
Today on the methods, and we addressed a little bit of the agenda setting that oftentimes at a motivational level, folks will not want to approve of themselves if they're getting bullied. And Manuel, you pointed out, you can actually decide, no, I'm going to approve of myself even if someone else is rejecting me or bullying me. And I love that point that you made there.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
And that was my effort at a summary, and I'll let Wanda go.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
Yeah. I love that to model self-disclosure and opening up and how to talk about those things.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
Right. Yeah, I experienced some of—I was really grateful to have your training, David, because my son went through a little bit of bullying, not too bad. And I offered him, you know, there are a couple ways I could help. I could— I could just listen and you could talk about it. Or I could help you feel better about it.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
I could show you some tools that you could use to kick your negative thoughts out of your head. Or we could practice how to talk to that bully. And what type of help would you like?
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
And that was really effective.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
He said he wanted help with just talking about it. He just wanted to talk about it with me. He wanted to handle it on his own. He didn't want me to interfere, but he did want some help talking back to some negative thoughts.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
A relief not to have an ego. Yeah.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
Yes.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
Cool. Thanks. Great spending time with you all. Thanks.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
We'll see you.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
Hey, Rhonda. Hi, Matt.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
Go ahead. Great points, Manuel. Yeah, to your question, David, it does seem like there's an inherent feature to human psychology. There's not been a generation of humans where there wasn't bullying and cruelty. And I think it is important to understand the motivation behind. Behind it in order to help kind of deal with bullying.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
And so one of it is that just sadistic desire to, you know, enjoy causing harm and feeling powerful, which is sociopathic and There's also Machiavellian, as you mentioned, to get power and influence through control and manipulation and lying and innuendo. And then there's also a narcissistic motivation, which is the belief that – I am superior and therefore I deserve more.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
417: Defeating the "Inner" and "Outer Bully"!
I deserve your lunch money as well as my own lunch money. And so I'm just going to take it from you because I deserve it. But I think there's probably a genetic basis behind all of these and that you will find different amounts of those traits in different human beings.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
Yeah, I've, I've been the victim of many should statements in my own mind. And it all, it often seems like it's the, right thing to do, that I should be beating up on myself or punishing myself if I've failed at something that's really important to me. So my guess is that her value system is around being a wonderful mom.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
And if she makes some error around that, she beats up on herself because at some level she believes she deserves it. She hasn't earned the right to feel good if she's not performing at a really high level as a mom.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
Maybe guilt or shame. And then associating those feelings with spending time with her daughter would be bad for the relationship.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
Yeah, so they're often very nice people. uh, anxious, um, avoidant, people pleasing, wanting to avoid any type of conflict. They value peace and harmony in their relationships. Yeah. They don't want to rock the boat.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
Right. And it seems good in the short term.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
I'm afraid I'll be winding down for the day. Okay. I'd love to spend time with both of you, but I'll be too sleepy.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
Oh, I feel guilty and bad for not showing you how much I care about both of you.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
Well, I'll have to politely decline.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
I loved it. I loved it. I had a couple other comments just on that pattern since I've lived it myself personally. One observation was that it seemed like resentment would kind of build up over time, like water behind a dam. If I was operating under the system, like I'll just always be nice and expect other people to reciprocate.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
If I was expecting that and it didn't happen, I'd feel a little bit resentful, but I still wouldn't want to rock the boat. And so I wouldn't bring up my feelings. And then it would like build up over time. And eventually it would be like some straw would break my back and my feelings would come out in a way that I didn't like that. I, you know, it's like it was rushing out of the dam.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
And so that was a terrible consequence of this rule, interpersonal rule that I had to always be nice. And the other thing that really helped me was the double standard technique, where I would imagine, would I tell someone else that they should be a better mom or a better person? Would I communicate to someone else in all these critical ways? And as a nice person, I just wouldn't do that.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
And it helped me see that double standard and let go of it. And I've noticed that that works really well when people are prone to being nice, is they can just employ that tendency to help themselves.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
Yes, I have. It's been very helpful to me. A little healthy selfishness.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
And that it would almost certainly include testing, careful measurement of mood to know if you're making progress or not, as well as empathy. careful agenda setting to address motivational barriers to improving, and a whole host of methods, each of which has some small chance of success.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
Thanks.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
But we'd want to have not assumed that every person will be responding identically to different methods just because they carry the same diagnosis.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
Or When Panic Attacks by David Burns.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
Yeah, it's a strange paradox, right? Because you would imagine that you would want to address your whole life to be able, rather than focus in on one moment, but realizing that our whole life is just a repeating pattern of thinking. And that if we defeat that thinking in one moment, then we have the tools to do it in every other moment. Yeah.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
Cool. I have a couple of thoughts. I really like Owen's question. And I think for folks who can successfully do externalization of voices on their own, they're essentially cured, right? That would be a metric of whether or not they're ready to graduate from therapy.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
And I would say that it's hard to do that on your own because it's unlikely, not only for the reasons that David mentioned, which is that there will be hidden resistance that will make it such that you wouldn't be motivated to defeat the thought, but often because when most people are trying externalization of voices, they tend towards the defense only responses.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
And it's really useful to hear a therapist use the acceptance paradox or the counterattack or just Socratic technique or other methods that might be more effective or more effective in combination. And so often I recommend that my patients make an audio recording of
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
of successful externalization of voices that they've done with their therapist and then to play that back and then to practice on their own. And I think in other podcasts, we've mentioned versions of externalization of voices that you do on a folded sheet of paper where one side is your critical thoughts and the other side is your responses.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
And I have seen that be effective for myself and for many of my patients with a little extra training. They can do externalization of voices on their own. And that's before we had the app. So I think with the app, it would be far more effective.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
Sure. A classic one would be something like, I'm worthless.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
I think I detect my negative thoughts coming at me. And, you know, I've got a lot to do today. I don't think I have time to listen to that.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
I felt good about that one. I tried the kind of counterattack.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
I felt like it was a I'm not currently suffering with the thought that I'm worthless. So it worked for me. I think there was a lot unsaid. And maybe I'd like to hear a role reversal. Maybe we could try again.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
Hey Matt, I'm your negative thoughts and I just wanted to let you know that you're worthless.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
I like that response. I think you took away the overgeneralization part that I'm, you know, worthless and defective in all ways at all times. So I like that response. What grade would you give it, Rhonda? I would give it a B. A B, okay.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
Maybe I can be Matt's negative thoughts and attack David. OK.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
Right.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
So you're positive, Matt, and I'm Matt's negative thought. Great. Yeah. Oh, hey, Matt. I'm your negative thoughts, and I don't mean to make you feel bad or anything, but I think it's important that you know that you're worthless.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
I like that a lot. I would give that an A. I would think that's a huge win. I like that you were able to kind of humbly accept and embrace flaws and shortcomings, and even in a joyful way, in a happy way. And that seems like, you know, at the core of the acceptance paradox.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
Okay. Hey, Rhonda, I'm your negative thoughts, and I just wanted to give you a really important message, which is that you don't matter.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
I like that. How did that feel to you, Rhonda? Was that a win?
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
A huge win?
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
Awesome. I liked it. I thought it was a huge win, too.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
Okay.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
I have a reference to another awesome quote that I think represents the acceptance paradox. This is from Zen Buddhism. Oh, neat. There was a monk who asked, what is Buddha? And Master Yunmen Unmon, probably pronouncing that incorrectly, answered, a dry shit stick. A what? A dry shit stick.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
I'm wondering how many more weeks of wear you can get out of it.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
Yeah, I think if I were going into solitary confinement, I would be feeling extremely grateful to have the skills and methods and tools that are in team therapy for that experience. I think there's a little bit of a paradox if we consider that solitary confinement is very similar as a situation to a silent meditation retreat.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
that people would pay a lot of money to go to experience something really wonderful in their life. And I think that could be kind of confusing until we look at the cognitive model that what would shape your experience in solitary confinement or in a silent meditation is exclusively what you're thinking in those situations.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
And so to have the skills to address your negative thoughts as they're coming up would be of tremendous value. Yeah.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
Yeah, my concern about the prison system is it's probably using that punishment as a deterrent for bad behavior. So they're not likely to want it to be a pleasant experience for prisoners. And I think we could debate whether that's an appropriate way to treat anyone is to lock them up and ignore them. I'm skeptical of that being a way of reforming behavior.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
I don't think that people come out of that experience highly motivated to connect with others and feeling better about society and wanting to play by the rules. I think they probably come out more bitter or more depressed, more resentful.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
Another one that I saw was discounting the positive or just focusing on the negative, focusing on errors or times when she's upset rather than when she's being patient and loving and kind.
Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy
412: Ask David: Give-Get Imbalance; Best Anxiety Treatment; Externalization of Voices; and more
There's almost always all or nothing thinking hidden somewhere in a negative thought. And perhaps in this case, parenthetically, she's thinking, you know, I'm never a good enough mom or I'm always a bad mom. Yeah. I'm never good enough on some scale of awesome momness. Yeah.