Defeating All-or-Nothing Thinking
Copyright © by David D. Burns, M.D. 2014. Do not reproduce or quote without written permission.
I send out an email report to the therapists in my Tuesday night psychotherapy training group at Stanford every week after we meet. I comment on what happened and summarize the negative and positive feedback from the Supervision Rating Scale that everyone fills out at the end of the evening. I also try to make a few teaching points.
Live therapy is one of many teaching techniques we use in the training group. Several of us work together as co-therapists and we treat an actual patient while the other therapists in the group watch. We stop every fifteen or twenty minutes to make teaching points, and to get feedback from the patient and from the therapists who are watching. This allows the patient to participate in the training process as well as the therapy.
This blog is based on a recent session with a depressed young man who I’ll call Ned. Many details in the report have been heavily disguised to protect Ned’s identity. After you read my comments, you can do an ultra-fast survey to let me know if you liked it.
Click here if you’d like to read about the session with Ned.
