- “Why won’t my husband ever express his feelings?”
- “Why won’t my wife listen?”
- “Why is my sister such a control freak?”
- “Why does my ex act like such a jerk?”
We all have someone we can’t get along with: a friend or colleague who complains constantly, a relentlessly critical boss, an obnoxious neighbor, or a spouse who nags.
In his best-selling book Feeling Good, Dr. David Burns introduced Cognitive Behavior Therapy, a clinically-proven, drug-free therapy that has revolutionized the treatment of clinical depression throughout the world. Now, in Feeling Good Together, Dr. Burns will show you how to develop more loving and satisfying relationships with the people you care about.
His new Cognitive Interpersonal Therapy is based on three simple but powerful ideas:
- We cause the exact relationship problems that we complain about so bitterly. However, we’re completely unaware of this, so we feel like victims and tell ourselves that it’s all the other person’s fault.
- We don’t want to examine our own role in the conflict because it’s incredibly painful to discover that we’ve been causing the problem all along.
- We all have far more power than we think to transform troubled relationships into loving ones, and this can nearly always be done quickly. But we’ll have to focus entirely on changing ourselves instead of blaming the other person. And although the rewards of intimacy can be enormous, there will be a stiff price to pay. The transformation will require humility, pain, and some hard work.
Based on 25 years of clinical experience and groundbreaking research on more than 1,000 individuals with happy or troubled relationships, Feeling Good Together is filled with simple, powerful tools that make relationships work, including:
- The Relationship Satisfaction Test
- The Blame Cost-Benefit Analysis
- The Relationship Journal
- The EAR Checklist
- The Five Secrets of Effective Communication
- The Intimacy Toolkit
- and more.
Feeling good feels wonderful—you owe it to yourself to feel loved!
Praise for Feeling Good Together from mental health professionals—
This is the finest work of its kind and will stand for generations as the relationship book.”
–Matthew May, M.D., Adjunct Clinical Faculty, Stanford Department of Psychiatry
“Feeling Good Together should be required reading for all couples who want to create a happy, healthy relationship.” –Tori Kelley, Ph.D., LMHC, Owner, Central Florida Mental Health, Inc.
“Finally, a relationship repair tool kit without fluff or camouflage. Change is a choice for brave and daring souls. Thank you, Dr. Burns!” –Nancy Ellen Lee, MFT, PhyD
“Implementing these ideas has been truly life changing. It works!” –Mischa Routon, MFT
“The relationship strategies in this book are simple but profound. This is Dr. Burns’s most seminal work. “ –Jan Stanfield, MFT/LCSW
“A powerful set of tools (and even a tool kit) to evaluate, repair or enhance our relationships. Feeling Good Together is destined to become a classic.” –Hugh Baras, Ph.D., Adjunct Clinical Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Stanford University School of Medicine
Thank you for your comment. I think I only got a part of it, but you’re definitely right. Blame is arguably the most common cause, by far, of troubled relationships, but people sometimes don’t want to let go of blame because it makes you feel superior to the person you’re not getting along with.! david