Feeling Good Podcast | TEAM-CBT - The New Mood Therapy

After reviewing Mark's scores on the Brief Mood Survey, the Empathy phase of the session unfolds. During this phase of the session, David and Jill will not try to help, rescue, or save Mark. They will simply try to see the world through his eyes and provide some warmth and compassion. Mark explains that he had two goals in life when he was a young man. He hoped to have a large, loving family; and...

This is the first in a series of podcasts that will feature live therapy. As you listen, you'll have the opportunity to peak behind closed doors to see how TEAM-CBT actually works in a real-world setting, and not role playing. The patient is a physician named Mark who has been haunted for decades by a problem with his oldest son, and he feels like a failure as a father. Although the facts of your...

The key is bringing the patient's subconscious resistance to conscious awareness, and melting it away with paradoxical techniques. This is absolutely critical if you are hoping to see a complete elimination of symptoms in any type of anxiety. You may recall that the Outcome Resistance for anxiety disorders usually results Magical Thinking—the anxious patient may be suffering intensely and asking f...

David reminds us about the differences between healthy fear and unhealthy, neurotic anxiety, or an anxiety "disorder" like a phobia, or OCD, and so forth. He explains that negative thoughts, and not events, trigger all our emotions, healthy or unhealthy. However, healthy fear results from negative thoughts that are valid and undistorted, and does not need treatment. For example, if you are walking...

We begin by describing the three different deaths of the ego that are required for recovery from depression, anxiety, or a relationship conflict, respectively. For depression recovery often results from the "Great Death," A Buddhist concept that involves the discovery that there is no such thing as a "self" that could be worthless, or inferior, or judged by another person. David and Fabrice only t...

David answers these questions: How do you deal with a patient (or friend) who is boring? How do you deal with a patient (or friend) you don't like? How do you get patients to do their psychotherapy homework? How do you deal with a patient (or friend) who is boring? David describes a technique he learned from a mentor, Dr. Myles Weber, during his second year of psychiatric residency at Highland Hos...

The cognitive model of anxiety is based on three powerful ideas: Anxiety always results from negative thought (NTs) that involve the prediction of danger. For example, if you have public speaking anxiety, you are probably telling yourself something like this: "I just know I'm going to blow it. My voice will tremble. People will know I'm anxious. My mind will go blank. I'll mumble and make a total...

There are 4 powerful treatment models for anxiety, including The Cognitive Model The Exposure Model The Motivational Model The Hidden Emotion Model Each approach has a completely different theory about the causes of anxiety and utilizes completely different treatment techniques. For example, cognitive therapists believe that distorted thoughts trigger all anxiety, and that the most effective treat...

David and Fabrice answer these questions: What is anxiety? How does it differ from depression? Do anxiety and depression always go hand in hand? How does anxiety differ from healthy fear? What are the most common forms of anxiety? How common is anxiety? Anxiety, like depression, has been called the world's oldest con. That's because you are always fooling yourself, and buying into negative thought...

A listener with OCD is plagued with intrusive and shameful sexual fantasies. David discusses his treatment strategies for a young man from Argentina who was struggling with forbidden fantasies of Jesus having sex with the Virgin Mary in all positions of the Kama Sutra, but the harder he tried to control them, the more intense and tantalizing they became. Being a good Catholic lad, he was terrified...

Discussion of recent startling and disturbing research studies by Dr. Irving Kirsch and others that suggest that the chemicals called "antidepressants" may, in reality, have few or no true antidepressant effects above and beyond their placebo effects. Dr. Burns illustrates the placebo effect with a thought experiment, and explains why it is so confusing to researchers and the general public alike....

Can the EAR techniques help a listener deal more effectively with a defiant, oppositional child. Dr. Burns reveals a fantastically helpful secret that he and his wife stumbled across in raising their own children. If you have ever struggled in your attempts to deal with an oppositional child or adolescent, you will find this podcast enlightening!

David and Fabrice address this question submitted by a listener: Dear Dr. Burns, I read Feeling Good twenty years ago. It was a wonderful relief and help to me. Your book has helped me live a better and balanced life. The best part was passing the knowledge on to my daughter.  I thought I read a wonderful description of how to handle death anxiety in the book. I was describing it to a friend, but...

David answers a challenging question posed by a listener: Dear Dr. David: In your Feeling Good Handbook , you suggest that the reader just allows himself or herself to be an ordinary person instead of trying to be perfect. Contrary to your opinion in the book, you're an outstanding therapist in reality. You've studied in one of the world's top colleges, you're well-educated with a doctor degree, a...

David and Fabrice are joined by Lisa Kelley, a certified TEAM-CBT therapist and former journalist from Littleton, Colorado. Lisa interviews David about an interview / blog David has just published on this website. Lisa begins by asking how people responded to a survey on David's website asking this controversial question: " Do you believe that a depressed individual could experience a complete eli...

How can you help a depressed friend or family member? You may be surprised to discover that the attempt to "help" is rarely effective, and may even make the problem worse . In contrast, the refusal to help is nearly always helpful. But to understand that paradox, you'll have to give a listen to this fascinating edition of "Ask David!" David and Fabrice also address a related problem nearly all of...

If used skillfully, the Five Secrets can resolve nearly any relationship conflict and transform hostility, resentment and mistrust into intimacy and warmth, often with amazing speed. And although this may seem easy when you first learn about the Five Secrets, it's extremely difficult in real world situations. In this Podcast, David and Fabrice discuss a number of predictable emotional and mental e...

Practically all of us have a friend, colleague, client, customer or family member we aren't getting along with very well. Perhaps the difficult person in your life is excessively critical of you, complains constantly, won't express his or her feelings, always has to be right, or never listens to you. Does anyone come to mind? In this podcast, David and Fabrice discuss five communication secrets th...

A fan points out that many of the examples in David's book, When Panic Attacks , are high functioning individuals with lots of education and good jobs. She asks Dr. Burns if depression and anxiety are inevitable among people who are poorly educated and without many assets. Dr. Burns again addresses the ancient but persistent question of whether our suffering results from the actual problems in our...

Discuss of " Should" Statements , Labeling , and Blame . Dr. Burns brings these distortions to life with a case of a severely depressed woman who felt profoundly guilty and devastated after her brother's tragic suicide.

T hree common distortions: Jumping to Conclusions (including Mind-Reading and Fortune-Telling ), Magnification and Minimization (also called the Binocular Trick), and Emotional Reasoning .

C ommon thought distortions that trigger negative feelings: All-or-Nothing Thinking, Overgeneralization, Mental Filter, and Discounting the Positive.

When we're feeling depressed, anxious, or angry, should we accept our feelings or try to change them?

A session  with a severely depressed, suicidal, hospitalized woman with rapidly cycling bipolar illness, who'd had 15 years of failed treatment with drugs and psychotherapy.

The three basic principles of CBT: Negative feelings, like depression, anxiety, and anger, do not result from what happens to us, but rather from our thoughts about what's happening. In fact, our thoughts, or "cognitions," create all of our emotions, positive and negative. When you're depressed or anxious, the negative thoughts that trigger your distress, like " I'm no good ," or " Things will nev...